Consciousness Flashcards
aspects of consciousness
subjectivity intentionality unity selectivity transience
outcomes of consciousness
body awareness agency theory of mind self awareness metacognition
subjectivity
very subjective
personal experience isn’t easily quantifiable
intentionality
focused or directed at things
unity
not easily fragmented, can’t experience the same thing (duck and rabbit)
selectivity
have attention, filter out other parts
transience
stream of consciousness, mind wandering from moment to moment
body awareness
knowing you have a body
agency
understanding that you’re an individual that’s separate from the rest of the world
theory of mind
understanding that the contents of your mind are different from someone else’s
self-awareness
experiencing your experiences
meta-cognition
sometimes you’re thinking about thinking
mirror task
seeing a mark on your body in the mirror and either trying to wipe it off or wipe it off the mirror
easy problem
map brain activity to conscious experience
hard problem
knowing how that conscious experience is is experienced by the individual
dualist language
mind and body are separate
materialism
mind and body are one in the same, mind is part of body
neural correlates of consciousness
minimal neural mechanisms needed to produce the conscious experience
consciousness vs selective attention
need consciousness for attention, choose to give attention
consciousness vs wakefulness
can’t generate waking state, people can have a waking state but won’t show signs of being conscious
consciousness vs perception
mostly about organizing the world around us, high levels lead to a conscious
s experience
consciousness vs explicit memory
drawing memory from storage in the brain, contents of conscious experience
consciousness vs decision making
decisions are conscious in nature, however consciousness may not be doing anything and is just a byproduct (lags behind decisions)
consciousness vs the self
clearest part of self is what the conscious has access to. some parts are not accessible
brain area where visual perception is
cortex
brain area where blindsight is
midbrain
top-down eye movement
FEF (frontal eye field)
bottom-up eye movement
superior colliculus
what happens when damage to the cortex impairs top down eyesight
midbrain (superior colliculus) used for blind sight
consciousness and pavlovian conditioning
learning occurs prior to conscious XP
Hippocampus is used for conditioning of stimulus slightly separated, cerebellum when they are on top of one another
why are different brain areas used for different kinds of conditioning?
anterior usage for farther apart stimulus shows more conscious effort being used to facilitate conditioning
thalamus in consciousness
loss of function causes loss in consciousness, however results vary depending on damage
how do we study loss of function in the thalamus without damaging the cortex
compression of the skull does not damage cortex but does the thalamus
consciousness is mainly focused on the:
forebrain
research methods that allow for study of consciousness
bistable images
binocular rivalry
presenting relevant stimuli for given neuron
comparing conscious and non-conscious brains
visual consciousness associated brain areas
ventral stream of the visual system
ventral stream of the visual system comoponents
inferotemporal cortex, inferior temporal gyrus, fusiform gyrus
binocular rivalry findings (non-human primates)
shown neutral image and face image. show activity in the fusiform gyrus when reported seeing a face, no activity when shown mixed image
inferotemporal cortex (IT)
activity here preceeded conscious visual perception
binocular rivalry findings (humans)
FFA (fusiform face area) and PPA (parahippocampal place area) are involved in seeing either a face or place
Halle Berry neurons
neuronal populations are encoded for specific things
e.g. dolphins, even the word spelled out, even when they thing about them
resting state brain activity
see high activity in the posterior cingulate and mPFC
how is resting state brain activity measured?
via resting-state functional-connectivity MRI
Default mode network
brain areas associated with resting brain activity
default mode network brain areas
mPFC, posterior parietal cortex, PCC, precuneus, hippocampus, lateral temporal cortex
DMN responsible for:
spontaneous cognition (mind-wandering). also active when asked about a past of future event**
sentinel hypothesis (DMN)
even when you’re doing nothing you need to pay attention to the world so we’re always ready to go
internal mentation hypothesis (DMN)
always thinking of future events. represents stream of conscious, mind-wandering (literatures choice)
