Consciousness

Question 1

What is Descartes Ghost in the Machine?

Answer 1

Descartes argued that the nervous system (machine) makes us move away from painful sensation but our conscious experience (ghost) lives outside our nervous system

Question 2

What is the problem of consciousness?

Answer 2

there are “easy” and “hard” problems of consciousness
fields of science find the easy ones, but the hard problems are the essential ones to solve

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should and yet it does

Question 3

Where does thinking emerge?

Answer 3

from the endless interactions between neurons and we do not have the technology to measure it
“hard” problems

Question 4

How are we mapping the brains connections?

Answer 4

start out with simple creatures to map their brains (worm) and work their way up
human conncectome project

Question 5

What are some examples of easy vs hard questions?

Answer 5

how do we react to stimuli? how do we tell when we are awake? what does each area do?
what is the cause of our feelings? how does free will work? how do we have individual thoughts?

Question 6

What are characteristics of consciousness?

Answer 6

detecting sensory inputs and sharing that information with a wide variety of brain regions

Question 7

What are the 3 principles of consciousness?

Answer 7

processes do not require us to be conscious (memory consolidation that occurs during rem sleep)
does not require awareness
requires attention

Question 8

what does the knee jerk response have to do with learning about consciousness?

Answer 8

by breaking down unconscious movements and understanding the steps, it is hoped that more complex things can be understood

Question 9

what are the steps to making a voluntary movement?

Answer 9

unconscious planning of the movement (EEG response)
brain becoming “aware” of the planned movement
movement starts

Question 10

why were voluntary movements broken down in the movement study? (what was hoped to accomplish)

Answer 10

breaking down voluntary movements to compare with involuntary to determine when consciousness is happening

Question 11

What does Roger Sperry do?

Answer 11

worked on lateralization of brain studies (left vs right brain) and studies of split brain patients

Question 12

What is the right brain - left brain theory?

Answer 12

each side of the brain is responsible for different functions. each side of the brain controls the movements of the opposite side of the body.

Question 13

What is left brain vs right brain people?

Answer 13

Left: analytical, logical, detailed, numbers, think in words
Right: creative, free thinking, big picture, intuitive, visualization

Question 14

What are some of the functions that are localized to one hemisphere or another?

Answer 14

emotion: right
language: left
handedness: depends on dominant hand

Question 15

What/why were the first brain split studies done?

Answer 15

studying patients with damage done on one side of the brain and how the other was affected in response
broca’s area or wernicke’s

Question 16

how were the split brain experiments done?

Answer 16

the one side of the brain controls the other side’s motor functions
an image is flashed on one side of the screen
report verbally what object was seen, or to find the object by touch

Question 17

what did the split brain experiments find?

Answer 17

“see” and interpret sight on the left side of the brain but can grab with the same hand even if nothing was “seen”

Question 18

what was the self recognition experiment?

Answer 18

mixing two people’s faces more and more
left hemisphere recognized the person’s own face
more easily than the right hemisphere

Question 19

How does splitting the brain help epilepsy patients?

Answer 19

epilepsy is the uncontrolled firing of action potentials in the temporal lobe that spreads to the other side of the brain (stopped by the surgery when corpus callosum is cut)

Question 20

What is corpus callosum agenesis?

Answer 20

born without a fully formed corpus callosum, children don’t develop right but adults are fine if theirs is cut later in life

Question 21

What happens when someone has brain lesions and makes a moral judgement?

Answer 21

harder for them to decide what is right and wrong (same for patients who undergo TMS and split brain procedures)

Question 22

What happens to patients with a coma?

Answer 22

can still respond (in the brain) to commands (parts of the brain light up with activity)

Question 23

How does our unconscious help us make choices?

Answer 23

we plan to do things (math problem steps, etc) without even “thinking” about it

Question 24

What are the 3 factors in unconscious prioritizing?

Answer 24

Strength of the stimulus (or information).
Its motivational relevance to the moment.
How accessible is the information?