Consciousness Flashcards
What is counsciousness?
The state/quality of awareness of thoughts, perceptions, memories and feelings
What is created by the state of awareness that derives from consciousness?
Subjective experience of what it is to be.
What were the effects of lobotomies?
Apathy, docility, weakness of emotions or opinions, child-like behavior
What is the corpus callosum?
Bundle of nerve fibers that connect the left and right side of the brain
What is the split-brain operation?
- Section of the corpus callosum
- Aims to treat seizures
What composes the outside brain?
Cell bodies
What composes the inside of the brain?
axons
What is epilepsy?
Condition in which a few neurons become extremely excitable and propagate the over-activity through axons.
What are the two main purposes of the cerebral hemispheres?
- Ability to CONSCIOUSLY process sensory information
- Ability to CONSCIOUSLY/PURPOSEFULLY move the body
What is the criss-crossing of the nervous system?
The right hemisphere is responsible for sensations and movements in the left hemisphere, and the opposite
How is vision lateralized?
The left field of vision of each eye is processed by the right hemisphere, and the right field of vision of each eye is processed in the left hemisphere.
What is the impact of damage to the cerebral hemispheres?
Not conscious of receiving sensory information
What is the main function of the corpus callosum?
Enables the hemispheres to share information in between themselves.
What parts of the brain coordinate bilateral body movements and integrate them after a dissection of the corpus callosum?
- brainstem
- spinal chord
What were the actual conclusions of the corpus callosum experiments?
- improvements were minimal or non durable
- no significant impact
How did the question of consciousness come to be related to the split-brain operation?
Some patients reported that their left hand was acting in a way that they could not control, as though it was being controlled by unconscious processes. It also sometimes went against what they were trying to do with the right hand.
What of touch in split-brain patients?
Touching an object with their left hand, they could not verbally identify it.
What of vision in split-brain patients?
Seeing an image in their left peripheral vision, they cannot verbalize what they see.
What happens when split-brain face stimuli that is directed exclusively toward the right brain?
Unable to verbalize it
How did split-brain patients adapt?
- One hemisphere takes over in a situation dependent manner
OR - Subcortical structures coordinate bimanual skills
Why were split-brain patiens unable to verbalize the stimuli treated by the right hemisphere?
The right brain does not possess speech
Where are language abilities located?
Mostly in the left hemisphere
What did Sperry discover about the right cerebral cortex (regarding language)?
- Ability to retain a small dictionary
- Can understand simple numbers/letters/short statement
THEREFORE the left hand can be used to indicate simple answers to simple questions
What did Sperry notice when split-brain patients performed an action that had been initiated by their right hemisphere?
they made up a post hoc answer, as if their left brain was trying to explain what the right brain had done to give it a sense
What is the interpretor theory?
Behavior is fully controlled by unconscious processes and the function of the left-brain counsciousness is the creation of narratives to make sense of the world.
Who developed the interpretor theory?
Gazzaninga
According to Gazzaninga, what controls behaviors?
Unconscious processes
According to Gazzaninga, what is the role of human consciousness?
Creating a narrative, out of disparate points of information, to explain our unconscious behaviors. (STORYTELLING)
According to the Interpreter theory, where is situated consciousness?
Left cerebral hemisphere
What is an epiphenomenon?
A biproduct of neuronal structures that has no functions but is there because neuronal pathways and brain structures evolved and created this by accident (consciousness according to Gazzaninga)
What is determinism?
In accordance with the laws of physics, there might be an unbroken chain of cause and effects originating to the origins of the universe, that humans can witness but not tamper with.
What is the mind-body duality?
There are two worlds that coexist quite awkwardly: the material world (the body) and the immaterial world (the mind). If the soul belongs to the immaterial world, then the body belongs to the material world and is of a mechanical nature.
What is the cartesian impass?
How can the immaterial soul, which belongs to the immaterial world, influence the material world (body).
What is thinking?
An act of creation that involves theorizing what we are, how the world is, how the things ought to be and how they might otherwise be.
How does the brain coordinate movement in a split brain situation?
The brain stem and spinal chord integrate information from both hemispheres.
What are the functions of the left hemisphere?
- Control of the left side of the body’s muscles
- complex language (comprehension, speech, writing)
- Proccesses right half of the visual field
What are the functions of the right hemisphere?
- control muscles on the left side of the body
- limited language (very limited dictionary)
- Processes left half of the visual field
