Consciousness (CH. 15) Flashcards
What is Consciousness?
A state of awareness of sensations or ideas, such that one can reflect on those sensations and ideas, know what it “feels like” to experience them, and report to others that one is aware of these sensations and ideas
Goodale Milner (1991) Blind Sight
Patient DF had profound visual Agnosia. Little-to-no conscious awareness of form/shape. Could still make visually guided actions
What are Action Slips?
An error in which a person performs some behaviour or makes some response that is different from the behaviour or response intended
What is the Prefrontal Cortex Responsible For?
- Control one’s thoughts
- Keep goals in mind
- Organize mental steps
- Shift plans and change strategy
- Inhibit automatic responses
- Working memory
What are “Workspace Neurons” Responsible For?
They link the activity of various specialized brain areas (e.g., regions crucially involved in attention and vision). Linking stimuli into a dynamic, coherent representation via workspace neurons leads to consciousness
What is the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)?
Active for detecting conflict, and thus the need for control
What is Access Consciousness?
One’s sensitivity to certain types of information
What is Phenomenal Consciousness?
What is feels like to have certain experiences
What is Qualia?
One’s subjective experiences that cannot be conveyed as a first-person experience to someone else
What are Metacognitive Skills?
Skills that allow people to monitor and control their own mental processes
What is Metamemory?
People’s knowledge about, awareness of, and control over their own memory
What are Neural Correlates of Consciousness?
Events in the nervous system that occur at the age same time as, and may be the biological basis of, a specific mental event or state
What is the Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis?
A specific claim about how the brain makes conscious experience possible; the proposal is that “workspace neurons” link together the activity of various specialized brain areas, and this linkage makes possible integration and comparison of different types of information
