S2W8Consc

Question 1

Dualism

Answer 1

Mind exists independently of the brain.

Descartes.

Mind and matter.

Mind has attribute of thought and matter has spatial extension.

How do they interact?

Question 2

I think, therefore I am

Answer 2

Cogito ergo sum

Descartes.

The act of doubting own existence is proof of the reality of one’s own mind (must be a thinking entity)

Question 3

Idealist

Answer 3

Mind controls the body.

Only mental phenomena exist

Mind arises from the brain.

For every mental event there is corresponding brain event

Question 4

Koch

Answer 4

Wrote a book that discusses consciousness.

Question 5

Neuromorphic

Answer 5

Computational

Use of very-large-scale integration (VLSI) systems containing electronic circuits to mimic the nervous system.

Implement models of neural systems (for perception, motor control, or multisensory integration)

Question 6

Neuroprosthetic

Answer 6

A device that can monitor and decode the electrical language of thoughts and convert into overt machine control (limbs).

Question 7

Conscious content

Answer 7

Information we are aware of at any given moment.

Characterised by experience of perceptions, thoughts, feelings and awareness of the world.

Question 8

Conscious level

Answer 8

State of consciousness

From coma through to alert wakefulness

Question 9

Phenomenal consciousness

Answer 9

Feelings, sensation in the present moment

Question 10

Access consciousness

Answer 10

Ability to reason, reflect and have a sense of self, that extend beyond the current moment.

Question 11

Chalmer (2007) hard and easy problems

Answer 11

The hard problem:

Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life?

Easy problem:

Understand our ability to discriminate and categorise stimuli, integrate information, and access our internal states and control our behaviour.

Question 12

Functions of consciousness

Answer 12

Perceiving the environment

Social communication

Controlling our actions

Allows us to think about events and issues far removed from the present

Integrating information

Question 13

Subliminal perception

Debner and Jacoby (1994)

Answer 13

Word presented for 50 or 150 ms followed by a mask.

Then the first 3 letters of the word presented again.

Think of first word that came to mind starting with those letters, except for the word that had just been masked.

150 ms: participants followed instructions to avoid using masked word.

50 ms: masked word was often.

Question 14

Proof reading task

Answer 14

IV1: Unconscious goal: with socialisation-relevant words
or not.

IV2: Socialisation seen as important or not.

DV: errors detected in text.

Unconscious socialisation goal impaired proofreading performance in participants for whom socialisation is an important goal.

Question 15

Social communication

Answer 15

Developing conscious awareness of ourselves helps us to understand other.

Temporo-parietal junction used for this function.

Possible that awareness originally developed to understand others and only later did we develop self-awareness.

Question 16

Controlling our actions

Answer 16

Free will is an illusion. Our actions are caused by unconscious process.

Wegner argued that the principle of priority, consistency and exclusivity jointly lead us to believe our actions are caused by our conscious thoughts.

When a thought appears in consciousness just before an action (priority), is consistent with the action (consistency) and is not accompanied by alternative causes of action (exclusivity), we experience conscious.

Question 17

Libet free will

Answer 17

Measured the time when subject became consciously aware of decision to move.

Dot on screen of oscilloscope circulating rapidly.

Subject noted position of dot when he was aware of conscious decision to move.

Conscious awareness preceded finger by 200ms BUT

Readiness potential 550ms before wrist.

Uunconscious activity 350ms before reporting conscious awareness .

Question 18

Bode et al. 2011 free will

Answer 18

fMRI Left fronto-polar cortex

Outcome of free decisions can be decoded above chance from brain activity several seconds before reaching conscious.

Shows some of our decisions are prepared preconsciously before we are aware.

However:

Requirement to make random responses probably reduces any pre-decision conscious processing.

Researcher’s ability to predict participant decision only slightly above chance.

Question 19

Assessing consciousness

Answer 19

Actual conscious experience is much richer than our ability to report it.

Reports of conscious experience limited due to processes (e.g. memory) intervening in between experience and report.

Distinction between objective or subjective thresholds.

Question 20

Under-reporting of visual arrays (Sperling, 1960)

Answer 20

Whole-report condition: presented subjects with 50ms presentations (then mask) of visual arrays of letters and found that on average they reported back 4.4 letters.

Partial-report condition: gave subjects an auditory cue to identify which row they would have to report. They were able to report 3.3 letters in that row.

Delayed the presentation of the auditory cue to 1 second: subjects’ recall fell to about 1.5 letters.

Recall fell to third of whole report (3 rows), so were able to report as many items from cued row as they encoded without cue.

Indicates subjects have all letters in a visual buffer but they have difficulty in reporting them before they decay.

Question 21

Coma

Answer 21

Person shows no signs of being awake and no signs of being aware.

Doesn’trespond to their environment, voices or pain.

Lasts for less than two to four weeks.

Question 22

Vegetative state

Answer 22

Person is awake but is showing no signs of awareness.

May open their eyes, wake up and fall asleep at regular intervals and have basic reflexes, such as blinking.

Able to regulate heartbeat and breathing

No meaningful responses, such as following an object with their eyes or responding to voices.

No signs of emotions.

Continuing vegetative – more than 4 weeks

Permanent vegetative – more than six months if non-traumatic injury, more than 12 if traumatic injury

Question 23

Minimally conscious state

Answer 23

Shows clear but minimal or inconsistent awareness

Periods where they can communicate or respond to commands, such as moving a finger when asked.

May enter after being in a coma or vegetative state.

Some cases it is on the route to recovery, but others it’s permanent.

Continuing: 4 weeks+

Permanen: depends on injury and response but several years+

Question 24

Cruse (2011) conscious states

Answer 24

EEG signal associated with motor imagery on one healthy control and three patients.

Clear focal areas over the hand and toe motor areas (directly relevant to the task) for all four participants.

Shows activation even in a coma

Question 25

Svard, Wiens and Fisher: masked and unmasked faces

Answer 25

Backward masking paradigm

Starting at 17 ms.

Investigated when the happy face advantage occurrs.

All age groups, recognition for happy faces better than for neutral and fearful faces at durations longer than 50 ms for masked and unmasked.

Question 26

Koivisto et al. (2014) Recurrent processing

Answer 26

Recorded EEG and manipulated recurrent processing with object substitution masking while the participants performed categorization task.

Masking reduced perceptual awareness, slowed speed and reduced EEG difference elicited by animal and nonanimal scenes after 150 msec.

Imply that recurrent processes enhance the resolution of conscious representations.

Question 27

Feedforward sweep vs. recurrent processing

Answer 27

Fragmented processing of different kind of information (shape, colour etc.).

Recurrent processing: integrated processing of this information.

Question 28

Recurrent processing TMS

Answer 28

TMS applied in lateral visual occipital cortex after visual stimulation.

Conscious visual perception reduced after TMS.

Consciousness is recurrent processing

Question 29

Global workspace theory

Answer 29

Behavioural and neuronal assumptions

Processing involves special unconscious processors- distributed across brain.

Consciousness associated with integrating information from processors late in processing.

Brain areas vary as a function of content.

Attention linked closely with consciousness.

Brain regions:

Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).
Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC).

Question 30

Early processing : Lamy (2008)

Answer 30

Backward masking paradigm. ERP

Forced-choice response to location of a
target.

Reported subjective awareness of target

Compared ERP waves when observers reported being aware/unaware.

Awareness associated with amplified P3 component (conscious awareness has late processing).

Widely spread across scalp for subjective awareness, but restricted to parietal for unconscious perception.

Question 31

Integrated brain functioning: Melloni (2007).

Answer 31

Comparing electrophysiological
responses to processing visible/invisible words.

Both perceived and nonperceived
words caused increase of local gamma oscillations.

Only perceived words induced syncrhonised gamma oscillations across different regions of the brain.

Conscious processing involves intergrated brain functioning.

Question 32

Integrated brain functioning (King, 2013)

Answer 32

Designed novel measure (wSMI) and applied it to EEG recordings of patients in various states of consciousness.

Measure of information sharing systematically increases with consciousness state, particularly across distant sites.

Distinguishes patients in vegetative, minimally conscious and conscious state.

Support integrated processing across long distances the more conscious you get.

Question 33

Prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate

Answer 33

compared conscious and nonconscious processing of briefly flashed words using a visual masking procedure while recording intracranial electroencephalogram (iEEG) in ten patients.

Conscious processing of unmasked words was characterized by the convergence of (voltage changes, increase in spectral power, long distance processing)

Particularly in prefrontal cortex.

Question 34

Attention and consciousness Naccache (2002).

Answer 34

Assessed reaction times for congruent and incongruent trials that were cued or not cued.

The nature of the invisible digit had no effect on uncued trials but a highly significant effect on cued ones.

Attention amplified information without bringing the object into
conscious awareness.

Question 35

Attention and consciousness Cohen (2012)

Answer 35

Attention is necessary but not sufficient for conscious awareness.

Information can only reach conscious awareness through attention.

Some attended items can influence behaviour (e.g priming) and produce neural changes.

Information that is not attended can produce modest priming effect and some neural activation.

Question 36

Global workspace theory: strengths

Answer 36

All major assumptions supported

Early processing of seen/unseen stimuli is similar

Consciousness associated with integrated brain activity

Links between attention and conscious awareness.

Question 37

Global workspace theory: weaknesses

Answer 37

Focuses on visual awareness

Integrated brain functioning not necessarily the neural substrate for consciousness

Psychological processes neglected

Question 38

Is consciousness unitary

Answer 38

Split-brain patients (Trevarthen, 2004)

Right hemisphere outperformed left hemisphere on visuo-spatial tasks.

Left hemisphere performed better on language tasks.

Patient Paul S (Gazzaniga, 1992)

Showed limited consciousness in the RH
LH interprets actions initiated by the RH

Question 39

Do split-brain patients have two minds?

Answer 39

Sperry: yes. minor hemisphere (RH) constitutes second conscious that runs parallel with major hemisphere (LH).

Gazzaniga: no. only one consciousness in LH known as interpreter. Makes sense of functions we have going on.

Bayne: no. single consciousness switches between two hemispheres. Hemisphere depends on the allocation of attentional resources.

Question 40

Dual consciousness

Answer 40

Split-brain patient VJ (Baynes & Gazzaniga) dismayed by independent performance of each hand

Both left and right hemispheres permitted self-recognition (Uddin et al., 2005)

Self-awareness associated with greater right than left hemisphere activations in healthy individuals (Keenan & Gorman, 2007)

TMS applied to right prefrontal cortex disrupted self-perspective taking (Guise et al., 2007)

Question 41

Anarchic-hand syndrome (Verleger, 2011):

Answer 41

Performance in terms of speed and accuracy significantly worse with left hand.

Smaller ERP P3 component to stimuli presented in RH.

LH plays dominant role in conscious awareness because it is the location of an interpreter or self-supervisory system providing coherent interpretation of events.

It would be of great relevance to discover the presence of NCC in the RH.