Task 7

Question 1

Doctrine of Concordance

Answer 1

= concerns the degree of similarity between individuals and their psychological characteristics

–> there is concordance between consciousness (phenomenal consciousness/qualia), awareness (psychological consciousness), and behavior
–> disorders dissociate this concordance

Question 2

Korsakoff’s Syndrome

Answer 2

• the most common form of amnesia
• concerns anterograde amnesia and retrograde amnesia
• caused by the toxic effects of alcohol, as well as thiamine deficiency caused by malnutrition in heavy drinkers

Question 3

Anterograde Amnesia

Answer 3

= the inability to form new long-term memories

–> STM memory remains intact, but as soon as thought or perception leaves working memory, they are gone

Question 4

Retrograde Amnesia

Answer 4

= loss of LTM that stretches back into the past

–> also occurs after accidents, concussion, or trauma, in which case there is usually a period of blank memory for the accident itself, and for a variable time before

Question 5

No complete loss of memory

Answer 5

amnesic patients can still:
- perform classical conditioning
- perform procedural learning
- retain and learn skills

Question 6

Consciousness in Amnesia

Answer 6

Amnesics are conscious because:
- they are aware, responsive, able to converse, laugh, and show emotions
- BUT: they have lost the interaction between current and stored information that normally enables the ‘commentary’ that underlies conscious experience

–> amnesics create no memory of a continuous self who lives their life

Question 7

Anosognosia (form of Neglect)

Answer 7

= a condition in which a person with the condition is unaware of having it (deficit of self-awareness)

• damage to the right parietal lobe
• leaving ‘core consciousness’ intact while damaging ‘extended consciousness’

–> the connections between autobiographical memory and the body representation based in the right parietal lobe are destroyed and this affects the core self

Question 8

Anton’s Syndrome

Answer 8

= patients are blind and still insist that they can see

• when parts of the visual system are gone there may be no neurons calling for information from the eyes or able to notice that none is coming in

–> there would be an absence of information rather than information about absence

Question 9

Hemifiled/Unilateral Neglect

Answer 9

= patients seem not to realize that the left-hand side of the world even exists

• occurs only with right brain damage
• can partly be explained as a deficit of attention, in that patients simply do not attend to, or have their attention drawn to, the left-hand side of the world

–> emotional stimuli shown in the neglected field can influence attention, and stimuli that are not consciously seen can prime later responses

Question 10

Hemianopia

Answer 10

= the removal of V1 on one side of the brain leaves a person blind on the other

–> if a person looks straight ahead and an object is placed on the blind side, it cannot be seen

Question 11

Blindsight

Answer 11

= cases in which people deny having conscious sensory experiences and yet behave as though they can see

Question 12

“The most obvious interpretation of Blindsight”

Answer 12

The blind seer has vision without consciousness. He is an automaton or a partial zombie who can “see” functionally but has none of the visual qualia that go with normal seeing. This proves that consciousness is something separate from the ordinary processes of vision.

–> invalid

Question 13

Objections to this interpretation: Blindsight does not really exist

Answer 13

• light might have strayed from the blind field into the seeing filed

Question 14

Objections to this interpretation: Blindsight is nothing more than degraded normal vision

Answer 14

• blindseers have several restricted visual functions and severely degraded qualia to match
• blindseers have been shown to respond very accurately while claiming no awareness at all
• blindseers are just overly cautious about saying they can see something

Question 15

Objections to this interpretation: Blindsight might depend on residual islands of cortical tissue

Answer 15

• true blindsight occurs when V1 is destroyed and other pathways from the eye to different parts of the brain remain intact

–> about 85% of cells take the major route through the lateral geniculate to primary visual cortex
–> the rest goes via the superior colliculus to various other cortical and subcortical areas and are not affected by the destruction of V1

Question 16

How can we detect Blindsight?

Answer 16

While denying consciously seeing anything, subjects can:
- make saccades to stimuli
- point to the location of objects
- mimic the movement of lights or objects in the blind field
- show pupillary and other emotional responses to stimuli they cannot see

–> this ability depends on information in the minor pathway running through the superior colliculus and amygdala

Question 17

Super Blindsight

Answer 17

Training a blindsight patient by giving him feedback on his guesses, until he comes to realize that he has a useful ability

–> after this training, he should spontaneously be able to talk about, act upon, and use the information from his blind field just as well as from his seeing field

Question 18

Evidence against the Super-Blindseer: Blindsight is impoverished

Answer 18

• in spite of their remarkable ability to detect stimuli and simple features without awareness, blindseers generally cannot recognize forms or identify familiar objects
• they cannot use their blindsight in ordinary life

–> they have to be prompted, and even pushed
–> the hypothetical super-blindseer has abilities way beyond those of actual blindsight

Question 19

Evidence against the Super-Blindseer: Awareness in the blind field

Answer 19

• blindseers are sometimes aware of certain kinds of stimuli in their blind field, especially fast-moving, high-contrast ones
• motion perception in the blind field is the same as that in the seeing field –> patients would not identify the experience as ‘seeing’

–> blindsight should be seen as action without perception

Question 20

Evidence against the Super-Blindseer: Sensory Substitution

Answer 20

= substituting one sense from another

• the residual functions in blindsight are banned from consciousness because the neural activity does not reach the conscious centers

–> blindsight is visual processing in the absence of phenomenal vision

Question 21

Evidence against the Super-Blindseer: Access Consciousness vs. Phenomenal Consciousness

Answer 21

Access Consciousness: the availability of information for use in reasoning, speech, and action

Phenomenal Consciousness: experience, or ‘what it is like’ to be in a given state

–> stimuli in blindsight are both phenomenally and access-unconscious
–> the super-blindseer would be a partial zombie who has A-consciousness but no P-consciousness

Question 22

Somatoparaphrenia (Feinberg)

Answer 22

= a condition in which a person denies ownership of their body parts of attributes them to someone else

–> hypothesized to be a more extreme form of neglect

Question 23

Neural Basis of Somatoparaphrenia

Answer 23

• damage to the right hemisphere of the brain
• parietal cortex = integrating sensory information from various modalities
  –> this integration is disrupted: lack of awareness/recognition of one or more body parts

Question 24

Behavior of Patients with Somatoparaphrenia

Answer 24

• patients are still able to perform complex tasks with the affected limb

–> often in combination with other symptoms of neglect
–> often in combination with anosognosia

Question 25

Dissociation in Somatoparaphrenia

Answer 25

Individuals with somatoparaphrenia display a lack of awareness/recognition of their own body parts despite being conscious and having intact sensory and motor functions

–> dissociation lies in the parietal cortex
–> dissociation lies between phenomenal and psychological consciousness