week 3 Flashcards
What are the three meanings of consciousness according to Pinker (1997)?
Sentience, access to information, and self-awareness.
What is the hard problem of consciousness, as described by Chalmers?
Understanding why subjective experience arises from physical processes.
What does sentience refer to in consciousness?
Subjective experience or phenomenological awareness
What does access to information mean in the context of consciousness?
The ability to report subjective experiences
What is self-awareness in consciousness?
The narrative self, where one recognizes oneself as experiencing feelings and thoughts
Who proposed the narrative self is adaptive for social navigation?
Nicolas Humphrey
What profound idea did Velmans propose about the outside world?
It is a stream of visual consciousness inside our skulls, constrained by sensory information
What are the easy and hard problems of consciousness as defined by Chalmers?
Easy problems relate to functions of conscious systems; hard problems address why experience arises
What is the Global Neural Workspace theory?
It states that information integrated in a global workspace becomes the content of consciousness
What do Dehaene and Naccache’s theory states about conscious states?
Conscious states require activation in visual areas and top-down attention
What are the three states of consciousness in Dehaene and Naccache’s model?
Conscious, Pre-conscious, and Subliminal
What is the primary critique of consciousness theories in addressing the hard problem?
They do not explain why integrated cortical information is consciously experience
What experiment by Wegner explores the illusion of will?
The “I Spy” experiment
What are the conditions that enhance the illusion of conscious will?
Priority, consistency, and exclusivity
What did Libet’s readiness potential study show about free will?
The brain initiates actions before conscious decisions are reported
What advancement did Soon et al. provide on Libet’s experiment?
Predicting decisions using multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) fMRI
What is the WWW model by Brass and Haggard?
It characterizes stages of free decision-making: What, When, Whether
What is the definition of qualia?
Introspectively accessible, phenomenal aspects of mental lives
What did Melloni et al. find about cortical integration?
It involves synchronization of cortical oscillations
What brain areas are associated with consciousness according to Rees (2007)?
Superior parietal and dorsolateral prefrontal areas
What does selective attention influence according to Baars?
Selective attention integrates information into the global workspace
What is the key feature distinguishing consciousness from selective attention?
Attention can occur without consciousness, enhancing or inhibiting unconscious processing
What did split-brain studies by Gazzaniga and Sperry reveal?
The left hemisphere controls speech, and split-brain patients adapt to integrate information
What is the role of the left hemisphere in split-brain patients?
It is considered the home of the narrative self and superior consciousness
