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Aug 24, 2023

What a Contest of Consciousness Theories Really Proved

Posted by in category: neuroscience

A five-year “adversarial collaboration” of consciousness theorists led to a stagy showdown in front of an audience. It crowned no winners — but it can still claim progress.

Aug 24, 2023

An Overview of the Leading Theories of Consciousness

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Organizing and comparing the major candidate theories in the field.

Aug 20, 2023

Scientists Identify a Hidden Pattern of Consciousness in The Brains of Coma Patients

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Scientists have used advanced imaging techniques to identify brain activity and regions linked to cognitive motor dissociation (CMD), or ‘hidden consciousness’. CMD is a state in which a person appears comatose and unresponsive while inwardly showing signs of conscious brain activity.

The findings, reported by a team from Columbia University in the US, may help doctors more easily identify CMD in the future, and better tailor treatments for people who can understand what’s being said to them but can’t respond to it.

CMD happens in around 15–25 percent of people with brain injuries from head trauma, brain hemorrhage, or cardiac arrest. In these patients, something breaks between the instructions coming from the brain and the muscles needed to carry those instructions out.

Aug 19, 2023

Process Physics, Time and Consciousness — Presentation Whitehead Psychology Nexus 2015

Posted by in categories: physics, robotics/AI, space

Conference presentation of “Process Physics, Time and Consciousness: Nature as an internally meaningful, habit-establishing process.” As presented at the Whitehead Psychology Nexus Workshop Conference held in Fontareches, France, March 27-30th, 2015 (with some minor adjustments). For full published paper, see: https://tinyurl.com/yc9r6kys (date of publication: October 18, 2017).

Abstract:

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Aug 17, 2023

Neuroscience research triggers revision of a leading theory of consciousness

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Exactly how, and how much, the unconscious processing of information influences our behavior has always been one of the most controversial questions in psychology. In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud popularized the idea that our behaviors are driven by thoughts, feelings, and memories hidden deep within the unconscious mind — an idea that became hugely popular, but that was eventually dismissed as unscientific.

Modern neuroscience tells us that we are completely unaware of most brain activity, but that unconscious processing does indeed influence behavior; nevertheless, certain effects, such as unconscious semantic “priming,” have been called into question, leading some to conclude that the extent of unconscious processing is limited.

A recent brain scanning study now shows that unconsciously processed visual information is distributed to a wider network of brain regions involved in higher-order cognitive tasks. The results contribute to the debate over the extent to which unconscious information processing influence the brain and behavior and led the authors of the study to revise one of the leading theories of consciousness.

Aug 17, 2023

How consciousness may rely on brain cells acting collectively — new psychedelics research on rats

Posted by in category: neuroscience

Psychedelics are known for inducing altered states of consciousness in humans by fundamentally changing our normal pattern of sensory perception, thought and emotion. Research into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics has increased significantly in the last decade.

While this research is important, I have always been more intrigued by the idea that psychedelics can be used as a tool to study the neural basis of human consciousness in laboratory animals. We ultimately share the same basic neural hardware with other mammals, and possibly some basic aspects of consciousness, too. So by examining what happens in the brain when there’s a psychedelically induced change in conscious experience, we can perhaps glean insights into what consciousness is in the first place.

We still don’t know a lot about how the networks of cells in the brain enable conscious experience. The dominating view is that consciousness somehow emerges as a collective phenomenon when the dispersed information processing of individual neurons (brain cells) is integrated as the cells interact.

Aug 16, 2023

Brain imaging study suggests that loss of consciousness is related to the malfunctioning of two neural circuits

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

A team of scientists recently aimed to better understand consciousness and its pathologies by studying the neural activity of patients with disorders of consciousness and healthy volunteers using brain imaging technology. They identified two crucial brain circuits implicated in consciousness. The results of the study have been published in Human Brain Mapping.

Consciousness is a complex and subjective experience, and there is still much debate among scientists and philosophers about its nature and origin. However, in clinical settings, doctors treating patients with severe brain injuries and disorders of consciousness need to find ways to help their patients, regardless of the exact definition of consciousness. The authors of the new study sought to better understand the mechanisms behind the pathological loss of consciousness and its recovery, as well as to have reliable ways to assess the state of the patients.

“In recent years, many studies have tried to objectively assess levels of consciousness using various neuroimaging techniques. While these studies have improved how we diagnose patients with disorders of consciousness, they haven’t fully explained how consciousness comes about,” explained study author Jitka Annen, a postdoctoral researcher at the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege.

Aug 15, 2023

Episode 25: David Chalmers on Consciousness, the Hard Problem, and Living in a Simulation

Posted by in categories: computing, neuroscience

Blog post with show notes, audio player, and transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2018/12/03/epis…imulation/

Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seanmcarroll.

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Aug 14, 2023

Source of Hidden Consciousness in ‘Comatose’ Brain Injury Patients Found

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Columbia researchers have identified brain injuries that may underlie hidden consciousness, a puzzling phenomenon in which brain-injured patients are unable to respond to simple commands, making them appear unconscious despite having some level of awareness.

“Our study suggests that patients with hidden consciousness can hear and comprehend verbal commands, but they cannot carry out those commands because of injuries in brain circuits that relay instructions from the brain to the muscles,” says study leader Jan Claassen, MD, associate professor of neurology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and chief of critical care and hospitalist neurology at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center.

The findings could help physicians more quickly identify brain-injured patients who might have hidden consciousness and better predict which patients are likely to recover with rehabilitation.

Aug 12, 2023

Daniel Dennett on Consciousness, Virtual Immortality, and Panpsychism | Closer To Truth Chats

Posted by in categories: biological, life extension, robotics/AI

Daniel Dennett discusses the nature of consciousness, if consciousness is an illusion, artificial intelligence and virtual immortality, and how he covers all of this in his book, Just Deserts: Debating Free Will, co-authored with Gregg D. Caruso.

Just Deserts: Debating Free Will https://www.amazon.com/Just-Deserts-Debating-Free-Will/dp/15…atfound-20
Read an excerpt https://www.closertotruth.com/articles/book-excerpt-just-deserts.

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