In this video we discuss The Blindsight by Peter Watts. It is a Science Fiction book about mankind’s first contact with alien life!
My New Sci-Fi Comic: https://www.quinnhoward.net/theliebehindthestar.
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One of the greatest challenges in the field of neurology and intensive care medicine is correctly diagnosing the level of consciousness of a patient in coma due to severe brain injury. Scientists of the Human Brain Project (HBP) now have explored new techniques that may pave the way to better tell apart two different neurological conditions.
Their findings, published in the journal eLife, reveal important information on the mechanisms of disorders of consciousness.
The team of researchers from University of Liège, GIGA Consciousness Research Unit and Coma Science Group and CHU de Liège (Belgium), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Spain), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), and others, assessed brain functional network states as a marker of consciousness to potentially distinguish patients in the unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) and minimally conscious state (MCS).
https://www.jimruttshow.com/joscha-bach-2/
Joscha Bach and Jim start by talking about the difference between mind & brain, and the body & environment’s connection to mind & emotions. Joscha then offers his views on some popular consciousness theories & thinkers: consciousness as frequency, Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Functionalism, Daniel Dennet, and Roger Penrose. While covering these theories & thinkers they talk about GPT-3, learning & memory, what it means to understand, intuitive vs analytical intelligence, dreaming vs reality, attention & agents, psychedelics, magical phenomena, areas worth exploring to improve AI, and much more.
Lecture from the mini-series “Cosmology & Quantum Foundations” from the “Philosophy of Cosmology” project. A University of Oxford and Cambridge Collaboration.
This session explores the nature of consciousness, including efforts to define and measure it. What systems have subjective experience? What do we mean when we refer to various types of consciousness? How simple, and how sophisticated, can consciousness in principle be? Can we define necessary conditions for a physical system to be conscious? Sufficient conditions?
Bobby Azarian is a cognitive neuroscientist and science journalist. His work can be found in publications including The Atlantic, the New York Times, Scientific American, and BBC Future. He has also authored academic papers for prestigious peer-reviewed journals, such as Human Brain Mapping and Cognition & Emotion.
Below, Bobby shares 5 key insights from his new book, Listen to the audio version—read by Bobby himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
If you’re listening to this then congratulations, you’re lucky enough to be alive during the most exciting time in history. We are on the verge of a paradigm shift of unparalleled magnitude. Such a shift occurs when new science forces us to adopt a different overall framework and perspective.
It’s a wild idea, but recent experiments suggest plants may have the ability to learn and make decisions. Are the claims true and if so, what does it mean for our understanding of consciousness and the human mind?
The Brain Chemical Involved in Consciousness
So how do we help these people? The brain is more than just a congregation of different areas. Brain cells also rely on a number of chemicals to communicate with other cells, enabling a number of brain functions. Before our study, there was already some evidence that dopamine, well known for its role in reward, also plays a role in disorders of consciousness.
For example, one study showed that dopamine release in the brain is impaired in minimally conscious patients. Moreover, a number of small-scale studies have shown that patients’ consciousness can improve by giving them drugs that act through dopamine.
