Consciousness

Introduction

• Consciousness involves:
  • Conscious experience.
  • Access to information.
  • Self-knowledge.
• Functions of consciousness:
  • Social interaction (predicting/understanding others).
  • Information exchange.
  • Global control.
• Decisions: Some are preconsciously prepared before conscious awareness.

Measuring Conscious Experience

• Assessment: Typically uses behavioral measures (e.g., verbal reports).
• Problem: Failure to report may be due to attention, memory, or inner speech issues.
• Lamme's Argument: Focus on neural correlates of consciousness.
• Conscious experience is associated with recurrent processing, not the feedforward sweep.
• Recurrent processing isn't always linked to conscious experience.

Brain Areas Associated with Consciousness

• Stimuli Processing Processing of not consciously perceived stimuli shows modest brain activation in most areas of the visual cortex.
  *Areas in the prefrontal and parietal cortex are typically activated during the processing of stimuli that are consciously perceived.
  *Functional roles of these brain regions in visual awareness are still unclear, but they may be involved in integrating information from various brain areas.

Theories of Consciousness

• Global Workspace Theories: Selective attention determines awareness.
• Conscious awareness involves integrated brain activity, especially in the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, and parietal cortex.
• Support exists for the major assumptions of these theories.
• Selective attention may follow rather than precede conscious awareness.
• Theories do not yet explain if key brain areas produce or are a consequence of conscious awareness.

Is Consciousness Unitary?

• Split-Brain Patients: Behavior can be controlled by each hemisphere.
• The left hemisphere is dominant, acting as an interpreter.
• The right hemisphere engages in low-level processing and may lack consciousness or have limited self-awareness.
• The left hemisphere can overrule the right, preventing dialogue between them.
• The right hemisphere may play a role in self-recognition and awareness.