Loss of consciousness
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Consciousness: A Neuroscience Perspective - Prof. Kurowski, Slides of History of Sociological Knowledge
This lecture note explores the concept of consciousness from a neuroscience perspective, examining the relationship between brain activity and conscious experience. It delves into the complexities of consciousness, including the mind-body problem, the role of resting-state brain activity, and the challenges of studying consciousness through objective methods. The note uses the cases of john and lucie, individuals who have lost consciousness, to illustrate the breakdown of neuronal arousal and its implications for understanding consciousness.
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2023/2024
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Loss of consciousness
Week 1/
John and Lucie lost consciousness
- (^) But:
- (^) What is consciousness? In most basic or general terms: Awake, aware and responsive to an environment
- (^) John: vegetative state, eyes are open
- come: eyes are closed
- (^) Lucie: MCS: minimal responses to environmental ques
- (^) UWS/VS: also following stroke, bleeding or tumors
Level of consciousness
- (^) Cortical and subcortical arousal very low: lack of motor output to an environment
- Loss of contents in consciousness
- Loss of self-consciousness or self-awareness
- (^) Loss of self?
- (^) Locked-in-syndrome
- (^) Depression: (extreme) emotional negativity
- (^) Schizophrenia: altered self (e.g., Jesus)
- (^) VS: loss of self with loss of consciousness
Resting state activity
- (^) Brain’s resting state activity: a neuronal bridge between environment and content of consciousness (and self).
- John and Lucia: the bridge is lost or destroyed
Unity of mind vs. Disunity of brain
- (^) The mind feels unified but the brain does not. (More about this problem later.)
- (^) Descartes: pineal gland connects the mind stuff with bodily/brain stuff. Was he right?
Extrinsic and cognitive view
Reflexive model:
- (^) Stimulus------brain activity------motor output
Intrinsic and resting-state view
- (^) The brain is always active, except for brain death -vegetative state
- (^) Sleep and dreaming
- (^) Uses large amounts of oxygen
- (^) Why?
- rest-stimulus interaction but not the other way around
Rest-stimulus interaction
- (^) Resting-state activity prior to stimulus exposure predicts what one sees or perceives.
- So, what does this mean for contents of consciousness?
Conclusions and difficulties
- (^) Consciousness:
- (^) A problem in philosophy for centuries
- (^) A problem in psychology since William James (1900)
- (^) A problem in neuroscience since 1990 Methodological problems:
- (^) Consciousness is (ontologically) subjective
- (^) Neuroscience is (methodologically) objective
- (^) How do you reconcile the two?
Cont’d
- (^) A way in:
- (^) Functional brain imaging techniques (PET and fMRIs) and other, e.g., EEG, single-cell recordings
- (^) Experiments: show unconscious neural activity without conscious and behavioral report.
- (^) Clinical studies: John and Lucie: breakdown of neuronal arousal and specific brain mechanisms
- (^) to understand the neuronal-mental transformation(or bridge) in healthy subjects we look at its breakdown in unwell brains: UWS/VS and coma.