LUCID PAGES		PHYSIOLOGY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
HOME HUMAN MIND Intelligence Brain vs Computer		This page is based on the eBook THE HUMAN MIND by Martin Dak. Before exploring consciousness, the reader is urged to first learn about the properties of machines and living systems. INTRODUCTION Consciousness is perhaps the most baffling phenomenon known to man. Every healthy person can be conscious, but almost no one can describe what consciousness is and what it does to the mind. This mystery has fascinated humanity for millennia. The following revelation of the nature of consciousness may seem unfair because the magic of your conscious experience may be lost forever. If you cherish the mysterious nature of consciousness and want to preserve it that way, stop reading now. Or continue reading to learn the unfathomable. WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS IS NOT Many brain researchers believe that consciousness is associated with attention, intelligence, memory, executive abilities, or expression of needs. In reality, none of these qualities is involved in the creation of consciousness. Most are generated prior to the onset of consciousness. Only consciously directed executive abilities are activated after achieving consciousness. The prominent thing consciousness does to the mind is self-awareness, that is the knowledge and feeling that one knows and feels. Another common false belief among brain scientists is the notion that consciousness is a distributed property that affects the whole brain. In reality, consciousness is concentrated in a specific neural structure. The function of the structure results in the subjective perception of being. The physical structure is the Self of the mind and the organism. Scientists have failed to find the Self. Not because it does not affect behavior and cognition, but because scientists have been incapable of correctly assessing the mental state of conscious human subjects. Another reason for the failure is that brain scientists do not know what the Self does and what they should be looking for. Also the lacking knowledge of the cognitive architecture of the whole brain has been hampering progress in the search for consciousness and the Self.  The next problem in the search for consciousness is that it has been misunderstood and associated with unrelated phenomena and cognitive abilities. Most people incorrectly assume that being awake is the same as being conscious. A related problem is the false belief that a behavioral response to a cognitive stimulus manifests the existence of  consciousness. Similarly, researchers who use neuroimaging techniques incorrectly believe that neuronal activation is reflective of conscious awareness. The reality of conscious experience is that the Self depends on other neural structures, and consciousness can only occur when major brain systems are functional. For example, it is well known that damage to the thalamic intralaminar nuclei can abolish consciousness. The reason behind the failure is not that the nuclei participate in consciousness, but that the neural structures involved in consciousness never become activated by the nuclei. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS Consciousness is a property of all complex living things. Consciousness gives an organism the experience of being in the real world and interacting with it. All essential environmental influences on the organism are recognized by consciousness. The brain uses the awareness to improve its well-being and chances of survival. The human organism is no different. It consists of the physical body and the brain. The brain processes information from itself, messages from the body, and input from the immediate environment sensed by touch and taste, and from the distant environment, which is experienced through smell, hearing, and vision. All these classes of information target the brain and trigger a perceptual process. The culmination of the process is associated with consciousness. Although consciousness gives the organism the necessary self-awareness, consciousness is not the end of the road. Consciousness is just an ability that allows a neural structure (the Self of the mind) to fulfill its primary function and purpose. They are explained in Dak's book. THE SELF The Self is a neural structure with diverse perceptual abilities. The Self can perceive, interpret, and experience cognitive signals as sensory information, or emotion, or ideas. The Self is able to function in its capacity only because it consists of highly responsive neurons. Even the slightest discernible attributes of a cognitive input are reacted to by the neurons, and their combined responses produce awareness of the incoming stimuli. This means that the Self perceives not just pain or emotion, but also can register neutral stimuli and facts of life, such as colors, texture, spatial properties, and similar attributes that are neither good nor bad. The perception and response of the Self are neurobiologically inseparable. Perception represents mental aspects from the viewpoint of the Self; that is how an input is mentally experienced by the Self. Response has more physical nature and corresponds to the actual biological changes in reaction to the received input. These changes can usually be witnessed by other neural structures or by an outside observer, but not the Self. Although the Self can react to cognitive input without the help from other neural structures, understanding of the signals typically requires access to memories. Not the memories of events, but categories of objects, animals, acts, attributes, and functions to allow the interpretation of the arriving stimuli. Dreams, for example, do not allow access to biographical memories. This deficit allows the dream imagery to be perceived by the Self as a contemporary reality. Even impossible events and concepts are accepted by the dreamer as facts because true biographical experiences are not accessible in dreams. One notable exception to the creation of conscious experience is emotion. The Self needs no memories of specific events or stimuli to perceive emotional signals. They can be understood just by the neurons of the Self. The neuronal response to the emotional input translates into the experience of emotion. The Self understands positive and negative emotion, and the degree of emotional intensity. Interestingly, the Self is only aware of emotion during consciousness. Other cognitive input can be perceived even in a dream, but emotion typically arouses no activation in the dreaming Self. CATEGORIES OF SELF-AWARENESS As the above discussion reveals, the biological Self reacts to any cognitive input, and the combined responses of the neurons produce awareness. But this is no consciousness, just mere awareness. There are several levels of awareness; each is associated with specific neuropsychological conditions. Simple Awareness Simple awareness occurs in dreams. The Self wakes up, apparently under the influence of the cognitive input, and perceives the events of the dream. There is no self-awareness and no ability to affect the dream. The subject is only aware of the cognitive input, but has no awareness of Self and of the way the Self responds to the input. Tracking of the dream events is poor, and the attention of the Self is usually spotty. Reflection about the events of the dream is possible, but only while the imagery lasts. New images of the dream wash away any lingering reactions of the Self to the old imagery and produce new reactions in response to the latest input. Hypnosis Hypnosis is the next higher level of awareness and the lowest level of self-awareness. The Self becomes self-aware, knows about its existence and experience, and perceives what is happening. But the Self is unable to interact with its cognitive input. Things are happening at their own pace, and the Self can only passively monitor the events. Some level of reflection is possible though. The Self may identify discrepancies between one's values, belief, and knowledge, and the suggestions made by the hypnotist. Despite recognizing the conflict, the Self is unable to intervene and change the course of events.  Lucid Dreams Lucid dreams are dreams that are accompanied by the dreamer's self-awareness. The Self receives cognitive input in the form of dream imagery and concurrently is self-aware of its cognitive experience. The dreamer may be able to considerably, even though to a limited degree, mentally interact with the content of the dream. The subject can often mentally depart from the dream and think about something else, and can even move the eyes at will. But the dreamer has no awareness of the rest of his body and has no control over it. Consciousness Consciousness gives a person not only mental self-awareness, but also self-awareness of one's body in relationship to the surrounding space. Consciousness allows the Self to perceive the whole human organism, both mentally and physically. The ability to exercise free will (mental pursuit of goals) and control over executive functions (physical behavioral pursuit of goals) are the usual accompanying traits of full consciousness. In reality, the Self does not exercise a free will. Consciousness unknowingly reacts to forces that remain hidden from the Self. THE MECHANISM OF CONSCIOUSNESS   The categories of awareness expose an essential common element: The Self reacts to its cognitive input. The reaction occurs as a biological response of neurons, and the reaction directly translates into a mental perception of the Self. The biological aspects of the response and the resulting mental perception are one and the same. But the excitation of neurons by an input is not enough to produce consciousness in the Self. An additional mechanism must be employed. The goal of the mechanism is to convey to the Self: This is your input, and this is how you react to it. The Self can recognize and interpret the input on its own. But the Self is unaware of its cognitive/neurobiological response to the input. To deliver the desired message to the Self, a cognitive feedback is necessary. Consciousness is created so that a neural circuit closely cooperating with the Self monitors the reaction of the Self to any cognitive input, combines the reaction with the original input, and feeds the composite signal to the Self. By means of this mechanism, the Self is able to become aware of its reaction to the original input because the reaction arrives in the form of an input. Engagement of the feedback changes simple perception to self-awareness. The level of self-awareness depends on the available sources of input to the Self. If all input sources are active (senses, memory, emotion, etc.), the Self is fully conscious and self-aware. But the Self still needs the ability to translate its experience into action, either mental or both mental and physical. This ability represents the difference between hypnosis, when the subject is unable to interact with the cognitive input, and lucid dreams, when cognitive modulation of the dream events is possible. These diverse abilities together with the primary function of the Self hint that consciousness only produces the highest level of self-awareness. A different part of the Self needs to do additional cognitive processes to engage the interactive abilities. At this time, the exact implementation of the described mechanism of self-awareness is still unknown. Directional propagation of information is probably required to achieve the feedback function. The feedback circuit of consciousness apparently does not affect the original input. The Self can perceive a dream without engaging the feedback circuit and creating self-awareness. The situation changes during self-awareness. As soon as the incoming signal reaches the Self and produces a cognitive reaction, the response of the Self is applied through the feedback circuit to modulate the incoming information. This is how the feedback signal is superimposed on the original input. A conceptually equivalent function is known from electronics. Transistors, diodes, transformers, and signal splitters are capable of implementing such feedback. But, as is argued on the page Brain vs Computer, electronic devices are very poor models for neural circuits and should only be used cautiously to facilitate a deeper understanding of neurobiological mechanisms. In the above discussion, there seems to be no room for attention. Attention is largely steered by the content of the cognitive input. The neural circuits supplying the Self with input determine what stimuli (images, sounds, mental facts, etc.) the Self receives. Within these input stimuli, the circuits of attention select certain features. Only the selected features enter the feedback loop and participate in conscious experience. The rest of the stimuli targeting the Self remain at the level of simple awareness. Thus, conscious experience is always attended. The whole cognitive input is saved as memory, but the conscious mind is only aware of encountering the consciously experienced information. Stimuli that only aroused simple awareness are typically not captured in the meta memory, and the subject is unaware that they exist. However, their presence may sometimes be detected during postprocessing of the remembered information. The usual modes that allow this function are hypnosis, reexperiencing of a past event, or conscious postprocessing of a dream that leads to awakening. The mechanism of consciousness implies that a cognitive input gives rise to a reaction in the Self. If no input is present, no reaction can be produced. In turn, the reaction cannot be brought as a secondary input to the Self, and the Self does not enter consciousness. This is why consciousness is always associated with some cognitive input. COGNITIVE PERCEPTION VERSUS REALITY The preceding text has revealed that consciousness allows us to experience the environment and its effect on the Self. Since the Self is heavily connected with the brain and body, conscious awareness within the Self reflects the state of the human organism in relationship to the environment. Experience has shown that perception of the world by the Self is very subjective. Two different people may encounter the same condition, and they may experience it differently. An Eskimo may enjoy the balmy 60 degree Fahrenheit weather, but a visitor from the tropics may be shivering in his winter coat. A father may proudly speak about his good boy, but everyone else may believe that the child is a spoiled brat. A painter may faithfully draw the portrait of a person, but the person may believe that the colors are not colorful enough or that the imperfections of the facial features are exaggerated. The examples hint that formative life experiences result in different perceptual qualities in different people and that the current perception of the Self is modulated by previous experiences. The different interpretations of the same facts are understandable when something is agreeable or disagreeable. One would expect that perceptions of reality should come closer to objective reality when the topic is neutral and unemotional. But even the most neutral stimuli are formed during personal experiences and are biased one way or another. However, there are certain standards that reflect the majority opinion and characterize a particular species. Other species will perceive reality differently, but even these differences are minor. For all practical purposes, the conscious experiences of most higher living things are largely similar. Functional consciousness, that is conscious experience applied to the world, indicates that all living forms can reliably avoid obstacles, use the terrain to their advantage, and seek food successfully. These practical examples manifest that conscious perception of any higher species is adequate to ensure survival, and that the differences in individual perception of reality are inconsequential. Unfortunately, most people erroneously associate consciousness with intelligence or other faculty and may disagree with this conclusion. Qualia, that is qualitative nuances of conscious perception, are inseparable aspects of conscious experience. Perceptual qualities of humans are reflective of our neurobiological representations of the world. As the human organism was evolving, it used various chemicals and biological properties of neurons to obtain information about the environment. Any suitable substance or mechanism that was available was tried until a quality representation of reality was obtained. That we perceive the world the way we do is simply a manifestation of natural selection of appropriate neurobiological mechanisms. There is nothing else behind it.
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Updated Mar 9, 2010		Unpublished work © 2001-2010 Lucid Pages. All rights reserved.