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. The information should make it easier to understand this page. 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. The following explanation 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 Consciousness, a long-neglected topic in neuroscience, is beginning to attract scientific inquiry. Interestingly, when scientists state their objectives, it becomes evident that they do not aim to explore consciousness; they tacitly want to know how the whole brain works. Because of this unconsciously injected goal, many brain researchers believe that consciousness is associated with attention, intelligence, emotion, 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 exists, knows, and feels. The next problem in the research of consciousness is that it has been misunderstood and associated with unrelated phenomena or 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 often incorrectly believe that neuronal activation is reflective of conscious awareness. These approaches are not productive, because consciousness is an internal experience of the mind and is only loosely associated with behavioral responses or neural activations. Another common false belief among brain researchers is the notion that consciousness is a distributed property that affects the whole brain. This idea is popular with philosophers because they do not need to bother figuring out how the brain works. By assuming that consciousness is distributed throughout the cerebral volume, science can be replaced with a belief that is difficult to disprove and impossible to confirm. 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 states 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 research of consciousness and the Self. Answering any major issue surrounding consciousness is not possible without knowing how the whole brain works. Poor knowledge of the functions of specific neural structures will constantly make scientists confuse consciousness with unrelated faculties and mental states. The below presented explanation of consciousness is only possible because the cognitive architecture and function of the whole brain have already been discovered. The reality of conscious experience is that the physical 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 reticular activation system (RAS) or the intralaminar thalamic nuclei (ILN) can abolish consciousness. The reason behind the failure is not that the neurons of these structures participate in consciousness, but that the neural systems directly involved in consciousness never become activated by the less advanced structures of the brain. Thus, the scientific finding that consciousness depends on the RAS and ILN is about as useful as the knowledge that the function of a computer depends on the power supply switch. But the information tells us nothing about the actual function of the computer. Just as unproductive are studies of coma, emotion, blindsight, or the activations of mirror neurons. These phenomena have next to nothing to do with consciousness.   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 recognizable by consciousness. The brain uses the knowledge 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 in real time, 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 be witnessed by an outside observer, but not by 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. This means that conceptual memories interface senses and biographical memories to the Self. Dreams, for example, do not allow access to biographical memories. This deficit allows the dream imagery to be perceived by the Self as if it were 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. However, emotional memories are still needed to give the good or bad emotions meaning. Interestingly, the Self is only aware of emotion during consciousness. Other cognitive input (images and sounds) can be perceived even in a dream, but emotion arouses no emotional reaction or experience in the dreaming Self.  DEFINITION OF TERMS Any discussion about consciousness faces serious problems attributable to terminology. Many languages do not have the equivalents of awareness, self-awareness, and consciousness. These English expressions have been defined by clinicians, philosophers, neuroscientists, or linguists, and mean different things to each of the named professions. On this page, the usage of the mentioned terms reflects how much the Self knows and to what degree. But it would be wrong to think of knowledge as a stream or heap of data. Knowledge on this webpage refers to experience of cognitive input by the Self. So, the key issue is not how much the Self receives, but how the Self experiences the information. When the Self experiences only the cognitive input, then the term "awareness" is used. If the Self experiences the input and also recognizes Aha, this is Me, I am perceiving this input, then the expression "self-awareness" is used. And when the Self acquires self-awareness and also recognizes and identifies with the physical body that hosts the Self in the surrounding world, then the term "consciousness" is used.  The proposed terminology implies that consciousness allows the highest possible degree and scope of human experience. But this realization comes with a few caveats. First, recognition of the human body is not absolutely necessary to produce consciousness, but is used as a reliable indicator that consciousness has been achieved. Second, the three levels of experience do not nicely follow each other from no perception to full consciousness. And third, the presented explanation of consciousness is grossly simplified to introduce only the basic concepts of this phenomenon. Consciousness has a much broader clinical, scientific, social, existential, and philosophical meaning than is disclosed on this webpage.  CATEGORIES OF AWARENESS As the preceding discussion reveals, the biological Self reacts to any cognitive input, and the combined responses of the activated neurons produce awareness. Awareness is a complex property that arises after signal detection. Even a radio, television, camera, or computer is capable of detecting a signal, but these devices have no ability to interpret the meaning of the information. This is why detectors of machines normally drive a display unit so that a human subject can view the information and recognize its meaning. In the human brain, signal detection and awareness of the signal are achieved almost concurrently in the perceptual neurons of the Self. Signal detection simply means innervation of the Self, but awareness of the signal is more involved. Awareness consists of two components. The first component represents factual understanding of the incoming signal in the mental domain and is supported by mental representations of the conceptual memory. This component only delivers ideas or knowledge. The second component stands for sensory stimulation (and other feelings) of the perceptual neurons of the Self. This component reflects qualitative aspects of the signal (qualia); that is what kind of "feeling" the signal evokes in the perceptual neurons. For example, an object is perceived as bright yellow circle. Yet even when the mental models and the sensory signals are combined, they do not produce consciousness, just mere awareness of the physical attributes of the arriving signal. There are several levels of awareness, and each is associated with specific neuropsychological conditions. No Awareness States of coma, general unconsciousness, or deep sleep do not produce any awareness in the Self. The Self is either inactive or receives no cognitive input. 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. The Self, thanks to its supporting neural structures, understands the meaning of the dream both in the sense of being able to interpret the visual information and in the sense of being able to mentally understand the story and its factual meaning. There is no self-awareness in a dream and no ability to affect the dream. The subject is only aware of the cognitive input, but has no awareness of Self or of the way the Self responds to the input. Tracking of the dream events is poor, and the attention available to 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. Self-awareness in Hypnosis Hypnosis is the next higher level of awareness and the lowest level of self-awareness. But this characterization does not mean that hypnosis naturally follows simple awareness. In hypnosis, the Self becomes self-aware, knows about its existence and experience, and perceives what is happening. The hypnotized subject is able to realize: This is me; I am perceiving an information, and I understand the information. But the Self is unable to interact with its cognitive input at will. 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 versus the suggestions made by the hypnotist. Despite recognizing the conflict, the Self is unable to intervene and change the course of events, unless so instructed by the hypnotist. Self-awareness in 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 existence and cognitive experience. The dreamer may be able to considerably, even though only 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. Unlike in hypnosis, the subject has great difficulty perceiving sounds and happenings in the outside world. The reason is that hypnosis and lucid dreams are only loosely related mental states that have substantially different physiology. Self-awareness in 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. Self-awareness of the human body happens within the physical limits of the Self, and not in the dispersed peripheral neural system of the body. 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 free will. Consciousness unknowingly reacts to forces that remain hidden from the Self. However, experience of one's body is of crucial importance for the organism and distinguishes lucid dreams, hypnosis, out-of-body experience, sleep paralysis, and other classes of self-awareness (commonly known as "states of altered consciousness") from true consciousness. The described levels of awareness and self-awareness can be confusing because many people believe that self-awareness gives a subject information about the status of his body. This view is incorrect. Self-awareness only involves the neural structure of the Self (not the human body) and gives the Self the experience and awareness of its interaction with the available cognitive input to the Self. Information about the human body is not necessary to produce self-awareness. A person can be self-aware of itself just mentally within the constraints of the brain when the only input is memory or information produced from memory. Or a person can be self-aware and can identify with one's sensory inputs, such as one's reflection in the mirror, body parts felt by touch, or somatic boundaries stimulated by the surrounding space (clothes, water, or cold air). Sensory self-awareness can also be triggered by input that does not include the human body, such as smell, taste, vision, sound, or touch of the surrounding space. THE MECHANISM OF SELF-AWARENESS AND CONSCIOUSNESS   The mentioned 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 within 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 or self-awareness 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. Self-awareness 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 deeper meaning of consciousness/self-awareness is that the neurons of the Self experience how they perceive a cognitive stimulus. The stimulus is not only recognized for its characteristics (qualia), but is also coupled with the neurobiological responses of the perceptual neurons. Thus, the experience of the input becomes internalized in the Self, and the incoming signal and the perceptual neurons become psychologically inseparable. As a result, the Self perceives the input as its world and as Itself. What the Self experiences constitutes the Self. Because of this property, the Self is psychologically defined by its cognitive input. This phenomenon is apparent during common, non-lucid dreams. The imagery and the experience of the dreamer are one and the same, and the observer is psychologically inseparable from the cognitive input. In addition to this most basic degree of acceptance of all cognitive input as part of the Self, the Self can also be associated with unique properties, such as the physical boundaries of the human body. These limits allow the conscious Self to distinguish the human organism from the rest of the world and give the Self an egocentric perspective. 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 merely produces the highest level of self-awareness. A different faculty of the Self needs to perform additional functions to engage interactive abilities. Even though the Self, its feedback structure, and other supporting neural substrates have been identified, the microanatomical 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 perception of the incoming information. This is how the feedback signal is combined with 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 versus Computer, solid state devices are very poor models for neural circuits and should only be used cautiously to facilitate 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. 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 a 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 be detected during postprocessing of the remembered information. The usual modes that support this function are hypnosis, reexperiencing of a past event, or conscious postprocessing of a dream that occurs just prior to awakening. Interestingly, the same categories of attended and unattended aspects of imagery also exist in common dreams, when the subject is neither conscious nor self-aware. Explanation of this phenomenon can be found in Dak's book. 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. FALSE TRAITS OF CONSCIOUSNESS   Consciousness represents a unique quality of human experience and is difficult to understand. Not surprisingly, consciousness has attracted the attention of various pseudoscientists, from naive believers in the supernatural to professional religious scholars. They have associated consciousness with qualities that do not exist or are not the manifestations of the fully conscious state. Perhaps the most common expression found in supernatural writings is the term superconsciousness. In reality, there is no such thing. Consciousness is the highest level of human perception and comes with limits on cognition to ensure perceptual quality, intelligence, and reality checking. No one can improve his level of consciousness beyond what is humanly possible. This ability is determined biologically and psychologically at birth. During growing up, traumas, dissociation, brain damage, and mental disorders may reduce the perceptual acuity of consciousness, usually because the neural circuits supporting consciousness become functionally degraded. By contrast, certain mental states that are cognitively lower than consciousness, such as hypnosis, are known for exceptional sensory abilities, reduced sensitivity to pain, superhuman strength, or superior memory recall. The cost of these improved faculties is loss of volition, judgment, perceptual modalities, or reality checking. The one-sided improvements in these faculties are not superior to consciousness, because the subjects are not conscious. 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 the existing 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 experience 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 that are needed for our functioning in our environment. There is nothing else behind it. RECOGNITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS The ability to recognize consciousness in human subjects or animals is of special importance in traumatic brain injuries, but also has significant impact in clinical settings during psychotherapy or standard cognitive evaluation. Because consciousness gives the brain the experience (the awareness, understanding, and mental feeling) of the impinging cognitive information, a clinician should be looking for the corresponding responses to such stimuli. This is in essence the transference and countertransference phenomenon, which so often causes difficulties to common psychologists and psychiatrists. When the stimuli and the emotional, cognitive, and behavioral responses are in agreement, then it becomes obvious that the subject is conscious. This is easy to recognize in highly intelligent animals or people. A chihuahua dog, an otter, or a weasel are naturally playful with humans and exhibit surprisingly keen understanding of what is going on during mutual interactions. Also apes in a zoo readily interact with visitors and manifest that they are aware of the meaning of the interaction. By contrast, some creatures, such as turtle, crocodile, fish, and very young children have limited understanding of and limited responses to cognitive stimuli. Adults can watch a very young child play, and the child fails to understand that someone is watching her. This failure is not caused by the lack of consciousness, but is influenced by undeveloped intelligence and the corresponding neural circuits. In adults, the assessment of consciousness is more difficult because adults can show seemingly interactive behaviors even in states of altered consciousness. The subjects can logically respond to cognitive input, but may have no emotions and no practical (emotional) understanding of the meaning of the received information. For example, the restaurant manager announces: "The restaurant is on fire." And a guest who lacks consciousness replies, "The fire station is four blocks away," and continues dining at the table as if there were no problem. This mental quality characterizes the states of altered consciousness and manifests the lack of true consciousness. The difference between the proper and the actual responses is not that big, but the difference in the neuropsychology of the behaviors is enormous.
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Updated Jul 29, 2010		Unpublished work © 2001-2010 Lucid Pages. All rights reserved.