PSYO 1021 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Depressant, Cocktail Party, Driving Simulator
27 Jun 2018
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Lecture 7
Chapter 5
Chapter outline – what is consciousness?
Consciousness
Definition
Awareness of one’s surroundings and of what’s in one’s mind at a given moment
= the main event in your brain at a given time, the experience
Ex: walk out into the porch on a bright sunny day, eyes send information to visual processing
areas, the heat hits you and temperature sensors send impulses to the somatosensory cortex.
Come together in consciousness to from your experience of being on the porch.
- Various sensory elements, focus on relevant stimuli
Don’t take in all of the sensory elements: sensory adaptation
Focus awareness to relevant stimuli, filter out irrelevant sensory info
Ex: Not thinking about how it feels to sit in chair, how clothes feel
Instead, focusing info on the prof speaking
Awareness is biased towards our current tasks and desires:
-Current desires
Affect what you are aware of
Ex: if you want to succeed, brain will focus on the prof
Thinking about hungry, desire of food
-Past experiences
2 people can have the same stimuli and different conscious experience
Researchers have divided consciousness with 2 types of problems
1. Easy problems
Examine awareness:
What type of information are you aware of?
How long are you aware of it for?
Examined with scientific studies
2. Hard problem
Why does all of this feel like something?
Why does it differ from one person to the next (subjective)?
Researchers have tried to examine this, not close to explaining
Nothing like a concessive theory or a guess to why there is a subjective aspect of consciousness
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Lecture 7
2 fundamental dimensions/ features of consciousness
Variations of consciousness can be explained in degrees of wakefulness and awareness
All states of consciousness lie between awake and aware (scale)
Wakefulness
Degree of alertness/wakefulness
Whether you are asleep or awake
Awareness
How much you are monitoring info from environment and thoughts
Closely tied to attention
Can be awake but not aware
Usually measured by differences of behavior and brain activity that accompain every state
Scale
Minimal consciousness
Loss of consciousness: fainting, comas
Coma
= Eyes are closed, completely unconscious to exterior stimuli
Low on both awakness and wakefulness
Resolve from injuries in parts of the brain (fever that overheats):
-Reticular formation – example of the cats
-Ponds – shutting of signals so that you are paralyzed when sleeping
Glasgo coma scale
Scale to assess the level of comas
3 variables: eye opening, verbal response and motor response
Behaviors are rated from each category
Average score ranges from 3 (coma) to 15 (well)
Function
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Lecture 7
Assess the degree of the comma
Predict if people are likely to recover
Problem
Only from observations, don’t know the brain activity
People can rate low on this scale and have a functioning brain
Locked in syndrome
Less popular, replaced with new technology that assess brain activity
Vegetative state
Awake but not aware
The eyes might be open, but the person is otherwise unresponsive (no verbal response,
movement)
Might be able to give a minimal response: tracking someone with their eyes
Locked in syndrome
Someone is actively functioning
But appears otherwise, can’t move because of malfunction in ponds (paralyzed)
Don’t respond to the Glasgow scale
Ex: women was believed to not have any conscious functions, thought she was in a coma
woman was asked to imagine some things like walking through her house…
fMRI revealed the same activity in brain as fully conscious healthy people
Suggest her brain was fully functional but appeared in a coma
= locked in syndrome
Full consciousness
Medically defined as recovered from Anastasia or a coma
Possible to be awake but not aware:
Following awake with a change or awareness:
Drowsy
Awake but your awareness is low
Impulse to sleep
Bored
Awake but not aroused by the environment (not paying attention to anything)
Flow
Really into what you are doing, time passes quickly
Thrive in our ability to rise to the occasion of challenging tasks
Consciousness and awareness is high
Ex: into a book, sport everything clicks at once
Mindfulness
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Document Summary
Awareness of one"s surroundings and of what"s in one"s mind at a given moment. = the main event in your brain at a given time, the experience. Ex: walk out into the porch on a bright sunny day, eyes send information to visual processing areas, the heat hits you and temperature sensors send impulses to the somatosensory cortex. Come together in consciousness to from your experience of being on the porch. Various sensory elements, focus on relevant stimuli. Don"t take in all of the sensory elements: sensory adaptation. Focus awareness to relevant stimuli, filter out irrelevant sensory info. Ex: not thinking about how it feels to sit in chair, how clothes feel. Awareness is biased towards our current tasks and desires: Ex: if you want to succeed, brain will focus on the prof. 2 people can have the same stimuli and different conscious experience. Researchers have divided consciousness with 2 types of problems: easy problems.
