PSYC 211 Lecture 1: Lecture 1 - Consciousness

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 211
• Professor: Jonathan Britt

Document Summary

Consciousness: awareness of thoughts, perceptions, memories and feelings. The brain is the organ that moves the muscles. Neuroscientists think the mind and consciousness are physiological functions located somewhere in the brain. Attention: you are conscious of things you pay attention to: working memory: manipulation of stored information. Long term memory and working memory tend to be related. Consciousness can also be de ned as the awareness and the ability to tell others about the thoughts. However, this de nition only suggests that only humans are conscious since they are the only living organisms capable of communication. Seizure disorders: they result from brain damaging, which can be produced by a physical injury, stroke, or an abnormality in the brain. Both sides of the brain engage in wild activity and stimulate each other, causing a generalized epileptic seizure. Neurosurgeons discovered that cutting the corpus callosum (the split-brain operation) greatly reduced the frequency of the epileptic seizures.