Consciousness of subjective time in the brain — PNAS Author Affiliations Contributed by Endel Tulving, November 9, 2010 (sent for review June 13, 2010) Abstract “Mental time travel” refers to conscious experience of remembering the personal past and imagining the personal future. Little is known about its neural correlates. Here, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we explored the hypothesis that mental time travel into “nonpresent” times (past and future) is enabled by a special conscious state (chronesthesia). Footnotes 1To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Consciousness Representation of consciousness from the seventeenth century At one time consciousness was viewed with skepticism by many scientists, but in recent years it has become a significant topic of research in psychology, neuropsychology and neuroscience. The primary focus is on understanding what it means biologically and psychologically for information to be present in consciousness—that is, on determining the neural and psychological correlates of consciousness. The majority of experimental studies assess consciousness by asking human subjects for a verbal report of their experiences (e.g., "tell me if you notice anything when I do this"). Issues of interest include phenomena such as subliminal perception, blindsight, denial of impairment, and altered states of consciousness produced by drugs and alcohol, or spiritual or meditative techniques. Etymology and early history[edit] John Locke, British philosopher active in the 17th century In the dictionary[edit] Philosophy of mind[edit]
More Than Meets the Mirror: Illusion Test Links Difficulty Sensing Internal Cues with Distorted Body-Image With all of the New Year's diet ads claiming you can lose dozens of pounds in seemingly as many days, you probably are not alone if you looked in the mirror this morning and saw a less than ideal body. Or maybe you just picked up a new magazine in which already thin models have their remaining flesh scavenged by Photoshop to make them appear even slimmer. With all of these unrealistic promises and images, it can be hard to gain an accurate sense of one's own body. But the disjunction for some people might go deeper than manipulated photos. A new study shows that the way people perceive their external appearance is likely linked to how they experience their bodies internally. "The sense of self is built up from a representation of internal states," says Hugo Critchley, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Sussex in England who was not involved with the study. Most of the time, the image someone has of their body is pretty close to its external appearance.
The Roots of Consciousness: Theory, The Biological Perspective The Biological Perspective In the Introduction, I discussed the evolution of organized matter from the photon through particles, atoms and molecules to living cells which begin to differentiate in structure and function forming a wide variety of tissues and organs that play a specialized function in the human body. It is reasonable to assume all these levels of organization including the whole human being play a role in shaping consciousness. Particularly important are the nervous system, comprising brain and spinal cord, and the endocrine system, comprising a number of ductless glands that secrete hormones into the bloodstream. Many biological scientists today implicitly believe that these structures not only shape consciousness, but are actually the source of conscious awareness. This view is known as the biological identity theory. The Nervous System Neuron cells are the principle units of the nervous system. Multi-Polar Neuron Bipolar Neurons Cross-section of the human brain Serotonin
Biological Consciousness and the Experience of the Transcendent 2. Biological Consciousness and the Experience of the Transcendent: William James and American Functional Psychology Eugene Taylor Harvard University Medical School Reproduced by permission of the Author. All trends pertaining to the mind/body problem in the late 19th century, from both popular and high culture, seem now in retrospect to culminate in the functionalism of the American philosopher-psychologist, William James (1842-1910). Born in a New York hotel in 1842, eldest son of the eccentric religious philosopher, Henry James Sr. and older brother of Henry James, the novelist, William James received his early education in Europe and America at the hands of a polyglot assortment of private tutors, temporary school masters, and painting teachers, until he embarked upon regular instruction at Harvard in 1861 by joining the Lawrence Scientific School. He transferred to medicine in 1864 and was graduated with the M.D. in 1869. Table of Contents Citation: Wozniak, Robert H.
What the science of human nature can teach us After the boom and bust, the mania and the meltdown, the Composure Class rose once again. Its members didn’t make their money through hedge-fund wizardry or by some big financial score. Theirs was a statelier ascent. They got good grades in school, established solid social connections, joined fine companies, medical practices, and law firms. You can see a paragon of the Composure Class having an al-fresco lunch at some bistro in Aspen or Jackson Hole. A few times a year, members of this class head to a mountain resort, carrying only a Council on Foreign Relations tote bag (when you have your own plane, you don’t need luggage that actually closes). Occasionally, you meet a young, rising member of this class at the gelato store, as he hovers indecisively over the cloudberry and ginger-pomegranate selections, and you notice that his superhuman equilibrium is marred by an anxiety. Help comes from the strangest places. As a newborn, Harold, like all babies, was connecting with his mother.
The period of the brain pretending to be the mind The mind is different from the brain , just as psychology is different from biology. Although mental processes are associated with some biochemical/neurological operations, some researchers and the popular media have misrepresented the association between the two systems as the causal relation (biochemical changes cause psychological experiences) or simply seen the two as the same. With the growing use of psychophysiological measures such as fMRI, PET, EEG, MEG, and optical neuroimaging, it has become pervasive to hear that biological events underlie (are more fundamental than) psychological events. Fortunately, some psychologists (e.g., Beck, 2010; Gernsbacher, 2010; Miller, 2010) have identified major problems with the claim that "biological events underlie the psychological events." First, Correlation is not causation. For example, research has show that after aerobic exercise, there were structural and functional brain changes. References
Ego death Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity." The term is being used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. In Jungian psychology the synonymous term psychic death is used, which refers to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In the death and rebirth mythology ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking. In (descriptions of) psychedelic experiences, the term is used synonymously with ego-loss, to refer to (temporary) loss of one's sense of self due to the use of psychedelics. The concept is also used in contemporary spirituality and in the modern understanding of eastern religions to describe a permanent loss of "attachment to a separate sense of self"[web 1] and self-centeredness. Definitions[edit] Mysticism[edit] Daniel Merkur: ...
How does anesthesia disturb self-perception? An Inserm research team in Toulouse, led by Dr Stein Silva (Inserm Unit 825 "Brain imaging and neurological handicaps"), working with the "Modelling tissue and nociceptive stress" Host Team (MATN IFR 150), were interested in studying the illusions described by many patients under regional anaesthetic. In their work, to be published in the journal Anesthesiology, the researchers demonstrated that anaesthetising an arm affects brain activity and rapidly impairs body perception. The ultimate aim of the work is to understand how neuronal circuits are reorganised at this exact moment in time and to take advantage of anaesthesia to reconfigure them correctly following trauma. This would allow anaesthetic techniques to be used in the future to treat pain described by amputated patients in what are known as "phantom limbs." Neuroscience research in recent years has shown that the brain is a dynamic structure. Persons under regional anaesthetic describe these very same false images.
Museumgoing in the Brain The question is, What is going on in your brain when you look at a painting "aesthetically"? Or why don't we touch things in museums? For a long time, people thinking about the arts have said that we go into some special state of mind when we look at paintings or other works of visual art. The idea has been floating around since the Greeks, but some English aestheticians, Lord Shaftesbury and Frances Hutcheson, spelled it out in the early eighteenth century. Then Kant, at the end of the century, put it most exactly, and Kant is who most aestheticians follow. Now, we're beginning to get evidence as to how brains embody Kant's idea. In 2009, Gerald Cupchick , Oshin Vartanian , Adrian Crawley , and David Mikulis conducted an experiment on aesthetics that differed from most others. The experimenters who ask subjects to judge beauty or non-beauty are asking them to abandon Kant's "free play of the imagination" and replace it with reason and decision and will. Work I've referred to: