Consciousness: What is it?

[d0ggY]

I agree in some respects. Ironically enough I finished my psych thesis on comparing grasp apertures depending on whether the subject was to actually reach and grasp the object or simply to make a grasp-size estimation of the target. I worked for several years in the neurophysiology lab at my Uni, specifically dealing with the proposed dual-stream theory of human brains.

That being said, I still think all animals, especially mammals, are very action-intent oriented based on their sensory systems. Perhaps it is our advanced perceptual system that allows for theoretical prediction and pre-movement assessment that is the \"conscious\"? (Unfortunately I can't remember a lot of what I learned as I honestly burnt out after the end of 06/07).

That would actually support why many believe that infants and toddlers are not \"conscious\" ...as this ability has not been fully developed.

[Tunnelcat]

Why then do infants and toddlers react to things that they see/hear that catch their interest, which they grab or smile at or perhaps something that upsets them, causing them to cry or flinch?

[d0ggY]

Animals do the exact same thing. The only difference is in the wide variety of emotions that we recognize in our own species. Although I'd bet that infant-emotion is related solely to their reaction to stimuli on a pleasure/pain principle rather than on \"conscious\" processes, such as we are speculating about here.

My bird reacts when I roll coins over in my hand. She is very interested in it but quickly becomes agitated and will throw the coins onto the ground. She then becomes very non-responsive to me for awhile and shows her typical anger/aggression signs of sleeked wings and dilated pupils. I don't really see a difference, personally. In fact, it is said that her intelligence and emotional levels are akin to that of a 4 year old and from having her for the last 15 years, I'd say that's a pretty good comparison.

[Pandora]

Ironically enough I finished my psych thesis on comparing grasp apertures depending on whether the subject was to actually reach and grasp the object or simply to make a grasp-size estimation of the target. I worked for several years in the neurophysiology lab at my Uni, specifically dealing with the proposed dual-stream theory of human brains.

cool! I am very interested in grasping and action control mechanisms. Where have you done your thesis? What did you find?

[d0ggY]

I did mine at the Perception & Action Lab at the Uni of Manitoba under Dr. Marotta.

As I was the guinea pig (first one to really use the machine for the type of testing I was doing), my actual data was pretty much garbage and my entire thesis was mostly just a trial and error of what to do and not to do for testing. The following year a masters student in the lab re-did a similar experiment and found more significant results.

In the end, my study compared pre-movement and end-movement fixations when someone was attempting to either reach out a grasp a block (action task) or whether they were simply to keep their hand on the table and make a grasp-size estimation while keeping their hand in place (perceptual task). The data showed that in action tasks we initially focus on the top-center of the object as this provides the initial landing point of our index finger (subjects were instructed to grasp at the top and bottom) and then closer to the end-movement fixations they would focus on the actual center of gravity of the object. For perceptual tasks, they only focused on the COG.

Although very rudimentary, it does show that we look at objects differently depending on what we are going to do with them. As I said, this was very prelim work with the new optotrak machine we had got and the work being conducted now is quite a bit more advanced. The dual-stream theory is quite interesting and a lot of strong research supports it.

Have you done any work on visumotor systems yourself?

[Pandora]

yes and no. I am working (mostly) on action observation. But since an assumption is that observing an action and performing it is based on the same/overlapping brain regions the details of the visuomotor circuits interest me a lot.

[d0ggY]

Ahh that's a super interesting topic! I'm guessing you are doing a lot of work with the mirror neuron theory? I mixed a lot of anthropology and psych together in a special course I took in brain evolution and language and read a lot of work by de Waal and especially Arbib. I didn't get too much into actual action imitation though, aside from looking at a few studies of observational learning, but we didn't do a lot of work in the area of neural networks. Are you using fMRI? Any interesting or unexpected results so far? Have you looked into if there is any specific areas of the brain where there is a split in the visual information? So if you are seeing an action performed on an object versus doing the action yourself, is there a point that the visual information goes to a different area of the brain for processing?

[Pandora]

yeah, exactly, most of my work is really centered around mirror neurons. Although I am much more interested in how they come to perform this function (and what aspects of actions they are *really* representing), and how other brain regions interact with and modulate the core 'mirror' circuits.

I have so far worked mostly behaviorally and with ERPs. I have recently started to do some patient work (comparing frontal and parietal lesions in action observation tasks), and finished two fMRI studies.

I love Arbib's work, by the way. Of all the mirror neuron theorists, he's the most lucid and specific. And he actually has the guts to put his assumptions into a model and test it. I know de Waal from his BBS empathy paper (Preston & de Waal, i think), which I liked a lot, but haven't kept up with his other work.

It's very cool, actually, that here on the dbb is somebody else into all this stuff --- and actually knows the nitty gritty modeling and theoretical stuff. What are doing now, if I may ask? Still in science or something completely different?

(edit: sorry for being so slow in responding, by the way, but work is super busy right now).

[Pandora]

Have you looked into if there is any specific areas of the brain where there is a split in the visual information? So if you are seeing an action performed on an object versus doing the action yourself, is there a point that the visual information goes to a different area of the brain for processing?

I haven't, but there is a recent paper (can't remember the authors) who found that more medial and lateral sections of SII differentiate between others' and self-produced actions.

[Pandora]

Why then do infants and toddlers react to things that they see/hear that catch their interest, which they grab or smile at or perhaps something that upsets them, causing them to cry or flinch?

as doggy said, you don't really need consciousness for that. But as a father myself, I am quite sure that infants do have a rudimentary consciousness. My speculation is that the reason why I develops further and matures is exactly because consciousness can control efficient action, and therefore gets reinforced.

[Pandora]

The dual-stream theory is quite interesting and a lot of strong research supports it.

I agree. My final exam for my psych diploma was actually about Milner/Goodale, and the attempts to disprove them. What irks me a bit about the theory is the characterization of the ventral stream for perception, and dorsal for action. I believe ventral processes also support action --- you need to know what an object is to act properly on it. See also Arbib's model where inferior temporal goes into prefrontal which feeds back onto the grasping circuits.

(ok, I have to come off my visuomotor high right now).

[d0ggY]

I actually switched gears and am doing my BSW now to work in the field of family mediation. I admit ...I really really really miss neuro-psych and also the ability to take electives in religion, anthro, etc and to start to make use of the cross-disciplinary learning. With the BSW it's strictly social work courses.

I would tend to agree that consciousness is very reinforcing ...more importantly from evolutionary perspectives is that it is extremely adaptive. I was hesitant to get into this earlier in the thread as it's a very recent theory in evolution and anything I say here is pure speculation (moreso than the other stuff ...seeing as how it's ALL just speculation). However, Edmund Bolles (http://ebbolles.typepad.com/babels_dawn/ ...probably the most interesting Blob on language evolution out there), proposed a few years ago that language developed as a result of moving from the trees to the ground. When we did so, we began to expand our horizons for food we would eat. One such horizon was water. In order to \"fish\", we had to be able to hold our breath and over many years, we developed the ability to do so by also developing control over an adaptive \"valve\" inside our throat. In the end, this same valve (the terms and details are hazy but I'm sure it could be researched in more depth) essentially led to the development of a more capable voicebox.

What's this got to do with conscious? Well, if you take in the fact that we went from the trees to the ground and became very vulnerable, plus our newfound ability for more detailed communication, and the fact that we are a completely defenseless creature ...enter in consciousness. The ability to plan and execute actions which will help ensure survival. This includes \"reading the thoughts of others\" (a skill infants learn quite early and is considered to be the crux of when consciousness arises), anticipating prey/predator actions, and communication with others. Also, our ability, as I said earlier, to be able to conceive consciously of time (changing seasons, migration of prey, cold weather approaching, etc).

So essentially, consciousness is both reinforcing and extremely adaptive for our species. To me, I think of it simply as a 6th sense, or as an extra appendage for survival such as fangs, claws, or venom.



If you find the article again on the separation between viewing others' actions and your own, lemme know. I vaguely recall reading about it myself but can't remember the authors or results. I think at the time, most of what I read was just postulations about what future research should find.


And finally ...the neuro gods - Milner and Goodale. As my thesis was on the essential work of these two, I think I suffered through all their criticisms as well and after awhile it gets to be quite confusing. One of my final papers for my vision science course was a proposal for a different kind of visual illusion test to either help prove or disprove it and at the time I found more criticism than support of it. Guys like Coello seem quite unconvinced in any real separation. That being said, it's important that one not overlook what M&G were doing - simply proposing that overall, there is separation, but the connection and interplay between the two streams is vast. A lot of Coello's work points more to this interplay than it does to saying both streams do the same task.

I think work with the mirror system is a critical piece in the puzzle so kudos to you. We are a species that learns by doing and the visual connection this has with brain processes cannot be underestimated. Johansson and Land both did a lot of work in determining where we look on objects and both found that when we are about to complete an action, we focus on \"landmarks\" on the object that are essential for interaction. Unfortunately, neither author looked at the interplay this has with the ventral stream (part of the very general goal of my thesis and requiring a lot more work). For simple objects, perception may not be all that big a deal, especially if we are just \"reacting\" to a situation such as catching a ball. But imagine the complex brain tasks involved in something like learning to knit. We have to first perceive the end-goal (socks) and then work in small incremental actions to get to that goal. Then if someone is teaching us, the mirror system activates. Insanity!

Although I would support that the ventral stream is more *important* for perceptual information, once the brain decides that action is necessary, communication with the dorsal stream kicks in. This is the important link and is why many action task experiments don't even show activation of the ventral stream. These action tasks don't require perceptual analysis and so they were used as evidence that DORSAL = ACTION only. Then other authors went and did tasks that involved primarily perceptual information and concluded VENTRAL = PERCEPTION. These authors were so busy arguing the finite details that they forgot the holistic goal of the brain - to work as a single unit to get the job done. Only as I was finishing my thesis did I start to see a lot more work concerning the interplay between the streams rather than arguing more about what stream does what.


And finally, since you are into the mirror system ...if you really want a brainteaser then sit in your comfy chair tonight and try to hypothesize, without researching, what areas of the brain would be activated in the following scenario:
A man who was just learning to play piano becomes blinded in an accident. You are now teaching him to play a song. What areas are being activated? Is he perceiving what keys his fingers are pressing? Is this perceptual or motor? Are the mirror neurons behaving the same since he has no visual feedback? Does the action system now communicate with the auditory system rather than the perceptual system for feedback? Lol ...ya ...

[Tunnelcat]

You have to take into account that the man has already seen the piano key layout before he went blind, so in his mind, he has a memory image of what it looks like. By using this memory picture in his mind, he can then map his finger positions on the keyboard by feel and eventually teach his brain to rely only on finger position in space to play, much more efficient.

It's like typing, it's easier to learn where to place the fingers if you can see what the visual layout is beforehand, you can use this image in your brain to get used to the finger locations. After the brain gets accustomed to the proper positions, the image is rarely used since the brain now has everything memorized by position, which speeds things up since you don't have to go through the extra step of recalling the memory image in order to type faster.

I would imagine that it would take a lot longer to learn the piano or typing if you couldn't see the keyboard beforehand. I'm not sure what area of the brain would be used if no visual clues were there first, probably just touch and motor areas of the brain. Humans are visual creatures, so they use that part of the brain first to learn things that require manual dexterity before switching to more efficient and quicker responding brain areas for positional tasks. All the brain has to do to play a song or create a letter is think about which notes or letters to put in the proper sequence. The fewer the computational circuits required for a task, the quicker the job can be accomplished.

This subject has made me think about memory and how it's formed. I have a sequential memory. For example, I can easily remember what song cames after the one I'm currently listening to on a CD that I've heard many times, but I could never list them out by rote memory all at once. Each song triggers the memory for the next one, but only by sound, not name. Weird. The way my memory works sometimes affects how I do manual dexterity tasks too.

[d0ggY]

One theory of memory:

At a base level, our brain functions by forming synaptic connections between neurons. At the next level up, these connections build pathways between related elements. It is the way these formations occur -- the pairing of one element with another -- that determines our memory capabilities.

An analogy would be Pavlov's dog. At a behavioural level, the dog learned to pair the sound of the bell with food. At a neuronal level, a synaptic connection was formed between the auditory signal and the visual/taste cue for the food.

Although I can't really describe how this works in relation to people developing photographic VS sequential VS arbitrary VS whatever other type of memories, this theory suggests that it is the way in which we learn to pair objects in this way that determines it. In other words, due to how we develop as infants, our brain may learn to remember and recall by linking things in sequential order. Or it may focus more on visual cues (photographic). Or perhaps it works better arbitrarily ...seemingly matching items in a random fashion (this would be where you could remember all 50 songs on your ipod but in no particular order). And so on and so on.

This is simply one theory of memory and many more exist. Sadly, few theorists actually focus at the neuronal level ...which is actually what I was more concerned with in my last post regarding brain regions. At a behavioural level, it's much easier to say how the brain or person is operating ...what they are focusing on and what they might \"see\" in their head. However, at a neuronal level and with respect to brain regions, things get much more complicated when a previously used sense is removed from the equation. There is a lot of research in how our brains remap themselves and this would probably be what would happen.


Going back to the memory thing ...the synaptic connection theories also offer a suggestion of why deja vu occurs. In theory, to recall a visual memory, we simply follow along a sequence of neural connections and activate associated imagery. So if the first time I saw a lambourghini I was eating a DQ blizzard ...the next time I see a lambo, I might subconsciously recall that blizzard. I may even \"taste\" it. It's why when we listen to songs while doing an activity and then later re-listen to the song, we often remember that activity. Essentially, synaptic connections are formed between all of these elements ...linking them together. Same goes with trying to recall something you've just forgotten (say ...something you meant to mention to the person you are talking to). How often do you backtrack through all the things you've talked about or thought about just prior? Often this triggers what you were trying to recall because the synaptic connections begin firing until one triggers the pathway to the forgotten element. It's like a giant library and if you know you were trying to remember whether a tomato was a fruit or veggie, maybe go look in the cooking section and see if that doesn't trigger it. Or go and look in agriculture and see what neurons fire. Etc etc.

Oh, back to deja vu. Assuming you hold the belief that deja vu is in fact a brain-related anomaly and not some supernatural or divine occurrence, then consider this. Let's say we walk outside to get the paper tomorrow morning and we see a squirrel sitting by the car tire. We get deja vu and swear we've seen that before. Now, assuming we HAVEN'T seen it before, one theory is that as we see the event, we are forming a neural synaptic \"memory\". Basically we are \"creating\" that visual event in our brains via some sequence of neural paths and connections. All of this is occurring very rapidly as a signal fires down a line of neurons to create this image. What happens if for some reason, that neural firing occurs twice by accident? It's akin to hitting the screenshot button twice on your computer very rapidly. You get the same image. However, what is happening is that during the first \"firing\", we are creating the connection. During the second \"firing\", we are recalling it. This creates the illusion that we've already seen it.

Dunno how clear that explanation is ...it's much easier to explain in person. It's also a lot easier if you have a background in neural synapses (a very very cool topic!). The gist of it is that we create a memory of the event of seeing the squirrel and then immediately recall that event without realizing it. This makes it seem like we've actually seen it before.

[Sllik]

I never got to a scholastic or personal level of research that either of you did, but there was a stretch of time during my younger life where the concept of consciousness and its reliance on personal perception was fascinating.

What always got my goat was the idea that perception is your personal reality, and your consciousness relies 100% on your perception for stimuli in order to learn, understand, and react. Language allows us to confirm that everyone's perceptions are the same or close to the same, and we then base theories and facts on those confirmations.

Having grasped that, how much are we missing out on learning or confirming based on the limitations of our perceptions? Are there inherent common flaws in one or more of our senses that prevents us from recognizing an opportunity for further advancement? Will we hopefully continue to evolve to the point where another sense develops or one of the ones we have improves enough for us to gather a greater understanding of the universe? If so, when will that stage of evolution occur, what form will it take, and what will have triggered it?

The easiest answer would simply be making more use of our gray matter as time goes on, and that alone would promote our desire to analyze our surroundings and abstract possibilities to the nth degree. Eventually (I hope), enough of us would reflect upon those possibilities and put our theories to the test for others to stumble upon yet more undiscovered mysteries... some of which might allow us to truly resolve the problems we've caused in our evolution like the state of the planet, our inability to efficiently live in mass quantities away from Earth's cradle, etc.

Let's hope something like that does happen, and happens before a comet or meteor strikes the planet and nullifies all of our accomplishments as a species.

[d0ggY]

I like your wording Sllik ...as I truly agree with your second statement completely. That's precisely how it works.

As for your third paragraph, again I think you allude to something very important. I think this is the point where guys like Einstein, Galileo, DaVinci, Hawkings, and other similar \"geniuses\" emerge. How can one conceive of something so ludicrous as a black hole or splitting atomic particles and yadda yadda. Many of the early geniuses were considered so far gone from reality that they were persecuted and executed for their theories and it's a shame. But it's exactly as you said - they have an altered perception of reality and many times they prove to be correct. The rest of us just succumb to the mass consensus.

A fascinating person in current time to study in terms of the gray matter issue is Kim Peek. He is the guy who was the basis for the Rain Man movie. I really don't know how he is able to do the mathematical and memorization feats that he does ...but a simple guess is that he is able to utilize those parts of his brain much more efficiently than the average human.

[Pandora]

If you find the article again on the separation between viewing others' actions and your own, lemme know. I vaguely recall reading about it myself but can't remember the authors or results. I think at the time, most of what I read was just postulations about what future research should find.

Hey doggy, just quickly, i am really swamped right now. Here is the paper:
http://www.jneurosci.org/cgi/content/ab ... 8/47/12268