Untitled Quiz

Created by

@FineElbaite2589

Study Notes

Two major approaches to defining and studying consciousness.
Easy Problem of Consciousness: How is brain activity related to conscious experiences?
- This approach is scientifically testable.
- One example is simulating neural activity to reconstruct the sound of a song.
Hard Problem of Consciousness: Understanding subjective conscious experiences.
- This approach is harder to test scientifically.
- Qualia is the 'what it's like' component of consciousness.
- Example: Is your subjective experience of a song the same as mine?
The relationship between attention, awareness, and consciousness can be explained by the tripartite model (Dehaene et al. 2006).
- The tripartite model suggests 3 stages of awareness resulting from stimulus and processing strength.
- The stages are influenced by exogenous and endogenous factors.

Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW): Widespread processing of information underlines conscious experiences.
- This theory moves from the neural level to the experience level.
- Unconscious activities involve local sensory-motor processing, such as riding a bike or tying your shoes.
- Conscious activities involve widespread processing, integrating cognitive networks.
Integrated Information Theory (IIT): Consciousness arises from a complex system.
- This theory moves from the experience level to the neural level.
- It explains which types of systems have consciousness and how much of it they have.
- This theory suggests that consciousness arises from complex systems with feedback loop modifications resulting in information gathering.
- It is argued that the cerebellum provides evidence for IIT.

Trance reflects shifts in the direction of consciousness.
- Hove et al. (2016) argue that a trance state is a "narrowed awareness of surroundings."
- Experienced shamans were used in an fMRI study.
- Rhythmic drumming was part of the study to induce a trance state.
- The study concluded that the trance state resulted in increased activity in the default mode network, which is involved in inward-directed cognition.
LSD affects language category representation.
- Family et al. (2016) showed that LSD affects cognitive processes.
- When concepts come from similar categories, they tend to interfere with each other.