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Consciousness research not dead, scientists insist

Consciousness research not dead, scientists insist

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Why does a relentless stream of experiences normally fill your mind? Maybe that's just one of those mysteries that will always elude us. Yet, research suggests consciousness lies well within the realm of scientific inquiry, as impossible as that may currently seem. Although scientists have yet to agree on an objective ...



Why does a relent­less stream of ex­pe­ri­ences nor­mally fill your mind? May­be that's just one of those mys­ter­ies that will al­ways elude us.

Yet, re­search sug­gests con­scious­ness lies well with­in the realm of sci­en­tif­ic in­quiry, as im­pos­si­ble as that may cur­rently seem. Al­though sci­en­tists have yet to agree on an ob­jec­tive meas­ure to in­dex con­scious­ness, prog­ress has been made on the ques­tion in sev­er­al labs around the world.

“The de­bate about the neu­ral ba­sis of con­scious­ness rages be­cause there is no widely ac­cept­ed the­o­ry about what hap­pens in the brain to make con­scious­ness pos­si­ble,” said Ken Paller, and di­rec­tor of the Cog­ni­tive Neu­ro­sci­ence Pro­gram at North­west­ern Uni­vers­ity in Ev­ans­ton, Ill.

Some brain sci­en­tists claim “con­scious­ness is nev­er go­ing to be un­der­stood” and so re­search should fo­cus on oth­er ar­eas, Paller said. “On the oth­er hand, many neu­ro­sci­en­tists are ac­tively en­gaged in prob­ing the neu­ral ba­sis of con­scious­ness, and, in many ways, this is less of a ta­boo ar­ea of re­search than it used to be.”

He added: “sci­en­tists and oth­ers ac­knowl­edge that dam­age to the brain can lead to sys­tem­at­ic changes in con­scious­ness. Yet, we don't know ex­actly what dif­fer­en­ti­ates brain ac­ti­vity as­so­ci­at­ed with con­scious ex­pe­ri­ence from brain ac­ti­vity that is in­stead as­so­ci­at­ed with men­tal ac­ti­vity that re­mains un­con­scious.”

In a new ar­ti­cle, Paller and Satoru Su­zu­ki, al­so a psy­chol­o­gist at North­west­ern, dis­cuss what they call flawed as­sump­tions about con­scious­ness to sug­gest that a wide range of sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tives can of­fer use­ful clues.

“It's nor­mal to think that if you at­ten­tively in­spect some­thing you must be aware of it and that an­a­lyz­ing it to a high lev­el would ne­ces­si­tate con­scious­ness,” Su­zu­ki not­ed. But ex­pe­ri­ments don't al­ways back this up. “Like­wise, it feels like we can freely de­cide at a pre­cise mo­ment, when ac­tu­ally the pro­cess of de­cid­ing be­gins ear­li­er,” through brain pro­cessing that doesn't en­ter awareness, he said.

The au­thors write that un­con­scious pro­cessing can in­flu­ence our con­scious de­ci­sions in ways we nev­er sus­pect. If these and oth­er si­m­i­lar as­sump­tions are in­cor­rect, the re­search­ers say, then mis­tak­en rea­son­ing might be be­hind ar­gu­ments for tak­ing the sci­ence of con­scious­ness off the ta­ble.

Ex­pe­ri­men­tal ev­i­dence has sup­ported some the­o­ries about con­scious­ness that ap­peal to spe­cif­ic types of com­mu­nica­t­ion among brain cells, which can be de­scribed in bi­o­log­i­cal terms or more ab­stractly in com­puta­t­ional terms, the re­search­ers said. They added that fur­ther the­o­ret­i­cal ad­vanc­es can be ex­pected if spe­cif­ic meas­ures of neu­ral ac­ti­vity can be brought to bear on these ideas.

Paller and Su­zu­ki both con­duct re­search that touches on con­scious­ness. Su­zu­ki stud­ies per­cep­tion, and Paller stud­ies mem­o­ry. They said it was im­por­tant for them to write the ar­ti­cle to count­er the view that it is hope­less to ev­er make prog­ress through sci­en­tif­ic re­search on this top­ic.

They out­lined re­cent ad­vanc­es that pro­vide rea­son to be op­ti­mis­tic about fu­ture sci­en­tif­ic in­quir­ies in­to con­scious­ness and about the ben­e­fits that this knowl­edge could br­ing for so­ci­e­ty. “For ex­am­ple, con­tin­u­ing re­search on the brain ba­sis of con­scious­ness could in­form our con­cerns about hu­man rights, help us ex­plain and treat dis­eases that im­pinge on con­scious­ness, and help us per­pet­u­ate en­vi­ron­ments and tech­nolo­gies that op­ti­mally con­trib­ute to the well be­ing of in­di­vid­u­als and of our so­ci­e­ty,” the au­thors wrote.

The paper, “The Source of Con­scious­ness,” has been pub­lished on­line in the jour­nal Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

Source : world-science.net
Cite This Article as
worldscience, "Consciousness research not dead, scientists insist", MachPrinciple, July 17, 2014, https://machprinciple.com/post/consciousness-research-not-dead-scientists-insist

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