Often referred to as a philosophical rather than scientific concepts are the concepts of qualia, self and consciousness although consciousness is being scientifically investigated. But the the underlying fact as explained in the previous post was that of the feeling of being rooted to a body.
But is there a way to go from consciousness as a philosophical concept to a more scientific one? Meaning, can it be measured? This question leads to an interesting answer. Yes! But it is only if there can be a communication with the brain that is being inspected.
Ok. Think of this statement. “Thinking is doing!”. Would you believe it? I’m pretty sure most would even stop reading the post now (if at all anyone is reading… ).
That statement is a scientific fact. And has to be understood in the correct manner. For eg., sometimes we do put ourselves in pretty bad situations in our dreams. Let’s we dream of a situation like this. A pretty girl is being chased by villians…its dark….late night probably(yes like the typical Indian cinema ) … You jump in….there’s a fight….you suddenly know how to fight BTW…and when the fight is over….you wake up…(you were expecting some more haan….). The interesting thing is that you might be sweating, atleast your heart rate is up and it seems like your just out of the gym although it was just a dream. Ever wondered why?
The way in which the brain works is thus. When we see a tiger in our room, say, we get really pumped up….and its common knowledge that our “Flight or fight” response takes over. But what we fail to question the chronology of two events:
1. Conscious fright feeling 2. Systemic response -such as sweating, heart rate increase etc.
Which comes first? Nope. It’s not a chicken-egg dilemma. It’s simply first the second and second the first. Confused..?!?!? First there is a systemic response and next the conscious fright.
Ok..?!?! But how does that correlate with the previous example? Since the brain already computes the data and gets the body ready for an action-either fight or flight, before we even know that we are ready. So, by the same yardstick, we you dream of the situation which I described above, it can be seen that part of brain takes action to prepare the body for any response, only to reminded by another part that it’s a dream.
A look at the video that I referred to in the last post will show a peculiar experiment. The host is made to lie in an MRI scanner and asked to think he’s playing tennis. What exactly happens here is that part of the brain takes this information or request and sends it to the pre-motor cortex which starts planning the motor activity. Remember, “planning”. Which means it’s crunching some numbers and is really active. And what does an active area in the brain need? Oxygen-rich blood.
It so happens that with some very precise settings and some more number crunching on the computer with some algorithms, we will be able to detect this part of the brain which is oxygen hungry. This type of an MRI scan is called fMRI or Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. This does not need a special type of a scanner, but the system will use a different way to scan your body to find these active areas in the brain.
This is an extremely useful system, which could potentially help take life-death decisions, especially in case of locked-in patients, who are not able to communicate, but are able to receive data and process it in their brain.
In the video, watching somewhere between 18:00 to 25:00. The host is made to undergo an fMRI experiment, he’s fed with anaesthesia slowly and the fMRI activity is observed. What do you expect? Does still keep “playing tennis” even after he’s almost unconsciousness?
The lighting up of a part of the brain goes lower and lower as the anaesthetic dosage is increased. A part of the brain called the thalamus and basal ganglia are said to be the center piece of anaesthetic action. And there is some sort of a loop formed between the cortex or the outer part of the brain and the thalamus that forms the basis for conscious action which is famously called the thalamo-cortical loop. “But where does the consciousness reside?”- is precisely what a neuro-scientist wouldn’t like to be asked yet.
So, now that we know what the brain does….how is the information processed in the brain? Does the brain communicate like any of the other communication devices and methods we know of? And how does all this lead to the search for consciousness?
insights 