How Does Consciousness Happen?
In this article to leading scientist had a debate about the actual reasons that consciousness happens and now respond to the debate that happened, in 2006. The first of scientist to comment is Christof Koch of California his main theory is that the pyramidal neurons affect long distance from lobe to lobe of the brain, and that few of these neurons are needed. The other scientist is Susan Greenfield, her theory is that a mass of neurons are sent at the same time to discern between consciosness and when you are unconscious.
Koch suggests that when you see somebody that you recognize you may have a visual neuron sent throughout the brain, but when somebody calls out your name a different stronger auditory neuron may be sent out that causes the thought of the other person to fade away. His main focus is on things that happen while you are conscious and how you get different levels of conscious ness.
Greenfield suggest that you have large assemblies of neurons that are sent throughout your brain from when you are conscious and when you are unconscious. She suggest that the reason that dreams feel more real and can happen is because these assemblies of neurons are less than when you are awake yet you are still conscious. She also supports her theory by saying that strokes my jam the process that restrain the assemblies therefore you have multiple continuous actions.
In my opinion they both have great theories and may both be right they just focused on different parts of the argument. Greenfield talked about being conscious and being unconscious while Koch discussed different levels of consciousness. I believe that you may have assemblies that communicate from lobe to lobe in the brain and you send more depending on how urgent or familiar the stimuli are. The further we come along in technology the further we can go in this search for what causes consciousness.
Mrs. Forgrave i couldn't get the article of the internet because u have to have a user name on sciam and my scanner isn't working so ill try and get it on at school on tuesday. I hope you understand thanx.
"How does Consciousness happen" by: Christof Koch and Susan Greenfield, Scientific American October, 2007
posted by bigbenrocksmyworld @ 8:17 PM
3 Comments:
i think the part that is talking about why dreams feel real is interesting. i think its interesting that even if the majority of your brain is unconsciously opporating, some part of it is still conscious and both work together.
It is interesting how there are different types of consciousness. Its really cool how while you're asleep part of your brain is still conscious and controlling parts of the body.
i like the part about the dreams thats really interesting...I've never really thought about how you can have different levels of conscioussness, i just thought you were in it or not.
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