From Neuroskeptic at Discover:
When you’re doing two things at once – like listening to the radio while driving – your brain organizes itself into two, functionally independent networks, almost as if you temporarily have two brains. That’s according to a fascinating new study from University of Wisconsin-Madison neuroscientists Shuntaro Sasai and colleagues. It’s called Functional split brain in a driving/listening paradigm.
To study authors link their work to the experiences of split-brain epilepsy patients.
In other words, when the GPS voice was helping the participants to drive (“integrated task”), the brain ‘driving network’ and ‘listening network’ were acting in concert, with a high degree of functional connectivity. But when the drivers were listening to the radio show (“split task”), the two networks were largely independent – indeed, by one metric, which the authors call “integrated information“, they were completely seperate. More.
The authors argue that “Integrated information is thought to be essential for consciousness, and the reduction of integrated information demonstrated here is at least compatible with a split in consciousness.”
Neuroskeptic finds all this interesting, as do we, but not strictly relevant to consciousness. We humans are often conscious of something but not aware of that fact until we deliberately focus our attention on it. Some call thinking about what we are thinking about “metacognition.”
There probably isn’t a “brain centre” for that. It is a form of integration.
See also: What great physicists have said about immateriality and consciousness
Or else: Consciousness as a state of matter
Researcher: Never mind the “hard problem of consciousness”: The real one is… “Our experiences of being and having a body are ‘controlled hallucinations’ of a very distinctive kind”
Searle on Consciousness “Emerging” from a Computer: “Miracles are always possible.”
Psychology Today: Latest new theory of consciousness A different one from the above.
Evolution bred a sense of reality out of us
Claim: Science is afraid of animal consciousness. Why? Won’t crackpot theories work as well as they do for human consciousness?
So then: Question: Would we give up naturalism to solve the hard problem of consciousness?
Neuroscience tried wholly embracing naturalism, but then the brain got away
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