{"id":4353,"date":"2014-08-06T14:20:55","date_gmt":"2014-08-06T19:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2014-08-25T19:39:03","modified_gmt":"2014-08-26T00:39:03","slug":"does-consciousness-claustrum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=4353","title":{"rendered":"Does Consciousness = Claustrum?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given that I’ve done a fair bit of study and thinking about human consciousness (from both the scientific and philosophic viewpoint, intentionally excluding most of the popular mystical and metaphysical approaches to the topic), I took note of the report that a research team at George Washington University managed to switch on and off<\/a> the consciousness of an epilepsy patient by using stimulatory electrode implants aimed at a structure in the brain called the claustrum. <\/p>\n

A few years ago, noted consciousness researchers and theorists Francis Crick and Christof Koch posited that the claustrum<\/a> was the place where the brain more or less weaved all of the various sensory input responses and stored information (such as memories and learned biases, fears and attractions) into a unified brain state representing the overall experience of being conscious. Their most significant empirical verification prior to the recent GWU study involved a certain type of mind-altering plant from Mexico called Salvia divinorum. The psychoactive chemical in the leaves of this plant were found to stick to a certain type of neuron receptor that is found in high concentrations in the claustrum. This distinguished it from other mind-bending hallucinogens like LSD, peyote and psilocybin, and even the basic feel-good stuff like coke and heroin. <\/p>\n

According to unscientific reports submitted<\/a> by “trippers” who used salvia, they experience “altered surroundings, other beings and ego dissolution”, i.e. a severe degradation of normal self-awareness. In other words, when you’re on this Mexican stuff and your claustrum is on the ropes, you’re pretty far gone. Hinting that the claustrum is where our brains assemble the “train of consciousness”, if you will (yes, my railroad buff side is coming thru here). And that salvia can switch this train onto the wrong track, maybe even off the track. And also that, for at least one epilepsy patient, electroshocks to the claustrum will stop the train like a red signal, then let it start up again once the signal turns green (i.e. the electrode is turned off). <\/p>\n

Most interesting. But has the “hard problem” of consciousness been solved by this? Can we now say that clastrum = consciousness, mystery solved? Well, I don’t think so. The claustrum may be the place where our trains of self-conscious thought go round and round. But as to why an active claustrum “seems” like anything at all to us, why it “feels” so different from when we drift into dreamless sleep or undergo anesthesia, is still a mystery as far as I am concerned. The difference between experience \/ consciousness and no-experience \/ unconsciousness is still immense . . . it’s the difference between a human being writing a poem or a song, and the chips in your laptop or smart phone manipulating electrical signals. Physically, there really isn’t all that much difference . . . in both cases it ultimately boils down to a lot of information being processed, i.e. signals in from the outside, mechanical responses out . . . so why does one have subjective experiences that need to be expressed artistically, and the other just does its job without any hint of “joie de vivre” or existential despair? Of love for all creation, or “I’m out to rule the world”?<\/p>\n

But even on a more empirical level, aside from “the ultimate meaning of conscious being”, there are various questions about the relevance of the recent GWU study. First off, this is just the reaction of one person, and not a typical person at that; the experimental subject was suffering from epilepsy, and had part of her hippocampus removed, an important brain structure associated with memory formation and retrieval — if her hippocampus was fully functioning, would her mind have crashed so quickly? Still, if the GWU study results are affirmed in other subjects having more typical brain structures (perhaps using focused trans-cranial magnetic induction<\/a>?), then a switch affecting consciousness has been discovered. <\/p>\n

However, this switch may be turning off more than just consciousness; it appears to be knocking out all higher-level body control (while allowing continuation of breathing, heartbeats, etc.). Recall that a lot of fairly complex body movements take place without conscious self-awareness; e.g., every night I fall asleep facing one way, and wake up facing the other — without any thinking or awareness when I roll over. And anyone who is (happily) married or otherwise regularly shares sleeping quarters with another knows what it is like to be kicked or rolled-into during the night, USUALLY without any conscious \/ malicious intent on the part of one’s bedmate. From the description that the GWU study provided regarding the subject while under claustrum stimulation, she seemed to have gone totally catatonic. <\/p>\n

Actually, the claustrum effect seen in this study doesn’t seem much different from what an injury to the reticular formation<\/a> in the brain stem will cause, i.e. a basic coma or vegetative state. So it’s hard to say that the claustrum is any closer to the heart of consciousness than the posterior brain stem is.<\/p>\n

The more interesting experiment — perhaps one for the future — would be to [attempt to] induce a zombie-like state whereby the subject could still respond to visual \/ auditory stimulation and could still voluntarily move their muscles and limbs, but was not otherwise experiencing self-aware consciousness. Basically, this would be to induce what is commonly known as sleepwalking. There is some controversy as to exactly what sleepwalking is and how it relates to our consciousness. Most people who have experienced classic garden-variety sleepwalking (there are many variations to the phenomenon, but most reported incidents have common characteristics) don’t remember what they were doing. They only find out later on when fully awake, by what someone else tells them or by suddenly waking up in unexpected circumstances. (Or, in my case, waking up to find that the faucet in the kitchen sink was left running and water was slopping over the edge and flooding the floor — remember, I live alone and I don’t believe in ghosts!) <\/p>\n

The basic assumption is that our conscious minds are pretty much blank when we sleepwalk; in most instances, sleepwakers who are suddenly awoken do not remember having a dream. An alternate theory is that we are actually conscious and know who we are and what we are doing during somnambulism; the problem is that the middle-term episodic memory devices temporarily break down. However, a SPECT brain scan of a teenage somnambulist<\/a> was actually performed. It showed that the frontal and parietal associative cortices, where self-reflective awareness is usually mediated, were mostly asleep and were not communicating much with the thalamus “switchboard”; while the cerebellum and the cingulate cortex above the limbic system in the core-brain were still quite active<\/a> (also presumably the center of the prefrontal cortex, where short-term working memory happens), allowing emotional motivation and muscle coordination to proceed as though in a normal awakened state. <\/p>\n

This seems to support (although it doesn’t confirm) the “zombie” hypothesis of sleepwalking, supporting the notion that nature COULD have made us evolve into smart but ultimately non-conscious machines with plenty of survival functionality (including the ability to see, hear, walk, eat, drive a car, have sex, and even brutally murder someone<\/a>, if the more extreme sleepwalking reports are to be believed). And that there are brain-situations that can return us to something quite close to that “default” state. Stimulating the claustrum did not appear to cause that particular brain-state. So, wake me up once the neuro-boffins figure that out; the GWU claustrum thing is quite interesting, but I don’t think it amounts to the “sine qua non” of what distinguishes the conscious and unconscious human mind-brain (at least from the perspective of the self-aware consciousness that makes humans what they are, poetry-writers and all). <\/p>\n

Oh, you might ask: do other animals have claustrums? Yes they do<\/a>, even insects. The human claustrum has the most complex structure, however, implying that it does more or connects to more places than for an insect or rodent. A study on rats<\/a> shows that their claustrums coordinate but do not integrate sensory and muscle motor information; by comparison, cat claustrums have more reciprocal connections with the cortex, which might allow more integration (presumably bringing them and their claustrums closer to “phi”<\/a>, Tononi’s information cross-integration concept of consciousness). So, don’t worry too much about bug or rat consciousness (another Buddhist mis-conception<\/a>!) . . . but as to your cat . . . <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given that I’ve done a fair bit of study and thinking about human consciousness (from both the scientific and philosophic viewpoint, intentionally excluding most of the popular mystical and metaphysical approaches to the topic), I took note of the report that a research team at George Washington University managed to switch on and off the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4353"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4355,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4353\/revisions\/4355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}