Week 11 (A) Flashcards
(15 cards)
What is the ‘easy problem’ of consciousness?
The difference between total unconsciousness vs anything more than that
What is the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness?
The quality of the experience colours, sounds, feelings (“qualia”)
What were the two research tools we learned in regard to consciousness?
- Binocular rivalry
2. Backwards masking
What is the definition of Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC)?
The minimal set of neuronal events that give rise to a conscious percept.
“.. It is probable that at any moment some active neuronal processes in your head correlate with consciousness, while others do not: What is the difference between them?”
What are the basic elements of the ‘sparse coding’ theory of consciousness?
- Relatively small collection of neurons (a few thousand) dedicated to a given concept (identify, idea, object)
- To consciously experience ‘grandma’ requires your ‘grandma-coded’ neurons to fire
- Activity of the neuron ensemble is INVARIANT - that is it fires any time you hear, saw, imagined, or smelt grandma
Who is associated with Sparse Coding theory
Christof Koch
Who is associated with Global Workspace theory
Bernard Baars
Describe the Global Workspace theory
Actually I’m not sure if I can
In the context of the global workspace theory…
if a stimulus is consciously perceived, what is notable about the resulting brain activity (compared to when a stimulus is witnessed but not consciously perceived)
When an item is perceived, it lights up a whole range of brain regions.
The opposite is true when not perceived
Getting into the details of brain regions and consciousness - activity in which brain regions is correlated with perception of stimuli
And why is it that interesting
Parietal and frontal cortices
It’s interesting because the temporal lobe was not included (ie. it fires whether perception or not), and that’s where some visual processing happens
So what’s the issue that has started people focusing on the parietal rather than the frontal cortex?
Cos the ‘hitting the button’ bit of ‘report paradigms’ might be the thing that is lighting up the frontal cortex
Describe the Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
Consciousness = Integrated information (Φ phi)
The greater the number of mutually exclusive possible states a system can hold the more conscious it is.
What are the core tenets of Integrated Information Theory (IIT)
Our experience is:
- integrated and unified (cannot be decomposed into perceptive elements eg colour, contrast)
- informative - specific and distinct from alternative experiences
According to Integrated Information Theory, why are the cerebellum and the gut not conscious, despite having millions of neurons?
Because in the cerebellum and the gut, the neurons are not connected to each other in the same way they are in the brain.
What was Olivia’s bug bear about Integrated Information Theory (IIT),
No specification of time scale
