Transcript Consciousness and the Brain

Consciousness and
the Brain
•Consciousness – our
awareness of ourselves
and our environment
–States of consciousness:
sleeping, waking, and
altered states
•daydreaming, meditating,
drug induced hallucinating
We have the answers! Except we have
none at all… crap.
• Cognitive Neuroscience – study of brain
activity linked with mental processes (called
cognition)
• Two schools of thought
– Conscious experience based on specific neural
circuits firing in a specified manner
– Conscious experiences produced by
synchronization of entire brain
Dual Processing – we know more than
we know we know… ya know?
• On vs. off staging
• Conscious left brain vs. intuitive right brain
• Concept that we process information
simultaneously on separate conscious and
unconscious tracks
The Two-Track Mind - Vision
• Dual processing system
– Visual perception track: unconscious creating
that allows us to think about the world
– Visual action track: conscious guide for our
moment to moment actions
• The Hollow Face Illusion
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc6LRxjqzkA&
feature=related
So what does this show us?
• Much of our everyday thinking happens
outside of our conscious awareness
• Parallel unconscious tracks – imagine driving
a car or walking home (automatic pilot)
Serial Conscious Processing
• Slower than parallel processing
• Allows us to solve new problems which
require focus
• Volunteers?
Selective Attention
• Relate back to bias
– Class experience: awareness of your nose, fingers,
hands, feet, smells, sounds, sights – or are you just
taking notes?
• Selective Attention: focusing conscious
awareness on PARTICULAR stimulus
Selective Inattention
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2M
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Selective Inattention
• Inattentional Blindness: failing to see visible
objects when our attention is directed
elsewhere
• Change Blindness: failing to notice changes in
the environment
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrrVozZ
R2c
Other types of blindness
• Choice-blindness: people seldom notice
deception and will in fact readily explain a
wrong preference
– Johansson experiment (2005)
• Choice-blindness blindness: people tend
believe they have the ability to perceive
deception when it occurs