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Researchers May Have Discovered The Consciousness On/Off Switch

Migrated topic.
I don't know if it really tells us anything truly groundbreaking... A study involving one person. And what they were able to interrupt was conscious function. No doubt that part of the brain is central in how we process information and form our internal experience, but I don't think the study gets any closer to really explaining how all these phenomena add up to our having an aware, living self.
 
Interesting stuff; the case cited however is not that of the 'entirely normal' brain but does seem to agree with some work hypothesising the functions of the claustrum published a couple of years ago:


www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Hypotheses relating to the function of the claustrum

This paper presents a new hypothesis as to the function of the claustrum. Our basic premise is that the claustrum functions as a detector and integrator of synchrony in the axonal trains in its afferent inputs. In the first place an unexpected stimulus ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov


Pretty heavy-duty paper but the conclusion and post-script are worth a look.At this stage I dunno if it says much, if anything, about non-local consciousness.
 
In terms of non-local consciousness, I wouldn't say this study has changed the name of the game one way or another. We know that a blunt blow to the head can render you unconscious or people can faint and lose consciousness etc...we know this is something the brain is easily capable of rendering, so it should be no surprise that it can be electromagnetically targeted to come to the same ends.

The study is far from scientific as well. We have a sample size of one for someone as corpus callosum points out, is missing part of her hippocampus! It's practically absurd to have published any results without simply finding a moderate sample size on normal volunteers.
 
If non-locality is it be understood, it's going to need to be tackled in a much different way than simply poking and prodding at various areas of a persons brain.

Viperoid, check out the 'consciousness is not the brain thread', and the last few posts, especially the last one.

The last post posits that there's a huge conundrum in the scientific/particle physics world with probability potentialities and applying that to 'materialistic/reductionist consciousness' alongside the particle/wave duality.

I highly suggest you read that last post along with the link I posted in regards to the non-locality studies done at the national university of mexico and another study done at kings college by a neurophysiologist in London, which those are only a couple studies essentially proving non-locality via specific evoked potentials in consciousness. There are many other reproduced studies aside from those two mentioned. They are out there. Non locality is very real. And consciousness isn't as 'meat and bones' as we might think.

:)

Posts 28, 30, 32 on this thread:

<3
 
Cool article, but an epileptic woman and an epileptic worm (dips on that for a reboot of The Odd Couple, btw!) is hardly a ground breaking sample. I would definitely say this should maybe give guidance to future research, but until that's done, I'm reticent to draw any major conclusions.

IF this small area of the brain turns out to be the location of consciousness, it could help us make some progress in the local/nonlocal debate. It might not tell us directly if consciousness is local, or if this part of the brain is a receiving area for some outside signal, but it would narrow down the part of the brain we need to examine to find some kind of mechanism of signal interception and translation.

Which would be cool.

Blessings
~ND
 
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