Of Consciousness, the Brain, and the Soul

(Image from scitechdaily)

Much as UFO skeptics claim that there is no definitive evidence of alien life, so do most scientists believe that consciousness does not exist outside the human brain. Another way of framing the latter proposition is that there is no proof that the soul exists.

American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray thinks that enough evidence has accumulated to question the brain-only view of human consciousness. [bold added]

the most robust, hardest-to-ignore evidence comes from a phenomenon called terminal lucidity: a sudden, temporary return to self-awareness, memory and lucid communication by a person whose brain is no longer functional usually because of advanced dementia but occasionally because of meningitis, brain tumors, strokes or chronic psychiatric disorders.

Terminal lucidity can last from a few minutes to a few hours. In the most dramatic cases, people who have been unable to communicate or even recognize their spouses or children for years suddenly become alert and exhibit their former personalities, complete with reminiscences and incisive questions. It is almost always followed by complete mental relapse and death within a day or two.

The phenomenon didn’t have a name until 2009, but case studies reach back to detailed clinical descriptions from the 19th century. Hospices, palliative-care centers, and long-term care wards for dementia patients continued to observe the condition during the 20th century but usually treated it as a curious episode that didn’t warrant a write-up. With the advent of social media, reports began to accumulate. We now have a growing technical literature and a large, systematic sample compiled by Austrian psychologist Alexander Batthyány.

Two features of the best-documented cases combine to meet Sagan’s standard: The subjects suffered from medically verified disorders that made their brains incapable of organized mental activity; and multiple observers, including medical personnel, recorded the lucidity.

A strict materialist explanation must posit a so-far-unknown capability of the brain. But the brain has been mapped for years, and a great deal is known about the functions of its regions. Discovering this new feature would be akin to finding a way that blood can circulate when the heart stops pumping.

Charles Murray analogizes the current state of consciousness science to the late 19th century problems with Newton's physics that required the creation of a new theoretical model:

I see the strict materialistic view of consciousness as being in roughly the same fix as Newtonian physics was in 1887, when the Michelson-Morley experiment proved that the speed of light doesn’t behave as Newton’s laws said it should. It took 18 years before Einstein’s theory of special relativity accommodated the anomaly.

We are identifying anomalies in the materialist position that must eventually lead to a paradigm shift. Science will have to acknowledge that even though conventional neuroscience explains much about consciousness under ordinary circumstances, something else can come into play under the extreme conditions of imminent death.

The implications are momentous. Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow observed that for a scientist trying to explain creation, the verification of the big-bang theory “ends like a bad dream”: “As he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Neuroscientists who have been trying to explain consciousness may have to face their own bad dream: coming to terms with evidence for the human soul.

The 21st century was predicted to be the century of the Brain or when the war on cancer would be won. But the century of "soul science"? That wasn't on my bingo card.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls”

Maybe her eyes can tell us what she's thinking

The nature of consciousness has long been a fundamental question of human existence, and it's no surprise that scientists are employing scientific methods to improve our understanding of the subject.

For example, human beings are not "conscious" when they are asleep, so one criterion of consciousness is that a person must be aware of objects in the person's surroundings: [bold added]

[Researchers] used a combination of artificial intelligence, mathematics, and a close examination of the eye movements of individuals as they were shown images of people’s faces.

As it turns out, they found that important clues are revealed in the eyes. When people were shown clear images, their eye movements showed a distinct pattern that indicates they were aware of their surroundings. However, as the subjects were presented with progressively dimmer images of faces, the pattern of eye movement changed. Tracking these changes, [Yale Prof. Hal] Blumenfeld said, allowed researchers to discern whether the subjects actually perceived the face or not without asking them.

“The eyes are truly the window to our souls,” he said. “We can tell if people are aware of something by simply looking at their eyes.”

The eye-tracking tool allowed researchers to explore the amorphous dividing line between consciousness and unconsciousness, a state most obvious as we awake from sleep. People become progressively more aware of their surroundings as slumber recedes, a process that is controlled in a region of the brain known as the thalamus.

Ultrasound waves directed at the
thalamus can "jump start" coma
patients (Medindia)

The Yale researchers found that when people awake the thalamus discharges a brief pulse which jumpstarts the transition to consciousness. However, this activity is only a first step in a series of actions throughout the brain that leads to full awareness, they found. For instance, that initial pulse from the thalamus may fail to activate other neural networks, keeping the individual unconscious of most surrounding stimuli. However, the pulse can also activate neurons involved in processing visual cues in the frontal cortex, which in turn amplifies circuits involved in arousal and attention. At the same time, signals irrelevant to the event are turned off.

To those of us who have friends or relatives who regularly experience visual and/or auditory hallucinations, the research into consciousness and awareness can't proceed fast enough.

But for those like your humble blogger, whose brain is healthily grounded in reality (!) and is concerned about scientists being able to read thoughts through eye movements, wearing sunglasses is strongly recommended.

Nintendo Harbinger: No, It's Not a Game

20x more efficient than the 1989 Game Boy

I have a Nintendo Gameboy stored somewhere, but not like this one: [bold added]

Custom designed to run entirely without batteries, the hand-held gaming device is powered by small solar panels as well as the button presses of the person playing it...

The implications of this demonstration are potentially huge, and not just for videogame junkies. In our battery-free future, carbon, moisture and light sensors that last for decades could be scattered by drones across farms.

Smart cities might be inundated with all-seeing, all-hearing surveillance devices; vehicles and buildings will use artificial intelligence to anticipate needs and perform simple tasks; and “implantables” in our bodies will more tightly integrate humans with everything else connected to the internet...

It’s this combination of traits—never needing to reboot, using very little power, and harvesting energy from the environment—that yields a system that could be a “perpetual” computer.

Devices that are so energy-efficient that they won't need batteries, that possess intelligence that already surpasses human beings', that can reproduce (much as software can write other software) and "teach" their offspring--it's a wonderful world that's approaching (/sarc).

Silicon Valley guru and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang "has predicted this future of computing will eventually include trillions of devices." Oh, joy.

The Luddites may have been mocked for centuries, but this is their moment.

Ancient Insight

The premise: consciousness is a characteristic unique to human beings, distinguishing us from animals and machines.

The problem:

Prominent thinkers like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk warn about the rising danger of an artificial intelligence that can "out-think" humans;

dementia and Alzheimer's Disease rob millions of their identity;

experiments reveal that animals exhibit traits that were once thought to be unique to human beings.

The claustrum (Daily Mail graphic)

The Economist science writer says that the answer to consciousness may lie in certain structures of the brain: the claustrum and the temporoparietal junction.

Here's another take: "Our identity comes more from our moral character than from our memory or intellect.".

Yale psychologist Nina Strohminger and University of Arizona philosopher Shaun Nichols surveyed spouses and children of patients with brain conditions affecting memory, cognition, or moral behavior whether their loved one was "still the same person underneath." Their conclusion:

Across all three groups, changes in moral behavior predicted changes in perceived identity, while changes in memory or intellect did not.

Heraclitus said that character is destiny. 25 centuries later we have little to add to that insight.