Consciousness and the Brain

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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

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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

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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

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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?vRc6LRxjqzkAfeature
  related

• 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?vRc6LRxjqzkAfeature
  related

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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)

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Serial Conscious Processing

• Slower than parallel processing
• Allows us to solve new problems which require
  focus
• Volunteers?

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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

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Selective Inattention

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vvJG698U2Mvo

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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?vVkrrVozZR2c

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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

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