Consciousness

There's a lot of discussion around consciousness if you look for it.

I want to highlight just three aspects, and would encourage you to read this story as part of the background.

Recently I came across two separate threads relating to consciousness that are interesting, compatible, and compelling.

The first is the work of Julian Jaynes (1920-1997). I myself would like to read more about his work, and my knowledge is really limited to what is available through the Julian Jaynes Society website, in particular this text, available for free. There are numerous other articles. The most important things I get from his work so far are that
a) consciousness is mostly a linguistic thing; and
b) consciousness is not what I thought it was.

Conversations with others have brought out a number of metaphors to capture what consciousness might be. My current favourites are 'a computer screen' in that it is unable to show the entire working of the computer but simply reflects a part of what is going on in it, and the 'sports commentator', unable to influence the game normally, and limited in understanding temporally and conceptually, but able to provide an adequate summary interpretation of what is happening.

The second vein of research I stumbled across that is relevant is the work of Benjamin Libet (a wikipedia reference will do here) . The key finding of interest to us here is that our conscious experience of volition occurs after other events in the brain - almost as if free will is an illusion that our linguistic commentator (see, now I'm bringing Jaynes into the discussion) reveals to us before an action takes place, but after the brain has already unconsciously decided to make the specific action. There is then a suggestion from Libet that free will is actually an inhibitor rather than an orginator. This would make sense for a couple of other reasons I'll get into in a moment. Read this first.

Anyway, this has set my mind off in a number of different directions, and I am slowly becoming aware of what they are. This, then, is the third aspect of consciousness I'd like to address.

Schizophrenia: could it be a failure of 'consciousness' to inhibit both activity and attention? I suppose the short answer is: of course, that's precisely what it is. But my point really is that perhaps when looking for the consciousness in the brain, there might be a lot to be gained from looking at the neural activity of schizophrenics. In particular, I am attracted by the idea that language, if it is the essential component of consciousness, is about metaphor, about drawing connections between things that usually have no natural connection, such as the word 'table' and the actual physical thing we refer to - and what significance this might have for schizophrenia. Given that schizophrenia has sometimes been conceptualised as a dysfunction of consciousness (e.g. this abstract from 1979 and this from 2004) and that it is also sometimes described as a habit of drawing connections between things that most of us would not normally connect, it should probably be studied in those terms.

Further evidence is given in this abstract, which compares the social cognitive abilities of people with schizophrenia to people with frontal lobe damage. All good students of psychology remember the frontal lobe damage of Phineas Gage and the resultant disinhibited behaviour...

And so I leave this thread of ideas with a final thought: perhaps 'schizophrenia' (watch out, we'll be discussing this term in detail soon - it's not what you think it is!) is simply a reflection of consciousness. It is not madness as some might like to conceive of it. It provides us with an idea of what people might be like if they were paying attention to 'the wrong things', and that clearly is a malfunction of consciousness, not 'biology' or 'genes'. There may be more enlightenment provided by researchers looking at the relationship between language and schizophrenia. Pay attention. It strikes me that we will never understand such tragically disfigured consciousness before we can work out what consciousness really is.

Wear red to get laid

This is silly.

I'll blame the reporters rather than the researchers here, but if I have time, I'm going to try and read this piece of research. Apparently men are more likely to spend more money on a woman if she is wearing red. The researchers suggest this is some kind of evolutionary thing linked to the red swelling that some female monkeys get around the time of ovulation.

So what's needed now is some research into women's decision to wear red. Is it a conscious thing? Are they unconsciously aware of the fact that men will spend more on them if they wear red? Hang on.... spending more?! I've heard of favours done by male monkeys in exchange for sex - but isn't this research misdirected? Surely if your conclusion is something to do with sex, the question asked should have been something to do with sex too. I would have thought that if we were thinking in evolutionary terms, cheap, fast sex is likely to be more highly valued rather than a date that costs lots of money. There's something fishy about this...

Hate in the brain

Hate. Is it an emotion?
This story is a curious discussion of what parts of the brain are activated when a person experiences 'hatred' of another person.
I was tempted to suggest that the decision to use faces of people as stimuli needs a bit more explanation, but now I think perhaps it doesn't matter. If we accept that we are unlikely ever to understand the intensity of another person's hatred (or any emotion for that matter), then as long as the person being studied says they experience hate, it's probably ok.

So what does this story tell us? I'm afraid it's one of those stories that will seem rather dull. Localisation of function in the brain is great, don't get me wrong, and I'm happy enough for the researchers to get their work seen (as evidenced by my choosing to discuss this story!) but by itself it's not that interesting. Perhaps it needs to be connected with other research...

Welcome !

Welcome to psychworldcz.

The main function of this site is to make current psychological research and ideas accessible to a wider audience. At the moment I see this happening in two main ways:

1) I provide links to and comment on stories currently in the press
2) Psychologists, researchers, teachers and students send in their own links, make comments on mine, and let us know about their own research. In particular I would like to hear about research happening in the Czech Republic - let the rest of the world know what's being done here!