I prepared a summary to introduce you to this topic:
Models of consciousness aim to inspire new experimental protocols and aid interpretation of empirical evidence to reveal the structure of conscious experience. Nevertheless, no current model is univocally accepted on either theoretical or empirical grounds.
The four current and major neuroscientific theories of conscious experience are: global neuronal workspace (GNW) theory, re-entrant processing theory, predictive coding, and integrated information theory (IIT).
A fantasy is an idea with no basis in reality and is basically your imagination unrestricted by reality. Reality is the state of things as they exist. It’s what you see, hear, and experience.
Imagery and perception are the same? A large body of evidence has shown that imagery and perception can behave in strikingly similar ways. For most of us, both can produce the subjective feeling (or qualia) of ‘seeing’; however, imagery is often a weaker and fuzzier version of visual perception.
The Perky Effect describes the relationship between real visual information (perception) and mental imagery. Discovered by C. W. Perky in 1910, her experiments were able to show that visualization of images can depress the sensitivity of perception of real visual targets.
What did Perky find about projecting a faint image of a banana while participants created a mental image of a banana? Their descriptions of the mental image matched the real image.
*Definition & Explanation of the Perky Effect https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/sum2020/entries/mental-imagery/perky-experiment.html
Quanta Magazine’s coverage of biology in 2023, including important research progress into the nature of consciousness, the origins of our microbiomes and the timekeeping mechanisms that govern our lives and development. Read about more breakthroughs from 2023 at Quanta Magazine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-bi…
00:05 The Research of Consciousness: Our minds are constantly taking in new external information while also creating their own internal imagery and narratives. How do we distinguish reality from fantasy? This year, researchers discovered that the brain has a “reality threshold” against which it constantly evaluates processed signals. – Original story with links to research papers can be found here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/is-it-…
04:30 Microbiomes Evolve With Us: This year, scientists provided clear evidence that the organisms in our microbiome —the collection of bacteria and other cells that live in our guts and elsewhere on our body — spread between people, especially those with whom we spend the most time. This raises the intriguing possibility that some illnesses that aren’t usually considered communicable might be. — Original story with links to research papers can be found here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/global…
08:43 How Life Keeps Time: The rate at which an embryo develops and the timing of when its tissues mature vary dramatically between species. What controls the ticking of this developmental clock that determines an animal’s final form? This year, a series of careful experiments suggest that mitochondria may very well serve dual roles as both the timekeeper and power source for complex cells. – Original story with links to research papers can be found here: https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-m…
brain-perks 