The reason why students, teachers, and researchers of psychology have difficulty in knowing what consciousness is, is because of indirect teaching from psychophilosophers that we feel, see, hear, smell or taste stimuli not in the sense organs but in the brain, leading to a comment that human consciousness eludes scientific measurement because it might be 'immeasurable."
But knowing we are conscious 'to what' and 'by what,' we can answer this puzzle. We are conscious to scene we see by our visual receptors (eyes, etc.), to sound we hear by auditory sense organ (ear), to touches we feel by tactile senses (in skin), to savor we taste by gustatory receptors (tongue, palate), and so forth. If this is so, then do we "see" in the brain or in the eye ?
Can an inborn blind man see in his brain or mind ? Of course not, except with the aid of a camera (biological or bionic).
If a bionic or cyborg eye is 1 kilometer (0.621 371 mile) distant from brain to where it will have to transmit what it has "seen", is the vision seen near on the brain or immediately on the bionic eye? Obviously, visual consciousness in this instance is not in the brain but in the bionic eye. "It" is conscious to what the bionic eye is seeing and not to what is near on the head (brain). Therefore, consciousness is in the sensory neuroreceptors or bionic sensory-detector (except, of course, if the brain cells themselves are also used as sensory neuroreceptors).
Where is the voice ?
Auditory (hearing) sense organ is an analogy , or similar, to microphone; and radio to temporal lobe of the brain.
Where is the sound in the radio ? The sound is not IN the radio, rather, it is in the speaker. The electrical signals (disturbances) transmitted by a wireless microphone at distance are converted into sound when they stretched magnetic disturbances from electromagnet, creating magnetic repulsion, which vibrates the speaker, producing sound outwardly.
What about in brain? What is the 'speaker' so that sound can be formed? The "speaker's electromagnet" of the brain are the auditory electrochemical charges themselves. Once those 'charges' reached their final destination in the brain (let us called it for a while, temporal electromagnet), charges' disturbances will happen, causing vibration among the charges and hitting other charges producing 'sound' inwardly: the auditory charges themselves express the 'sound'. But of course, it's not the speaker (temporal lobe) that hears the sound, rather, it's the microphone (ear). What the speaker does is to express this sound outwardly, whereas temporal lobe expresses it inwardly.
Is the speaker conscious ? Its sound must be 'replayed' into itself (speaker's electromagnet) and collided to the copy of that sound and confirmed and expressed inwardly and played back again and compared to other stored/replay-able 'sound' to become, apparently, partly conscious.
Consciousness has two inseparable portions:
(1) the detecting, and
(2) the processing : Processing will not happen without detecting.
Video cam can detect (see) scene or image and expresses it by a monitor screen. however, video copy in memory can be also expressed in the monitor screen. Likewise, man's episodic memory can be expressed in the occipital lobe or visual system, simply because the brain cells themselves (which store that episodic memory) function as sensory neuroreceptors. When we close our (optical) eyes and visualize, we are using our visual brain-cells as eye or as visual sensory receptors and, therefore, those brain cells are visually conscious. we become conscious depending on the sensory receptors we use.
The advantage of optical eyes over mental 'eye' is that their visual nascentiraptic charges are many or stronger than the latter's, and that's why when we visualize (imagine) with our optical eyes opened we cannot almost see the image we mentally formed but just an insight or idea of that image. by closing our optical eyes, that image will mentally take its appearance prominent.
Controlling...
To consciously control a particular body particular, say a finger, the nascentiraptic Mind in the thalamus must send electrochemical signal to the area 4 or motor cortex (i.e. center for consciously controlling movement) and 'electrify' (stimulate) there the finger-controlling neurons. However controlling Mind (charges) cannot do it easily except by knowing first where is the finger. Without having 'felt' the targeted 'finger', even the eyes seeing that finger cannot help to move it, the finger is seemed does not exist. sensation (produced by air on skin hair, temperature, tension or stretch of muscle) in the skin & muscle of the finger sends signals in the thalamus in the brain by which controlling Mind can ascertain its location in the body. The stimulation produced by the muscles & tendons gives the kinesthetic sense. Kinesthesia in the skin-muscle-tendon is magnified (elaborated) in the area 2 of the somatosensory cortex and partly of the area 1 which have relays in the ventral posterolateral (VLP) and ventral posteromedial (VPM) neurons of the thalamus. Mind locates it by the thalamus. If focus of consciousness happens in the finger, simultaneously focus of realizations will happen in the thalamus' finger-sensation neurons and somatosensory cortical finger-sensing neurons. Excess of the charges, together with the thalamus', will be sent to the immediate neighboring motor cortical finger-controlling neurons.
There are a lot "mind" in the living brain, to name a few they are the mind for visual consciousness, auditory (hearing) consciousness, tactile (touch) consciousness, olfaction (smelling), gustation (tasting), kinesthetic and vestibular consciousnesses. If all conscious-giving neural fibers from peripheral nervous system (nerves outside the brain) have relays on the thalamus, then we can presume that all minds in the brain are unified in the thalamus, producing a coordinating center of minds (i.e. centralized unified controlling Mind). Consciousness, which starts in the sensory neuroreceptors, is realized apparently in the thalamus, and this realization is even magnified or elaborated (up to finest details) in the somatosensory cortex or post central gyral neurons.
It seems that somatosensory cortical neurons have multiple functions, i.e., sensory-cortical 'procedural' memory (storage system of 'procedural' for tactile, kinesthetic, and vestibular sensations), sensory receptors (e.g. the consciousness being experienced in sense organ is apparently also experienced here and 'report' it to the thalamus), and relays (apparently to 'purify' or make specific and confirm the 'command charges' to the neighboring 'switches' (neurons) for voluntary movements from motor cortex).
When man is frightened it possibly means that his nascentiraptic Mind ()force) is electrifying his amygdala, and if extremely terrified, his posterior hypothalamus is being stimulated. These areas and with the thalamus in the brain are possibly the center for 'conscience'. Electrical stimulation of man's amygdala can elicit most commonly all normal autonomic manifestations for fear (e.g. secretion of adrenaline, fast beating of the heart, and dilation/expansion of the eyes' pupils). Shivering (trembling) and increase heart rate are some of the obvious effect after electrical stimulation of the posterior hypothalamus.
Charges as controlling Mind
In many experimentation on animals and conscious men, electric charges were used as a controlling Mind by stimulating certain areas of the brain. Penfield and his associates serendipitously discovered that motor precentral gyrus is interconnected, possibly through associative neurons, to the sensory post central gyrus, after having stimulated the precentral area (25 % experiencing 'sensation, with or without a motor response/body movement) and on post central area (20 % evoking a motor response, with or without 'sensation') of the patients. Either of the controlling Mind or electrical charge can move the head and eyes to the opposite side if it stimulates the posterior part of the superior parietal lobule (area 5, parietal adversive field). One patient, according to W. Penfield, said that a "terrific tight sensation of taste" was being experienced after electrical stimulation of the cortex above the circular sulcus (surrounding the insula) or the surface of the insula itself. sensations about sound (intensity, quality, and pitch) are appreciated after stimulating the auditosensory area (41). When man's uncus, olfactory lobe or amygdaloid nucleus' region is stimulated, olfaction (smell consciousness) is experienced. Electric charges stimulating occipital area 18 or 19 in man can evoke visual consciousness (such as definite images or flashes of light of various colors). Controlling mind or stimulating electric charges passing on the angular gyrus can deviate conjugate-ly the eyes to the opposite side. In conscious patients, dizziness (nausea), a sense of swaying, falling, or of rotation will be 'experienced' if the fast temporal convolution's posterior part is stimulated. To cry (like of a baby), controlling Mind or electric charges must stimulate the lower part of the precentral gyrus' cortex (lips, jaw and tongue areas) or in the supplementary motor area's upper part on the mesial aspect of the hemisphere which can also happen in conscious adult patients. Tip-of -the-tongue state may happen if electric charges (or extra nascentiraptic charge) stimulates the lower frontal (area 44), upper frontal (motor cortex anterior to the foot area on the mesial aspect of the hemisphere), post central gyrus' lower part, or temporal lobe's posterior part against the proper direction of stimulation.
THALAMUS
J.G. Dusser de Barenne and O. Sager had demonstrated the sensory localization in the thalamus by injecting a minute quantity of strychnine in cats' thalamus, resulting to hyperesthesia (unusual sensation) and hyperalgesia (unusual insensitivity for pain) to stimulate skin (most pronounced on the body's contralateral side) and muscle-tendon-periosteura (around bone). By means of various methods it has been shown that the thalamus's posterior ventral (PV) nucleus had a definite somatotopic (sensory localized) organization so that it is thought that thalamus makes sensory stimuli consciously perceived. It was also discovered that thalamus and corpus striatum are functioning for the execution of automatic (reflex) complex movements. Being part of the reticular formation, thalamus's ventromedial portion, reticular nucleus and intralaminar nuclei are involved in the arousal and alerting reactions. All types of sensation on the contralateral side of the body are grossly impaired or possibly will be lost if thalamus' lateral nuclei are destroyed: there may be severe pain (e.g. unpleasant feeling from light touch or too much disagreeable sensation from cold-produced impulses), spontaneous pain with a very unpleasant hypersensitivity. Possibly some effects of the thalamic syndrome are impairment of touch and of kinesthetic senses on the opposite side of the body, some loss of tactile (touch) and thermal (hot) sensations over the face and body, disability of conscious controlling Mind to 'feel' (locate) the position of a limb if eyes are closed (or a 'feeling' or 'thinking' that the limb does not exist ther at all), and disability to mentally 'locate' a sensation on his skin even though he recognized the stimulus, or various abnormal involuntary (unconscious) movements. In some instances, according to H. Head (Studies in Neurology, vol.II. Frowde, London, 1920), a patient "could not stand the hymns on his affected side" when hearing a music, while another patient said that "a horrid feeling came in the affected side and the leg," when the choir sang and he "started to shake." Another had reported "I seem to crave for sympathy on my right side." These are disturbances of sensation associated with some emotional reactions caused by the thalamic syndrome.
WITHOUT KINESTHESIS
Christina, a young British woman, had an unknown inflammation, which resulted to an irreversible kinesthetic neural damage. although other senses and organs are intact and only her kinesthesia is impaired, she could not sit up, walk or stand when the disease started that she was as floopy as a rag doll. Then by visualization and sheer willpower she slowly learned to do these things. However, her controlling mind could not 'locate' where exactly to control her fingers and how much amount of force would she need to apply, which usually resulted to a painful force when she is grasping a fork -that she had to drop the fork. Such grasping is an indicative that some sensory neurons, other than of kinesthesia, are possibly active in her skin that's why she could slightly localize the direction toward her arm. According to her, it seems that something's been scooped right out of herself, right at the center, as if she is not physically embodied. this incidence gives us an idea that without kinesthesis, the control of Mind is almost by chance and is telekinetic, rather than by touch detection & pure biological psychokinesis. (Read also: OliverSacks, 1985. The man who mistook his wife for a hat and other clinical tales. New York: Simon & Schuster).
Kinesthesia is a proprioceptive sense that tells us about the location of our body parts,being stimulated by the movements of our muscles, tendons, and periosteura.
CONTROLLERS
Central Nervous System is the most complicated and hi-tech invention ever we see in this known universe, and functioning by its brainware and neuroware.
Brainware -the neurons, processes (nerves, synapses, dendrites, telodendria), neurotransmitters, cortices, lobes, nuclei, tracts, and any anatomical component of the central nervous system (CNS).
Neuroware -an entire set o programs, procedures, and related documentation associated with a system, e.g., the alpobreña ( particularly, alpobrenic program).
Examples of Neuroware
Hypervid - an applications-neuroware which is used by conscious Mind to navigate stored 'info' in various centers making a 'short cut' way instead of rewinding the ENTIRE index-card & file-cabinet arrangement of the restrictive search-and-retrieval methods. (It is a shortening for "hypertext" plus Latin word "videre" - "to see".)
BADDMaM : Brain-aided design, drafting, morphing and motion.
- a neuroware program for designing, drafting, morphing and creating motion images .
This applications-neuroware program is used (1) by conscious Mind when gedankenexperimenting or visualizing, and (2) by the alpobrenic (unconscious) mind during sleep state to produce dream, or (3) by hypnotic voice during hynotic state.
Dream
Dream is (1) a free dynamic noumenal virtual reality or (2) a semi-directed dynamic noumenal virtual reality.
Any of the senses (sight, hearing, feeling, smelling, tasting, etc.) can be a content of a certain dream. Pure dream (e.g. hearing only without any other sensation) can be hardly remembered (except perhaps for the blind) and that's possibly why we almost having nothing or seldom-ly have pure dream. usually, dream is a combination of video and audio with "feeling" (touch sensations), and sometimes with olfaction (smell) and/or gustation (taste). Depending on the activated areas of the brain, a dream may be black & white or colored (e.g., from/by ventral portion of occipital area 19). in some cases of near-death-experience, alpobrenic video is so intense, vivid, and clear.
Hypnosis is an exo-directed dynamic psychological virtual reality.
At least three minds are involved in hypnosis:
The hypnotee's (1) conscious Mind and
(2) unconscious mind, and
(3) the hypnotist's voice-mind.
The control is transferred from the thalamic nascentiraptic conscious Mind to the hypnotist's voice or neurologically, partly 'switching off' the controller for the circuit of the subject's thalamic conscious Mind and 'switching on' the controller to the auditory circuit, leading to the ear's auditory nerves.
Switches Controller
If this is correct, then there are switches-controller in the brain that can be switched on to the thalamic conscious-Mind (as in ordinary conscious state), or to the auditory circuit (as in hypnosis), or to the Alpobreña (as in dream state), or can be switched off to the thalamus' conscious-Mind (as in coma state), or can be interfered with metabolic or electrical distraction (as in epilepsy) or with aural (?) interference (as in automatic handwriting or automatic speaking).
In hypnosis, the disagreeable sensations or pain can be directed to the unconscious mind apparently by transferring the direction of those sensations-impulses to and via associative nerves instead concentrating to the somatosensory (say area 2 of) cortex and thalamic pain-perceiving neurons. the fact that hypnotic suggestions can be used to anesthetize people undergoing dental work, surgery, or childbirth, and reduce severe, chronic pain is an indicative of redirecting the impulses of pain to other paths. (Read also: Carole wade & Carol Tavris. Psychology 6th ed.,pp.170-171, Prentice-Hall,Inc. NJ. copyright 2000/read Irving Kirsch, G. Montgomery & G. Sapirstein. Hypnosis as an adjunct to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy: A meta-analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 63, 214-220. 1995/ read Henderikus J. Stam. from symptom relief to cure: Hypnotic interventions in cancer. In N.P. Spanos & J.F. Chaves (eds), Hypnosis: The cognitive-behavioral perspective. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books copyright 1989.)
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