Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts in Science and Inquiry

Oct 16, 2014 David Rubenstein rated it it was amazing

Shelves: science, biology, medicine, psychology

This book is a truly fascinating exploration of the biological foundation of consciousness. Stanislas Dehaene is an active researcher in the field. He makes a compelling argument that consciousness can be explained in terms of his "global neuronal workspace theory". In this theory, consciousness means that information that comes into a particular area of the brain through one of the senses becomes available to the rest of the brain. The information becomes "... globally available to all our high This book is a truly fascinating exploration of the biological foundation of consciousness. Stanislas Dehaene is an active researcher in the field. He makes a compelling argument that consciousness can be explained in terms of his "global neuronal workspace theory". In this theory, consciousness means that information that comes into a particular area of the brain through one of the senses becomes available to the rest of the brain. The information becomes "... globally available to all our high-level decision systems." In other words, consciousness is brain-wide information sharing. Dehaene describes a huge body of research that he and others have done, that substantiate his theory.

Perhaps you have heard of a story where a movie theater used subliminal messages to encourage customers to buy Coca Cola. According to the story, individual film frames with the message were interspersed with a movie. They could not be consciously seen, because they flashed by too fast, but they encouraged a significant increase of sales of Coca Cola at the concession stand. Well, this is an urban legend--the story was a hoax.

But this does not mean subliminal messages do no work. Dehaene describes many intriguing experiments that prove that subliminal information--both visual and auditory--can be used to prime people to respond more positively to subsequent tasks. He describes how fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) has been used to correlate this subliminal priming with activity in the brain. The subliminal messages activate neurons in the brain, but not until the messages are increased in duration past some threshold, do they instigate global neuron activity throughout the brain, and the subject becomes conscious of the message.

Here is a fascinating little tidbit: There is a single individual neuron in the brain that is activated if and only if you see a facial image or the written name of some celebrity. A different individual neuron is activated for each different celebrity. I had no idea that neurons could be quite that specific!

Dehaene's "global neuronal workspace theory" has been put to practical use in medicine. Perhaps you have heard of people who have suffered brain injuries, and are almost completely paralyzed. They can only communicate very slowly, for example, by blinking an eyelid. But there are others who are truly completely paralyzed, and they have no means of communicating with the outside world. Doctors have diagnosed these patients as being in a permanent "vegetative state". Dehaene describes how fMRI's and EEG's have been used on some patients to establish that the patients are really conscious, and provide a crude type of two-way communication. And, a technique called Transcranial Mental Stimulation has been used to awaken some "vegetative" patients, and bring them to a fully conscious state. Sometimes, these patients can be awakened to live normal lives.

Toward the end of the book, some intriguing experiments are described that explore self-consciousness--in animals like dolphins! The results of these experiments could be interpreted to mean that some animals are actually self-conscious; they think about the fact that they are thinking. But, since animals do not talk, it is also possible to give other interpretations to the experiments. Obviously, this area is controversial.

Toward the beginning of the book, I was taken aback by the dry writing style. It is not a difficult book to read, but the writing style is close to the scientific style, and does not seem quite right for a "popularized" book for the layman. Getting through some of the prose is slow-going. But then I realized--the book is describing some amazing things. It conveys a good understanding of the biological foundations of consciousness. There have been many recent books written about consciousness--but this one goes far beyond philosophy--this book explains the "how" and the "why". ...more

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Feb 28, 2016 Charlene rated it liked it

Shelves: biology, decision-making, neuroscience, philosophy, constructs

Filled with a lot of wonderful neuroscience. Worthwhile studies. I was with him until he began making illogical arguments at the end. He obviously hates Peter Singer. In this he is not alone. No matter how disdainful researchers find Singer, they are often able to argue against him using research and logic. Dehaene was obviously overcome by emotion and his logic centers failed to light up. A little too much vmPFC activation and not enough dlPFC involvement in his decision-making.

Dehaene argues Filled with a lot of wonderful neuroscience. Worthwhile studies. I was with him until he began making illogical arguments at the end. He obviously hates Peter Singer. In this he is not alone. No matter how disdainful researchers find Singer, they are often able to argue against him using research and logic. Dehaene was obviously overcome by emotion and his logic centers failed to light up. A little too much vmPFC activation and not enough dlPFC involvement in his decision-making.

Dehaene argues that Singer is dead wrong. He argues that of course babies and handicapped (his terminology) individuals are conscious and should never be killed. It is clear to me that Dehaene does not really understand Peter Singer's arguments. He misrepresented them. Singer is not in favor of killing babies. Singer is arguing that many animals have consciousness, just as babies and children do. If this is the case, why are we at liberty to kill them? Dehaene took a moral stance (against something Singer wasn't even arguing) and tried to take Singer down with science, and it was a pretty big fail. Dehaene cited studies that showed that even tiny babies had some consciousness, albeit a much less complex version of adult consciousness. If he is to make this argument, then he is stuck addressing consciousness of animals, since the argument he gave about babies and "handicapped" individuals has been made about animals. Indeed he does. He concludes that animals too have consciousness, but since their consciousness is less complex than adult humans, they cannot share special status with humans. Umm What? Did he just forget what he argued only a page or so back? That was a bad note to end with.

If you are more Kantian than Mill in your ideology, then you might not mind Dehaene's argument against Singer, even if it lacks logic and misses Singer's point. Kant and Mill have opposing views in the famous dead baby problem. The soldiers are approaching. The baby is crying. If the soldiers hear the baby, they will kill the baby and kill every last person hiding near the baby. Mill would suggest that since the baby is going to die anyway, you must kill it yourself to save everyone else (in fact, not killing the baby could be tantamount to murdering everyone else). According to Mill's utilitarian approach, letting everyone die serves no good, because in the end, it didn't save the baby. It merely caused more harm, not less. But Kant says there is no logic that can justify the harm of even one person. The baby's life is precious and it is immoral to kill it, even if that means everyone else will die. Kant doesn't care about any logical argument that would suggest that not doing so is essentially murdering everyone else. He makes blanket statements about morality. For Kant, taking any action against the baby is simply wrong. When having to memorize the dead baby problem as an undergrad (so as to not mix up Mill and Kant), I would say, "I just Kant kill the baby!"

Thus, my ears were ringing with Kantian ethics as I read Dehaene. I kept imagining him saying, "You Kant kill the babies but you Kan kill the animals!"

Even with my annoyance, I really did appreciate his solid research on consciousness in individuals in a prolonged state of being unable to communicate. He looked at people in comas, partially unresponsive, etc and provided some truly incredible studies that demonstrate that the mind is often far more active that it appears. Again though, he focused on Singer. Dehaene voiced his anger at Singer, who suggested that people in a vegetative state should be able to die. Somehow Dehaene translated this to mean that Singer did not want to investigate the minds of those in a vegetative state. Singer never said that. Singer is a huge proponent of gathering as much evidence as possible. Singer is saying that now, with the knowledge we have, keeping someone in a vegetative state isn't always kind or moral. In fact for Singer, it is often more kind and moral to kill someone in that state. I feel pretty certain that if we develop tech to cure a vegetative state, Singer would be all for it. Dehaene is basically arguing against a fantom. If he had taken the Singer arguments out of his book, it would have been a great book. ...more

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