Human consciousness is simply a state of matter, like a solid or liquid – but quantum

from extremetech.com

• By Sebastian Anthony on April 24, 2014 at 8:13 am
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Thanks to the work of a small group neuroscientists and theoretical physicists over the last few years, we may finally have found a way of analyzing the mysterious, metaphysical realm of consciousnessin a scientific manner. The latest breakthrough in this new field, published by Max Tegmark of MIT, postulates that consciousness is actually a state of matter. “Just as there are many types of liquids, there are many types of consciousness,” he says. With this new model, Tegmark says that consciousness can be described in terms of quantum mechanics and information theory, allowing us to scientifically tackle murky topics such as self awareness, and why we perceive the world in classical three-dimensional terms, rather than the infinite number of objective realities offered up by the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Consciousness has always been a tricky topic to broach scientifically. After all, science deals specifically with effects that can be observed and described mathematically, and consciousness has heretofore successfully evaded all such efforts. In most serious scientific circles, merely mentioning consciousness might result in the rescinding of your credentials and immediate exile to the land of quacks and occultists. (Read: How to create a mind, or die trying.)

A stunning image of the neurons in a human hippocampus

But clearly, consciousness – or sentience or soul or whatever else you call the joie de vivre that makes humans human – is a topic that isn’t going away. It’s probably awfully pretentious of us to think that consciousness is the unique reserve of humans — but hey, evolution handed us these giant, self-aware brains, and so we’re going to try our damnedest to work out whether consciousness is a real thing — whether our brains really are tied into some kind of quantum realm — or if we’re all just subject to an incredibly complex Matrix-like simulation put on by our hyper-imaginative and much-too-powerful human brain. (Read: MIT discovers the location of memories: Individual neurons.)

The latest attempts to formalize consciousness come from Giulio Tononi, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who proposed the integrated information theory (IIT) model of consciousness — and now Max Tegmark of MIT, who has attempted to generalize Tononi’s work in terms of quantum mechanics. In his research paper, “Consciousness as a State of Matter” [arXiv:1401.1219], Tegmark theorizes that consciousness can be understood as a state of matter called “perceptronium” that can be differentiated from other kinds of matter (solids, liquids, gases) using five, mathematically sound principles.

The paper, as you can imagine, is a beastly 30-page treatise, but the Physics arXiv Blog does a good job of summarizing it (if you’re comfortable with quantum mechanics, anyway). In short, though, it outlines Tononi’s ITT — that consciousness results from a system that can store and retrieve vast amounts of information efficiently — and then moves onto his own creation, perceptronium, which he describes as “the most general substance that feels subjectively self-aware.” This substance can not only store and retrieve data, but it’s also indivisible and unified (this is where we start to wander into the “here be dragons” realm of souls and spirits and so forth). The rest of the paper mostly deals with describing perceptronium in terms of quantum mechanics, and trying to work out why we steadfastly perceive the world in terms of classical, independent systems — rather than one big interconnected quantum mess. (He doesn’t have an answer to this question, incidentally.)

Tegmark’s paper doesn’t get to the point where we can suddenly say what causes or creates consciousness, but it does go some way towards proving that consciousness is governed by the same laws of physics that govern the rest of the universe — that there isn’t some kind of “secret sauce,” as postulated by mystics and religious types since time immemorial. As far as science is concerned, that’s a rather big relief.

Interdisciplinary Consciousness Conference Celebrates 20 Years

from    azpm.org

Story by Anna Augustowska

April 22, 2014

Although consciousness has been studied for thousands of years, it still remains one of the most mysterious concepts in the world.

“(Consciousness is) awareness, having an experience, being aware of your surroundings or yourself…having a phenomenal aspect of existence,” said Stuart Hameroff, director of the University of ArizonaCenter for Consciousness Studies and professor emeritus of anesthesiology and psychology at the UA. “It could have been that we would be complex behaving entities going around our business without any inner consciousness…”

Since 1994, Hameroff has been involved in organizing a biannual interdisciplinary conference on the science of consciousness, which opened again this week in Tucson.

Toward a Science of Consciousness hosts around 800 scientists, philosophers, experimentalists, artists and students from different backgrounds and perspectives.

“For the 20th anniversary, we invited the best people in the world, people who’ve been here over the years, people who are doing the best work now…it is pretty much the all-star event,” he said.

The list of 29 speakers include names such as Deepak Chopra, spiritual medicine guru, Roger Penrose, world-renowned physicist and mathematician, and David Chalmers, distinguished professor of philosophy at Australian National University and professor of philosophy at New York University, a press release from the event said.

For a week the speakers explore consciousness through lances of physics, subjectivity and objectivity, time, death, quantum approaches and brain studies.

The conference aims to reflect on 20 years of progress in the studies of consciousness, and to discuss current understanding, dilemmas and future directions, the release said.

Toward a Science of Consciousness is taking place from April 21 to 26 at the Tucson Marriott University Park, 880 E. 2nd St. For more information call 621-9317.

The consciousness of free will

from news24.com

21 April 2014, 08:15

I refer to a  recent article by my news 24 contributor, Sharksterll, titled- Free Will- a myth or not?

I’d like to explore this theme from another angle, not in an academic sense, as this subject has been debated repeatedly down the centuries without an established conclusion between the two factions, but more a personal philosophy or understanding of sorts.

The naturalists would reply to the question of whether free will exists in the negative, seeing as they embrace a physically indifferent universe with set laws which govern the planet.

 This concept is applied to human beings who are comprised of matter and energy, to include the conscious and sub conscious parts of the brain, which is regarded as being biologically determined.

Consciousness means awareness or perception and by its very definition is an intangible concept outside the area of the physical.  

The understanding of the naturalists therefore renders us captives of biology by claiming humans retain as it were, a sense of primitive sub consciousness ingrained in our genetic make-up that predisposes humanity to subjugating the vulnerable of its own species, as well as that of other kinds.

Ironically, the antidote proposed for this condition, to tame the wild beast within, is proposed as education or evolution which overtime would render us at least ‘controllable’ at best. 

What if the problem is not biological but a mind or consciousness based one. 

To paraphrase the New Testament ‘be transformed by the renewing of your mind’

The problem might be that the consciousness has been so suppressed over time that people who either view themselves, or are deemed by others, to have no free will are driven by group ego based on primitive physiology.

Another huge factor that comes into play is that society’s hierarchy benefit from the lack of consciousness amongst its citizens, and use manipulation of the mind through brain washing and propaganda techniques to subdue them.

By reducing people to mindless, and soulless biological constructs who need others (those with more wisdom apparently) to define who they are, and dictate their thinking, as they are incapable of this themselves.  The group or herd mentality is then established to corral individuals into enclosures and prisons of their own making.

Oddly, some naïve naturalists have forgotten their survival of the strongest mantra, on which so-called civilisation was built, entrusting education to tame the human predators amongst us, concluding we have overcome our primitive inclinations and all desire the same things.

The predators amongst us would have us believe this fable, as it suits their purposes to a tee.

An even more peculiarly are not just the predators themselves, but those whom identify with their aims and derive a sense of satisfaction as being part of the in-group, and privy to their ideals, an example of the typical group ego at play.

A person who operates from a higher consciousness than the rest will not succumb to any devious ploys, but here’s the clincher, this spark emanates from God, to the chagrin of the sceptics and their supporters.    

Last question to ponder, why would the naturalists prefer the view of humankind as a mechanicalprimitive chained to his biological inheritance as opposed to an individualistic human being operating in awareness of his place and purpose in the universe.

It may usurp their ambitions in all likelihood.    

Meaningful Activities Protect the Brain From Depression

from theatlantic

A new study of adolescents found that those who derive joy from selfless deeds were less likely to be depressed over time.

OLGA KHAZANAPR 21 2014, 3:00 PM ET

Natesh Ramasamy/flickr/Olga Khazan

Our entire lives, when you think about it, are built around rewards—the pursuit of money, fun, love, and tacos.

How we seek and respond to those rewards is part of what determines our overall happiness. Aristotle famously said there were two basic types of joy: hedonia, or that keg-standing, Netflix binge-watching, Nutella-from-the-jar selfish kind of pleasure, and eudaimonia, or the pleasure that comes from helping others, doing meaningful work, and otherwise leading a life well-lived.

Recent psychological research has suggested that this second category is more likely to produce a lasting increase in happiness. Hedonic rewards may generate a short-term burst of glee, but it dissipates more quickly than the surge created by the more selfless eudaimonic rewards.

"Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided," a study in the Journal of Positive Psychology found last year.

Related Story

There's More to Life Than Being Happy

As Emily Esfahani Smith wrote at the time, “While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do ... Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future.”

But of course, we don’t always peruse the psychological literature before reaching for that fourth beer. Some people naturally seek out delights that are more corporeal and decadent—The Wolf of Wall Street comes to mind—and others will gladly spend the afternoon helping grandma paint her dining room because it’s “a good thing to do.”

Over the years, scientists have found they can measure the amount that a person enjoys something by taking MRIs of activation levels in the ventral striatum—the “reward center” nestled in the bullseye of the brain. The ventral striata of teens, in particular, tend to light up especially brightly in response to all kinds of rewards. Because teens brains are so sensitive to these little jolts of pleasure—or lack thereof—late adolescence is also when depression peaks for many people.

In a new study, researchers aimed to figure out how the tender brains of adolescents reacted to the more bacchanalian rewards, like video games and drugs, versus the more pro-social ones, like “helping others in need, expressing gratitude, and working toward long-term goals.” Would the teens who get their jollies from volunteering be happier, in the long run, than those who live only for Grand Theft Auto?

For the study, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers followed a group of 39 teenagers over the course of one year to see whether the way their brains reacted to either eudaimonic or hedonic rewards correlated with how depressed they felt over time.

First, the subjects underwent an fMRI while making a decision about whether to keep money for themselves (a hedonic reward) or to donate it to their families (eudaimonic). They also played a game to determine if they were willing to take risks for the possibility of a greater financial reward (hedonic).

The subjects then filled out a self-report questionnaire of depressive symptoms during the initial scan, and again a year later.

Depressive symptoms declined among teens who made the selfless decision (left), but they rose in teens who made selfish decision (right). (PNAS)

It turned out the teens who had the greatest brain response to the generous, family-donation financial decision had the greatest declines in depressive symptoms over time. And those who got a boost from the risk-taking game were more likely to have an increase in depression. The types of rewards the teens responded to, it seems, changed their behavior in ways that altered their overall well-being.

"For example," the authors write, "adolescents who show heightened activation in the ventral striatum during eudaimonic decisions likely experience a sense of reward from supporting their family and may therefore show increases in the time they spend helping their family."

It’s important to note that this doesn’t necessarily mean parents can inoculate their teens against depression by forcing them to seek happiness through volunteering. But it could be that teens who already do that kind of thing because it really does lift their spirits are likely to have that lift stick with them.

“Taken together, our findings suggest that well-being may depend on attending to higher values related to family, culture, and morality, rather than to immediate, selfish pleasure,” the authors write.

So, good luck convincing teenagers of that.

What Are Some Concise Ways To Convince People That Consciousness Is Not An Emergent Property?

from forbes

Comment Now 

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Answer by Marc Ettlinger, PhD linguistics, research neuroscientist at the Dept of Veterans Affairs, on Quora,

If you frame the question right, it’s pretty easy because claims of emergent consciousness are simply philosophical assumptions dressed up as science. You can poke holes in this edifice in three crucial ways, teasing apart the idea that consciousness (1) is an emergent (2) property of the brain (3).

Emergent
First, “emergent property” is an oft-misused term. With respect to consciousness, it is one of those hand-wavey terms people like to throw around without any substance behind it. Used appropriately, it can refer to an incredibly useful scientific hypothesis.

A basic definition is something like complex properties that result from the interaction of simple behaviors. When people talk about emergent consciousness, they show nothing of this sort and therefore don’t answer thehow of consciousness.

Some crucial questions that “emergence” doesn’t answer, which actual scientific emergent explanations tackle include:

How does consciousness arise from chemical interactions leading to electric impulses? 
Why is there consciousness instead of something else? 
How does physiology constrain and define this so-called emergent property?

The crucial thing missing here is mechanism. When we talk about real emergent properties, like those of a network, for example, we can show how a specific type of network (e.g., a Small-world network) will emerge in lots of different situations, (e.g., the brain, social networks etc.) because of simple properties that connections between things have: some sort of relationship between viability and proximity. From this, you get lots of local connections and a few non-local ones in certain proportions. Crucially, this makes sense in a mechanistic way where you can understand how the simple properties specifically gives rise to the larger organization and basically only this organization and you can model it — see it happen before your eyes.

The brain as small-world network

The same cannot be said of consciousness and synapses.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for emergence as explanatory when worked out in sufficient detail (e.g., An Exemplar-Based Computational Model of Chain Shifts), but that has yet to be done with consciousness and it’s not even close, because it is currently at square zero. Has anyone shown a model that exhibits properties of self awareness and qualitative experience from chemical properties? Again, not even close.

Terrence Deacon articulates this well in Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter: Emergentism is simply playing a shell game, taking the mysticism it purports to explain, and calling it “emergence.”

The Brain
Another assumption that’s unwarranted in presuming that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain is that there is no evidence that consciousness is completely encapsulated in the brain. The consciousness we observe is, at the least, a property of the interaction of the brain with the world through the rest of the central nervous system outside the brain, plus the peripheral nervous system.

We have yet to show that consciousness can emerge from a brain in a vat. If this were to ever happen, then the input to your vatbrain would certainly have to mimic precisely the things (environment, CNS, PNS) that you’re excluding from consciousness when saying it emerges from the brain. I don’t think anyone has ever argued that the brain in the vat would develop consciousness absent necessary input from some very specific system.

So, by saying in the brain, you’re limiting your explanation unnecessarily given a lack of evidence. Of course, you can simply say, consciousness emerges, but I can’t imagine a more vacuous statement, given lack of scientific meaning ofemerge discussed above.

It’s more like saying consciousness exists, which I hope we can at least all agree on (though I know some don’t).

The Hard Problem of Consciousness
The final big issue concerns what aspect of consciousness you’re actually trying to address. Generally, the evidence from brain imaging is about the “easy” problems of consciousness (cf., Hard problem of consciousness), such as attention, self-awareness, proprioception and so on. (Note, these are still not easy questions, but certainly tractable in the sense of answerable via the current empirical methods we have at our disposal.) That sidesteps the actual key philosophical issue that is at the heart of what people have been arguing about for at least 400 (Cogito ergo sum) and possibly over 2000 years (Allegory of the Cave), the question ofQualia.

In other words, why aren’t we philosophical zombies?

How do you explain the subjective experience of redness, let’s say? Saying simply that it’s the correlate of the neurophysiological response to certain rods and cones sensitive to certain light waves does not answer the question of why there is a gestalt qualitative experience of red.

I like Schrödinger‘s framing of this precise subject:

The sensation of color cannot be accounted for by the physicist’s  objective picture of light-waves. Could the physiologist account for it,  if he had fuller knowledge than he has of the processes in the retina  and the nervous processes set up by them in the optical nerve bundles  and in the brain? I do not think so.

The response may be that this is all simply an illusion (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0234…), of course, but that, again, denies or sidesteps the deeper question and doesn’t answer it.

---

At a practical level, we can ask whether bluebrain, when it is up an running, will have consciousness on its own? The answer may be yes, and there will be lots to think about, but it’s certainly not a foregone conclusion.

So, emergentism, in this context, is simply camouflaging the supernatural wolf in the sheep’s clothing of pretend science and pretend explanation. It is merely renaming the philosophical imperative (and perhaps belief) of monism andmaterialism as something that sounds explanatory.

I don’t have an answer myself, but neither do they. So, you can let these folks believe they have consciousness figured out, but the truly beautiful mystery of subjective experience is still far from understood.

This question originally appeared on Quora: What are some concise ways to convince people that consciousness is not an emergent property?. More questions:

• Neuroscience:How does the human brain decide which memories to store?
• Cognitive Science:Is it possible for the human brain to crash like a computer? What would happen?
• Consciousness:What is the science behind hypnosis?

Transcranial Stimulation in Disorders of Consciousness

from medscape.com

Pauline Anderson

April 03, 2014

Transcranial direct-current stimulation (tDCS) could offer short-term benefits to some patients with disorders of consciousness (DOCs) subsequent to severe brain damage, a new study has shown.

Researchers are reporting that a single session of anodal tDCS applied to the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex improved scores on a coma recovery scale in some patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS), without causing adverse effects.

The study included 30 patients in an MCS who showed reproducible but inconsistent signs of consciousness and 25 patients in a vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (VS/UWS), who showed only reflex movements. Causes of brain injury included trauma, anoxia, cerebrovascular accident, and subarachnoid hemorrhage.

"Our study illustrates the residual capacity for neural plasticity and temporary recovery of (minimal) signs of consciousness in some patients in MCS, but does not permit to make any claims regarding possible long-term tDCS effects," the researchers, with senior author Steven Laureys, MD, PhD, from the Coma Science Group, Cyclotron Research Center, and the Departments of Neurology and General Intensive Care at University Hospital of Liège, Belgium, write.

Their findings were published in the April 1 issue of Neurology.

Short Session

Each patient received one 20-minute session of both active tDCS and sham stimulation. tDCS is a form of noninvasive cortical stimulation that modulates cortical excitability at stimulation sites via weak polarizing currents.

The stimulation device included a build-in placebo mode. Both patients and administrator were blinded to whether the stimulation was a sham or actual treatment.

To assess tDCS treatment effects, researchers used the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised, which consists of 23 items that address auditory, visual, motor, verbal, communication, and arousal functions. Scoring is based on the presence or absence of specific behavioral responses to sensory stimuli administered in a standardized manner.

The study found that 43% of patients in an MCS (13 of 30) had a tDCS-related improvement in that they showed a clinical sign of consciousness not seen before. In the MCS group, the difference in total score change between tDCS and sham was 1.6 (P = .003).

Of the 13 patients in an MCS who responded, 5 had sustained their brain injury more than a year before the study. "These clinical improvements in long-standing MCS corroborate previous evidence for late recovery and neural plasticity in MCS," said the authors.

They note that 2 patients in the MCS group were receiving amantadine, but the treatment was started 6 months before study inclusion and remained unchanged during the experiment.

The authors hypothesize that the treatment may have enhanced attention and working memory processes that underlie many conscious tasks.

In the VS/UWS group, 2 acute (less than 3 months) patients (8%) showed tDCS-related signs of consciousness that weren't observed during the pretreatment evaluation or during the pre- or post-sham evaluation.

There were no treatment-related adverse effects.

The tDCS stimulation may have some advantages over repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which induces neuronal firing in the stimulated location. It's easier to apply, causes less discomfort, and has a lower risk of inducing seizures, said the authors.

A limitation of the study was that it didn't include MRI-based mapping of the stimulated area.

Promising Site

Writing in an accompanying editorial, John Whyte, MD, PhD, Moss Rehabilitation Institute, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, said the new study is "of considerable interest" as it points to "another potential treatment avenue for DOC as well as a promising site of intervention."

However, said Dr. Whyte, to generate a clinically useful intervention, the treatment will need "a translational research process" that would involve both scientific and practical obstacles.

"First, of course, is the need to determine whether these short-term effects can be amplified and made more durable, which would be required for real clinical effectiveness," he writes.

Another hurdle will be to define subgroups that best respond to tDCS. "[O]ne might wonder how much preservation of the left prefrontal cortex and its connections is required for the effect, whether this stimulation site is optimal for all patients, and whether the changes in brain morphology that often follow severe brain injury might complicate the relationship between electrode placement and current delivery to relevant tissues."

If a single session can identify treatment responders, "tDCS may provide a useful screening approach for other treatment studies, as well as a useful treatment in its own right," Dr. Whyte concludes.

The authors and Dr. Whyte have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

Neurology. 2014;82:1112-1118, 1106-1107. Abstract Editorial