If Consciousness Is A Function Of Neurons ?

[LeRepteux]

Thanks for giving me the chance to dive more deeply into my own thoughts Zazz.

 

As you point out, for the brain to be able to manipulate its waves, there is two problems to solve: one about the way its tools can be built, and one about how the brain is going to manipulate its own tools since it is going to affect its own waves, which seems to be a circular process. Lets take the concentration tool as an example: when we concentrate on something we have in mind, the tool should have the properties of a lens, that could change the direction of a wave front towards a focus, where a receptor could capture the concentrated wave and direct it towards an amplifier, from where it could be directed back into cause elsewhere in the brain, for it to be converted into an action, or to be reflected for a while. But what would first conduct a particular package of waves toward the concentrating tool, and what would tell the concentration tool to keep concentrating the same wave over and over again as we do when we are concentrated on something?

 

Can we decide to voluntarily concentrate on something or is it the circumstances around us that bring us to do so? When we dream, we are also concentrated on some particular action, but we did not decide which action it would be, and we cannot decide to change it either. To me, our dreams mean that our ideas can change by themselves, and our conscience means that we can be aware of those changes when we are awake, but not necessarily that we can voluntarily chose the direction and the importance of these changes. To me, this feeling that we have to take our decisions freely may come from the resistance that our brain offers to its own changes, thus it could happen after the changes have occurred, which is supported by the experiments made about conscience by Benjamin Libet in the seventies, and which leads to the question of how these changes can happen, and my answer is randomly, either by the randomness of our environment, or by a random process happening in the brain.

 

This means that our conscience of what is going on would always be a fraction of a second away from reality, which is true for interactions with our environment because they always take time to get back and forth between mind and environment, but which is difficult to observe for our own ideas because our decisions are involuntary, thus subconscious. This discovery of Libet brought everybody back to the big question: what is free will? But, to me, the introduction of a random process to explain the changes answers it: free will might come from randomness being created by the mind, which would change our ideas randomly, thus freely from any causal process. Question: what happens when we voluntarily proceed randomly in our head? Does it happen randomly?

Edited November 21, 2014 by LeRepteux

[pgrmdave]

Electromagnetic waves can be manipulated electronically... and brain waves could be amplified or concentrated or diffracted or refracted or reflected by a specific formation of neurons. 

 

Brain waves *are* electromagnetic waves.  Be careful not to go off into "woo" territory, where you start anthropomorphizing physical phenomena.  Brain waves aren't special or unique aside from the fact that they originate within our brain, but the actual physical phenomenon has no distinction from any other electromagnetic radiation.  The more you start thinking that the radiation given by the brain is unique to conscious thought the further you'll get from a working engineering model.

[LeRepteux]

To me, the brain waves that carry information are produced by bunches of neurons firing together at the same frequency. The EM waves that we observe are only the result of this activity and do not interfere with the activity itself, so they have nothing to do with consciousness.

Edited November 21, 2014 by LeRepteux

[CraigD]

My apologies for letting this thread run on for several without a grounding neuroscience “reality check”.

 

What do you think of my proposal about brain waves containing the informations, and about the comparison with light containing the informations from galaxies, which is a kind of memory that lasts for billions of years?

I think you’re making a metaphorical analogy, not a scientific proposal.

 

You seem to be saying something along the lines of: “’brain waves’ contain information about the brain like light contains information about stars”.

 

On the surface, the analogy seems a poor one to me, because, although light can be described as an electromagnetic wave, “brain waves” are a very different kind of wave. “Brain wave” refers to the graphical representation of changes in voltage across conductions connected to points on a person’s scalp. Electromagnetic waves self-propagate through space at a constant speed, while “brain waves” are artifacts of a way to do electroencephalography (EEG). Although, as with any changing electric current, the tiny voltages produces around brain cells emit tiny very low frequency EM waves, these emissions are too weak to be distinguished from similar background noise at distances greater than a few millimeters, whereas light from collections of distant stars can be detected at distances of greater that 10²⁵ m (billions of light years). Interest in detecting EM emanating from brains is primarily in order to invent a way of doing “touchless” EEGs without the messy conductive paste and electrodes currently required, and as yet, has had only slight practical success.

 

Taken another way, the analogy strikes me as apt. Just as the light from distant stars tells us only superficial information about a star, such as its temperature and the abundance of elements in it, from which we can deduce information such as its distance, motion, mass, age, and stage within characteristic varying cycles, EEGs tell us only superficial information about the brain and its person’s mind, such as whether they are dead, asleep, awake and resting, or thinking intensely and/or moving.

 

EEGs can’t tell us if a person is thinking, but not what they are thinking. This is because the millions of the voltage change due to a single or small collection of brain cells that participate in causing a thought are combined into producing a detectable EEG “brain wave” pattern. Much like one can tell that a distant crowd of a million people are talking among themselves loudly, but not what they are saying, EEGs can tell us if a person is active, but only in a very rough way what it’s doing

 

If images can be carried by light waves, if words can be carried by sound waves, why couldn't these informations be carried by another type of waves? Why couldn't the images that we see, and the sounds that we hear, be carried by the brain waves if those waves circulate endlessly in loops in the brain?

Hopefully my noting above that “brain waves” are not self-propagating answers this question.

 

To answer directly and In short, “brain waves” are a side effect of brain activity – a “leak”, if you will – not an essential effect of it. The movement of electric charge that’s important to brain activity – thought – is on the scale of individual neurons and synapses. Recognizable EEG “brain waves” occur when, as they normally do, many collections of neurons are behaving similarly, giving us mainly a measurement of the quantity of brain activity, not carrying the information content of the thoughts it embodies.

 

Also importantly, the “leak” of brainwaves from millions of brain cells is one-way – brains produce them, but are not sensitive to them, except when we use machines to graph them in a way we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

 

The brain can be affected by EM fields, such as is done by TMS machines, which has been shown to have an effect or both injured and normal brains, but the effect is very general (for instance, increasing or reducing the ability to memorize rote information, reducing the emotional impact or recalled memories, or reducing psychiatric depression), not the transmission of distinct information such as thought or memories, and the EM field strength of these devices many orders of magnitude greater than that produced by the brain.

[zazz54]

Just read an article in NPR re: a brain chemical linked to memory:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/11/20/365213989/sleeps-link-to-learning-and-memory-traced-to-brain chemistry?

Interesting that LeRepteaux is advocating the idea that information could be passed along through brain waves, though as CraigD points out, "....Recognizable EEG “brain waves” occur when, as they normally do, many collections of neurons are behaving similarly, giving us mainly a measurement of the quantity of brain activity, not carrying the information content of the thoughts it embodies."

 

I get that brain waves seem only to be 'electrical activity' - but are they? Do those waves actually carry information?

Edited November 22, 2014 by zazz54

[LeRepteux]

Hi Craig, thanks for caring!

 

As I said to Pgrmdave just above, I differenciate the EM waves from an electroencephalography from the brain waves that produce them. Like any other kind of waves, these waves self-sustained by neurons' activity could carry information if they were circulating endlessly in the brain, for instance, when we see an image, this image could be carried by the brain waves the same way the image of a galaxy is by light waves, and the more we would look at the image, the more it would reinforce the wave that carries it in the mind.

 

This way, individual neurons or molecules would not be the cause for memory, but differently, memory would be due to the constant interaction between neurons. Of course, for these waves to be able to keep their information alive for a while, apart from the neurons having to stay alive all the time, they must not be absorbed or deformed by the medium that carry them for a while. So before going on talking about them, the important question is: from what you know of the brain, do you think that these brain waves could loop endlessly in it?

Edited November 22, 2014 by LeRepteux

[CraigD]

It’s important to understand and agree on what “brain wave” means.

 

“Brain wave” is not a widely recognized scientific term. In my experience, it was most used in the 1960s through 80s in the emerging field of biofeedback therapy to refer to a collection of recognized very low frequency (0.1 to 100 cycles/second) “sensomotor rhythms” (SMRs) that can be measured with a EEG, named, in order of increasing frequency, Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. When connected to an EEG machine, one can learn to consciously change these rhythms. It was hoped that this would allow people to self-treat a variety of medical and psychiatric conditions. Since then, evidence has shown that biofeedback is little or no more effective than relaxation techniques that require no EEG or other sensing devices, so it’s failed to find a place in the medical mainstream, becoming more of an amusement and niche sport.

 

It’s important to note that the smooth, wave-like appearance of SMRs are largely artifacts of the body tissue that the electric charges that cause them travel through and the machines used to measure and record them. What they are actually measuring are sudden appearing and dissapating “pulse” changes in the amount of charge at its electrodes. The distinct recognizable rhythms, with their characteristic frequency ranges, are found by analyzing this complicated input, such as with Fourier transforms, though an experienced eye can get a rough sense of them looking at a raw graph on a paper tape or oscilloscope screen.

 

This image

from BrainMatters, a commercial biofeedback company (an example, I think, of the marginal medical status of biofeedback), shows a simple example of this decomposition of the original signal from a single electrode.

 

I get that brain waves seem only to be 'electrical activity' - but are they? Do those waves actually carry information?

Being “electrical activity” and “carrying information” are not mutually exclusive – obviously, because that’s how we’re exchanging information now, using electronic computers.

 

What an EEG directly measures is the electric current resulting from an condutive electrode and wire connecting the skin of a person to an electrical ground. This measurement certainly caries information about the brain of that person.

 

At present, we are only able to determine gross information about that brain from this signal – essentially, how active it is. This is very useful medically, because it allows us to determine if a person is “brain dead” or not, a key guide to knowing when to terminate life support, along with more fine grained information, that allows us to change such things as medications to improve the likelihood of a person recovering from coma.

 

Because the information measured by an EEG is a composite of electricity carried by ionized atoms originating with the ions that allow signals to be carried along axons (the stringy part of a neuron, a kind of brain cell), in principle, a much more fine analysis of them might be able to provide information as “fine grained” as that which can at present only be obtained by inserting electrodes into the brain. Whether this will ever be possible or done requires a technological guess. My personal guess is that it won’t be, because future advances allowing electrodes so small that huge numbers of them can be inserted anywhere with practically no injury will be a better solution. Because such electrodes and their supporting machinery would be very small, “nanotechnology” describes such a scheme aptly.

 

What can be said with high certainty is that the brain itself has no way of transforming these “leaked” signals into useful information. Information is carried between synapses by signals propagated along, in a kind of “ripple effect”, by the transfer of ions (mostly sodium, some potassium) across their membranes. The presence of ions due to charge “leaking” through the atoms (mostly in water molecules) separating neurons doesn’t effect this, except in cases where the charge is much bigger than that leaked by neurons, such as from an external electric shock.

 

This way, individual neurons or molecules would not be the cause for memory, but differently, memory would be due to the constant interaction between neurons.

I don’t think any credible neuroscientist thinks an individual neurons can “cause” a memory, but rather, that memories are due to a combination of changing the long-term potential of many (million) or synapses and the physical connection of neurons to them.

 

Of course, for these waves to be able to keep their information alive for a while, apart from the neurons having to stay alive all the time, they must not be absorbed or deformed by the medium that carry them for a while. So before going on talking about them, the important question is: from what you know of the brain, do you think that these brain waves could loop endlessly in it?

No.

 

You’re using the phrase “brain waves” in a way I’ve heard used only in science fiction and New Age mystical society. I know of no science suggesting or supporting the idea that waves like you describe exist. If you know of any, please post some links to it.

[LeRepteux]

Thanks Craig,

 

To understand what the waves that I am talking about could be, imagine two interconnected neuron layers where the impulses could go from one layer to the other and vice versa. At the upper layer, some sensitive neurons located there could produce impulses that would be transmitted to the layer. Since the layers are interconnected, the impulses from a touch would be transmitted from one layer to the other and vice versa until they would be absorbed by the imperfections of the medium, like any other kind of wave when it encounters imperfections in its own medium.

 

For instance, light loses its informations in space when it encounters dust or a planet, but nevertheless, it travels billions of light years and still possess an enormous quantity of information when we see it. If the neuronal medium was meant to support the informations this way, it could keep them alive for a very long time. Of course, it means that this kind of wave would have to circulate in some kind of loops in the brain, because they could not go straight line like light waves. But we already know that the brain executes many feedback loops between its components, so why not try to consider these components as waves transformers for a moment and see where it would lead us to.

Edited November 23, 2014 by LeRepteux

[Poppins]

Is this an answer from the scientific community, tasked with such a project, or your opinion? And don't get me wrong, I think that answer is probably the essence of what may be their objective, and if so then I would ask, what satisfies the user? Would not the AI be forever insatiable? Which I would add, is worrisome in some respect - very useful in others.

I work in this field as a "Data Scientist". I keep current with my research, so you can trust my expertise on this topic.

[LeRepteux]

I think that consciousness (as we know it) is actually a byproduct of sweeping signals coming from the supramarginal gyrus and crossing the motor cortex. I like to think of it as an emergent property of thought. I have reasons to believe that based on experience in machine learning.

Do you kind of mean that this byproduct would kind of be useless to survival?

[Poppins]

What byproduct? Consciousness? What "consciousness" is and whether it's necessary for survival is a futile debate in my opinion. We need to take a more objective look at the meaning.

[LeRepteux]

To me, our consciousness is not objective. I define consciousness as the perception that we have when our automatisms are resisting to a change, whether that change comes from inside or outside of the brain. In a sense, this resistance would be useful for survival since our automatisms must not change too fast, but in another one, if our automatisms would never change, we could not adapt to our changing environment.

[Poppins]

We are victims to cause and effect. What you're describing above is essentially objective.

[LeRepteux]

Objectiveness is about everybody being able to agree on an observation because it does not change with time. Thus if our consciousness is about the perception of a change, how could it be objective?

[Poppins]

Objectivity is not about people agreeing on an observation; that is also a fallacy (it could be a false consensus).

 

ob·jec·tive

əbˈjektiv/

adjective

 

1.

(of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

 

You might like to look at Stuart Hammerhoff and Roger Penrose about this one. I think that they have a pretty logical explanation of consciousness as a quantum function of microtubules. I don't agree with them entirely and not many other people do either.

Edited November 26, 2014 by Poppins

[LeRepteux]

To me, it is impossible to be individually objective, because it is impossible to avoid having feelings and opinions when observing a phenomenon. If the phenomenon reproduces itself constantly, it is yet a good indication that it stays the same, so that we can imagine that everybody will observe the same thing, but nevertheless, it is necessary to check out if they do before proceeding further. In fact, this is how scientists proceed with a new phenomenon. Of course it might be a collective illusion, but it might also be an individual one.

 

You made me laugh when I read that you had a logical interpretation of what might be consciousness while saying at the same time that almost nobody, including you, believed it was good! You won't be surprised if I say I prefer mine, will you?

Edited November 26, 2014 by LeRepteux

[Poppins]

Not at all. We don't have to agree.