(Adopted from my talk on 2 March 2009 at Osmania University, Hyderabad, India)
Eradication of Sorrow and Advaita:
At some stage or other, every sensible man faces the fundamental questions like:
Who am I? What is this world around? How did it come about?
Many ancient Indian Advaitic texts start off the process of Self-inquiry with these fundamental questions (e.g. Aparokshanubhuti, verse 12). It is also usually presented in those texts that ‘suffering and pain’ are the primary causes for such an enquiry (e.g. Bhagavad-Gita takes off with the scene of the psychological pain and despondency of Arjun to whom Lord Krishna teaches Self-knowledge. Gautam Buddha’s Four-fold Path too emphasizes the need to understand the existence and nuances of ‘sorrow’).
A direct answer to the fundamental questions raised at the beginning gets thus deflected towards finding "ways and means" of ‘redemption of sorrow, pain, suffering or misery in the worldly life’ (e.g. Vivekachudamani (Verses 36-40)).
The most common import of all Upanishads is to point out the highest human goal to be the realization of Oneness (Advaita) of ‘self’ and Brahman. Sankara (vide his Commentary on the 4th Sutra, first pada of first adhyaya of Brahma Sutras (tattu samanvayAt)) says that this realization becomes an accomplished fact when there is a total “Eradication of Sorrow.”
‘self’:
A sense of ‘self’ is just an artifact. We acquired ‘self’ as a useful tool in evolution in order to help us in the protection and preservation of the body organism. If ‘me’ vs. other separation is absent, this body will not know whether it is feeding this mouth or the dog there when this body is feeling hungry, needs energy input.
So the sense of ‘self’ gives us a separate identity.
The identity provides:
continuity in time,
a coherence to my experiences,
ownership for my possessions including my limbs and body and
doership for my actions.
Our sense of ‘self’ emanates from our perceptions.
We all experience our body to be part of ourselves. It is a fundamental aspect of ‘self’ awareness. How strong is your internal image of your own ‘self’? This can be found out by a small experiment (known as ‘Rubber hand illusion’). Seat yourself in a chair. Place a rubber hand in your front near to the real hand. Conceal the real hand behind a cardboard screen. Ask your friend to brush the real hand and the rubber hand at the same time. In about 10 – 12 secs you feel the rubber hand is yours. On the top of it your brain begins to disown your own real hand. The temperature in the real hand drops down!
Such a perceptual phenomenon does not happen just for a limb. It can happen to your entire body. Swedish scientists proved two months ago that healthy volunteers could indeed experience other people's bodies as their own through manipulation of their perceptions. A sort of parakaya pravesha you can say!
Suppose you don’t get any sensory input at all. Then you cannot even think you have a body. It happens to you all the time in your deep sleep.
Dr. Goldberg of Israel showed that we might lose our sense of self completely under some conditions of threat for survival.
Lesions in brain may make a patient deny part of his own body like a lady who described a paralyzed hand lying beside her as not hers. This is known as anasognosia. Some persons under certain pathological conditions do not perceive their own bodies. So they claim that they are dead because they do not have a body. This is known as Cotard’s syndrome.
It is obvious from these examples that your sense of ‘self’ or “I” is not a firm entity and gets altered easily.
There is no identifiable entity we can call ‘self’ or a spot for self in the brain. There is no “You” in your head. “ ‘self’ is a post facto construct after the event, language dependent and is the result of confabulation by the left temporal lobe.” Our concept of ‘self’ is a fiction.
Perception – Reality Disconnect:
What the brain creates in our head is a map of what it perceives. It is not a replica of what exactly is ‘out there’ around. What we can infer today from Neuroscience is that our detector apparatus (comprising our senses and mind) is defective or inadequate to know exactly what is there around. Our perceptory and cognitive capabilities evolved mainly for the limited purpose of protecting and preserving the body organism.
There is an obvious disconnect between reality out there and the map in our heads.
Advaita tells us that our perception of the world around is an illusion and our sense of ‘self’ or I-consciousness is a fallacious non-entity (aabhaasa). That is what exactly what Neuroscience too tells us.
Mind:
Our thoughts constitute our mind. It is not made up of any unintelligible diaphanous, ‘mindstuff’. We could detect and record thoughts as the electrical waves generated by our brain. We are able to harness those energy waves to do work for us. Paraplegics can move their wheel chairs just by their thoughts. Mattel is bringing out even Toys this year exploiting this principle.
Majority of Neuroscientists do not think mind is a separate entity from brain. Of course, there are a few of them talking about substance dualism, but that is certainly a dwindling minority.
Mind has been identified as the principal reason for happiness or unhappiness in man.
Vedanta laid considerable attention to one of our mind’s trait which may be called ‘Objectification.’ Mind cannot grasp or understand any observation, any percept, made by the senses unless it positions itself aloof as a distinct observer, as a separate entity, from what is observed. This basic lacuna of the mind gives an impression that mind has a separate and individual existence of its own having I-consciousness as its center. Vedanta tenaciously makes an effort to point out this limitation and strives to transcend it.
Religion, however, welcomed and took advantage of a related weakness of the mind which is complementary to the quality of individuation i.e. separation. While the tendency to ‘objectify’ can be called as “Reification”, the second quality can be termed as “Deification.” Reification and Deification can be viewed as the fallouts of the universal survival mechanism of ‘fight or flight’ that all living creatures have acquired from the very beginning of evolution of life on earth.
Let me explain this a bit.
In the face of a threat or danger, my mind has to assess whether I can fight it out or should run away from the threatening situation. This assessment does require the perceived thing to be assessed as a distinct object separate from me in order to measure my own ability in controlling the threat. If I am unable to stand up to the threat, the obvious thing to do for me is to take flight to save my skin. Suppose I have become so weak-kneed or have developed cold-feet even to run, what is to be done? The best thing then to do for my own safety is to play possum. A more modern and cleverer way of doing it is to ‘surrender’.
Man being so frail and weak in facing the natural hazards or wild creatures, he began to ‘surrender’ to the natural forces by worshipping them, by deifying them. So to ‘reify or deify’ is the mantra that our mind has learnt as the modified form of the natural mechanism of ‘fight or flight’ syndrome in the game of survival.
After all, we are using old machinery (i.e. our brain) which evolved for some other job (survival) to a new use (abstract thinking) for which it is not really designed. So man takes easily to religions (particularly theistic ones) as religions excel in the art of reification and deification.
Amelioration of Affliction and Advaita:
In order to be free of sorrow, Vedanta advises us to deny the claim of ownership and doership of our perceptions and actions. The world is not bothered by an individual who successfully denies the ownership and doership of the sensations; nor is such an individual bothered by the world. (“Yasmat na udvijate lokah lokat na udvijate ca yah” – BG XII -15).
Chandogyopanishad tells us that “Happiness and sorrow do not touch one who has become definitely unembodied” (Ch.VIII. xii.1).
Since embodiedness is the result of claiming ownership and doership of perceptions and subsequent false construct of individuation, it is established that the enlightened man has no embodiedness even while living. The amelioration of pain and suffering is thus brought about by ending inferred embodiedness, or the imaginary sufferer. The actual sorrow of the physical body is not alleviated by Advaita. All the greatest known Jivanmuktas or let us say their bodies, did suffer ghastly diseases, they aged and died.
John in his 2007 book “You Were Never Born” was very categorical about what sort of pain can be avoided by Advaita. While physical pain and sorrow are admittedly unavoidable in the relative world, 'advaita' can free the individual from 'psychological suffering'. ‘Psychological suffering’ for him is “emotional turbulence, doubts, worries, fears, concern about ‘myself’, what people think of ‘me’, the feeling of being a separate individual etc.” (p: 245). The key is about one's shifting the focus from a memory-based fictitious ‘persona’ of autobiographical 'self' to that very 'awareness' which 'awares' (for lack of a better word) within oneself (see my Book Review at:
http://www.advaita.org.uk/discourses/teachers/wheeler_ramesam.htm)
I shall discuss the Neuronal Correlates in the Brain of a Jivanmukta in my next blog entry.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query reality perception disconnect. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query reality perception disconnect. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, May 14, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
CONSCIOUSNESS IN COMA
"I Screamed, But There Was Nothing to Hear"
[FIRST A WELCOME:
I am happy to welcome to our Blog Mohan Suswaram and another member who gave only a link. I eagerly look forward to your inputs.]
"I Screamed, But There Was Nothing to Hear"
Many times discussants on Advaita raise the question about Consciousness in a Coma patient.
It is true, we do not have a clearcut definition of coma to be able to discuss the state of consciousness under comatose condition. In our Post dated 27th Sept 2009, how a patient in a vegetative state could 'learn' was talked about.
Now we have the shocking report of a patient who was in coma for 23 years but had been conscious all the time!!
What a horrific misery he must have gone through. Unimaginable and heart wrenching even to think!
"For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.........
"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear", he said, via his keyboard.
The Belgian former engineering student said he coped with being effectively trapped in his own body by meditating. ... Sometimes, he said, 'I was only my consciousness and nothing else'.......... 'Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it,' he tapped out on to the screen during an interview with the Belgian network last night, AP reported.."
The following is from The Guardian:
"In 1988 Jan Grzebski, a Polish railway worker, fell in front of a train and was diagnosed as being in a coma. In 2007, he "woke up" to learn the iron curtain had fallen and he had gained 11 grandchildren. Doctors discovered he had been conscious throughout.
Terry Wallis of Arkansas fell into a coma after a road accident in 1984. When he woke up 19 years later, his wife had gone off with another man, had three children and was embroiled in a legal battle over who was deemed his legal guardian. His mother was with him the day he woke up and a nurse asked: "Terry, who is that?" He opened his eyes and replied, "Mom".
In 1996 Patricia White Bull from Albuquerque, New Mexico, woke after 16 years in a persistent vegetative state, scaring the life out of a nurse who was tucking in her bedding by shouting, "Don't do that!". She had fallen unconscious during the birth of her fourth child.
Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year in a coma. Only days before, a judge had granted her family's request for the removal of her feeding tube.
Mark Newton from Hertfordshire fell into a coma in 1996 after surfacing too quickly while diving. Doctors considered him brain dead and recommended turning off his life support. His mother resisted and he woke up after six months. He had been aware of what was happening around him, but could not communicate."
From Associated Press:
"A coma is a state of unconsciousness in which the eyes are closed and the patient cannot be roused. A vegetative state is a condition in which the eyes are open and can move, and the patient has periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, but remains unconscious and cannot reason or respond.
"It makes you think. There is still a lot of work to be done" to better diagnose such disorders, said Caroline Schnakers of the Coma Science Group."
Consious Under Anesthesia:
Patients under anesthesia too may oftener be conscious, said Dr. Wong, a surgeon a couple of years ago. The patient cannot express because his/her muscles are paralysed/too relaxed and do not move under his/her command though he/she may be conscious.
Mr. Rom Houben's condition came to light through brain scanning. His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys, says a report in Mail Online.
So we can reasonably say 'consciousness' exists even under comatose condition. Modern scanning techniques can tell us many things about the brain as the case of Mr. Houben proves. Can the scans help us understand the brain of a Jivanmukta?
[Neuronal Correlates:
Please see my Posts on Neuronal Correlates of a Jivanmukta. My argument, in short is as follows:
We perceive a world.
But neuroscience clearly shows through studies on illusions/magic etc. that we hardly perceive what really exists 'out there.'
In other words, there is a disconnect between the ‘reality out there’ and our perception. This means that the sensory apparatus (senses and the respective cortical neurons) are inadequate to show what "exactly" is 'out there.'
2. Our brain makes a “map” of the perceptions received from the senses and interpretation made by the sensory cortex. We are actually aware of that map formed in our head. We don't have a clue what "exactly" is out there.
This “map” in our head is obviously made up of ‘thoughts’ (generated by neuronal electrical pulses as waves), or thought-stuff - whether it is beautiful girl or an ugly duck or a river or a table, these are all represented as thoughts in brain. So the constituent of all so called perceived ‘objects’ is thought-stuff.
3. The thought itself is cognized by us because we have "consciousness." Or as philosophers put it, consciousness illuminates (shows up) the thoughts.
4. A ‘me’-thought acts as the ‘seer’ of the map in our head. This is the ego providing continuity in time, coherence to experience and ownership to knowledge. It gets generated based on autobiographical information.
5. Neuroscience is as yet unable to understand how "Consciousness" is engendered in us.
6. Non-dualists find a shift in their perception. Instead of seeing the 'map' of the world in their brain with ego at the center, they identify themselves with the illuminating Consciousness. And this shift happens within and to an individual.
7. Can this shift then not be a play or happenstance in the brain itself of a Non-dualist ?
8. I wish we could get some brain scans of a Jivanmukta to see if the autobiographical memory based I-thought (i.e. 'self') collapses in him/her to give place to a "Universal Self."]
Comments are welcome.
***
Comment Added on : 19 May 2011: Vegetative and minimally conscious states:
"A person in a vegetative state will open their eyes spontaneously and make reflexive movements, but has no cognitive function and likely does not feel pain. Recovery is possible, but the chances of improvement are greatly diminished after a year. Someone in a minimally conscious state, by contrast, has intentional, non-reflexive but inconsistent responses to stimuli. They might speak a few words or track their image in a mirror, and they feel pain. In minimally conscious and healthy people the frontal cortex would then send a message back to the temporal cortex. The reason for this is uncertain; it may be to let the temporal cortex know what to expect in the future. But for people in a vegetative state, the communication was one-way: signals passed from the temporal to frontal area, but not back."
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110512/full/news.2011.287.html?WT.ec_id=NEWS-201\
10517
Comment Added on Sept 1, 2011: REM Sleep could prompt life-saving Decision:
http://the-scientist.com/2011/12/05/sleep-aid-revives-unconscious/
Added on Apr 06, 2012: As you awaken from anesthesia:
"We expected to see the outer bits of brain, the cerebral cortex (often thought to be the seat of higher human consciousness), would turn back on when consciousness was restored following anesthesia. Surprisingly, that is not what the images showed us. In fact, the central core structures of the more primitive brain structures including the thalamus and parts of the limbic system appeared to become functional first, suggesting that a foundational primitive conscious state must be restored before higher order conscious activity can occur."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-primitive-consciousness-emerges-awaken-anesthesia.html
Added on 16 Jun 2012: Communicating with people in a vegetative state:
"Despite highly controversial debate of consciousness, Owen believes that up to20 percent of people in a vegetative state in the United States are capable of communicating. "What we're seeing here is a population of totally locked-in patients. Over the past decade, he has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a sort of interrogation tool—mapping the brain activity of comatose people as he asks them a series of questions. He has found that in a subset of patients thought to be far gone, the brain activity in response to questioning was comparable to what's observed in healthy people."
http://the-scientist.com/2012/06/14/fmri-mind-reader/
(See also: Brain Scans of Comatose Patients
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-brain-scans-comatose-patients-reveal-conscious-state)
Added on 14 Nov 2012: An “Unconscious” Man Talks:
"Scott Routley, a 39-year-old Canadian patient that doctors had considered vegetative and incapable of communicating following a car crash 12 years ago, was able to tell doctors that he’s not in pain via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of his brain. Scott has been able to show he has a conscious, thinking mind."
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33264/title/An--Unconscious--Man-Talks/
Added on 27 Nov 2012: Brain in a Coma:
"Compared with healthy patients in the study, high-traffic hubs of brain activity are dark in coma patients while more quiet regions spring to life. Scientists still don't understand exactly how human consciousness works, but the twilight state of a coma could reveal some insight. Past research revealed that a person in a coma is closer to being anesthetized than being asleep. Other studies have found that vegetative and minimally conscious patients have very different brain activity. But for the most part, it was hard to find obvious differences in brain functioning between healthy patients and those who have lost consciousness. In healthy patients, about 40 regions lit up in concert with many other parts of the brain. These high-traffic hubs, like busy airports, apparently process much of the electrical firing in the brain. But in the coma patients, many of these hubs were darkened, and other, normally peripheral regions took their place. Intriguingly, coma patients had fewer hubs in a region called the precuneus, which is known to play a role in consciousness and memory."
http://www.livescience.com/25030-coma-brain-reorganized.html
Added on 05 Dec 2012: Brain networks restructured in comatose patients:
"By analysing the connectivity at a local level, the authors of the study have observed that some brain regions ("hubs"), which are highly connected in healthy volunteers, are less well connected in comatose patients. Conversely, the less densely connected regions in the network in healthy subjects become "hubs" in comatose patients."
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/ind-trr120412.php
Added on 19 Apr 2013: Measuring Consciousness:
[FIRST A WELCOME:
I am happy to welcome to our Blog Mohan Suswaram and another member who gave only a link. I eagerly look forward to your inputs.]
"I Screamed, But There Was Nothing to Hear"
Many times discussants on Advaita raise the question about Consciousness in a Coma patient.
It is true, we do not have a clearcut definition of coma to be able to discuss the state of consciousness under comatose condition. In our Post dated 27th Sept 2009, how a patient in a vegetative state could 'learn' was talked about.
Now we have the shocking report of a patient who was in coma for 23 years but had been conscious all the time!!
What a horrific misery he must have gone through. Unimaginable and heart wrenching even to think!
"For 23 years Rom Houben was imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.........
"I screamed, but there was nothing to hear", he said, via his keyboard.
The Belgian former engineering student said he coped with being effectively trapped in his own body by meditating. ... Sometimes, he said, 'I was only my consciousness and nothing else'.......... 'Powerlessness. Utter powerlessness. At first I was angry, then I learned to live with it,' he tapped out on to the screen during an interview with the Belgian network last night, AP reported.."
The following is from The Guardian:
"In 1988 Jan Grzebski, a Polish railway worker, fell in front of a train and was diagnosed as being in a coma. In 2007, he "woke up" to learn the iron curtain had fallen and he had gained 11 grandchildren. Doctors discovered he had been conscious throughout.
Terry Wallis of Arkansas fell into a coma after a road accident in 1984. When he woke up 19 years later, his wife had gone off with another man, had three children and was embroiled in a legal battle over who was deemed his legal guardian. His mother was with him the day he woke up and a nurse asked: "Terry, who is that?" He opened his eyes and replied, "Mom".
In 1996 Patricia White Bull from Albuquerque, New Mexico, woke after 16 years in a persistent vegetative state, scaring the life out of a nurse who was tucking in her bedding by shouting, "Don't do that!". She had fallen unconscious during the birth of her fourth child.
Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year in a coma. Only days before, a judge had granted her family's request for the removal of her feeding tube.
Mark Newton from Hertfordshire fell into a coma in 1996 after surfacing too quickly while diving. Doctors considered him brain dead and recommended turning off his life support. His mother resisted and he woke up after six months. He had been aware of what was happening around him, but could not communicate."
From Associated Press:
"A coma is a state of unconsciousness in which the eyes are closed and the patient cannot be roused. A vegetative state is a condition in which the eyes are open and can move, and the patient has periods of sleep and periods of wakefulness, but remains unconscious and cannot reason or respond.
"It makes you think. There is still a lot of work to be done" to better diagnose such disorders, said Caroline Schnakers of the Coma Science Group."
Consious Under Anesthesia:
Patients under anesthesia too may oftener be conscious, said Dr. Wong, a surgeon a couple of years ago. The patient cannot express because his/her muscles are paralysed/too relaxed and do not move under his/her command though he/she may be conscious.
Mr. Rom Houben's condition came to light through brain scanning. His case has only just been revealed in a scientific paper released by the man who 'saved' him, top neurological expert Dr Steven Laureys, says a report in Mail Online.
So we can reasonably say 'consciousness' exists even under comatose condition. Modern scanning techniques can tell us many things about the brain as the case of Mr. Houben proves. Can the scans help us understand the brain of a Jivanmukta?
[Neuronal Correlates:
Please see my Posts on Neuronal Correlates of a Jivanmukta. My argument, in short is as follows:
We perceive a world.
But neuroscience clearly shows through studies on illusions/magic etc. that we hardly perceive what really exists 'out there.'
In other words, there is a disconnect between the ‘reality out there’ and our perception. This means that the sensory apparatus (senses and the respective cortical neurons) are inadequate to show what "exactly" is 'out there.'
2. Our brain makes a “map” of the perceptions received from the senses and interpretation made by the sensory cortex. We are actually aware of that map formed in our head. We don't have a clue what "exactly" is out there.
This “map” in our head is obviously made up of ‘thoughts’ (generated by neuronal electrical pulses as waves), or thought-stuff - whether it is beautiful girl or an ugly duck or a river or a table, these are all represented as thoughts in brain. So the constituent of all so called perceived ‘objects’ is thought-stuff.
3. The thought itself is cognized by us because we have "consciousness." Or as philosophers put it, consciousness illuminates (shows up) the thoughts.
4. A ‘me’-thought acts as the ‘seer’ of the map in our head. This is the ego providing continuity in time, coherence to experience and ownership to knowledge. It gets generated based on autobiographical information.
5. Neuroscience is as yet unable to understand how "Consciousness" is engendered in us.
6. Non-dualists find a shift in their perception. Instead of seeing the 'map' of the world in their brain with ego at the center, they identify themselves with the illuminating Consciousness. And this shift happens within and to an individual.
7. Can this shift then not be a play or happenstance in the brain itself of a Non-dualist ?
8. I wish we could get some brain scans of a Jivanmukta to see if the autobiographical memory based I-thought (i.e. 'self') collapses in him/her to give place to a "Universal Self."]
Comments are welcome.
***
Comment Added on : 19 May 2011: Vegetative and minimally conscious states:
"A person in a vegetative state will open their eyes spontaneously and make reflexive movements, but has no cognitive function and likely does not feel pain. Recovery is possible, but the chances of improvement are greatly diminished after a year. Someone in a minimally conscious state, by contrast, has intentional, non-reflexive but inconsistent responses to stimuli. They might speak a few words or track their image in a mirror, and they feel pain. In minimally conscious and healthy people the frontal cortex would then send a message back to the temporal cortex. The reason for this is uncertain; it may be to let the temporal cortex know what to expect in the future. But for people in a vegetative state, the communication was one-way: signals passed from the temporal to frontal area, but not back."
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110512/full/news.2011.287.html?WT.ec_id=NEWS-201\
10517
Comment Added on Sept 1, 2011: REM Sleep could prompt life-saving Decision:
The minimally conscious state, persistent vegetative state and coma are all disorders of consciousness caused by severe brain damage. Minimally conscious individuals tend to have better outcomes than vegetative individuals, but distinguishing between them is difficult and misdiagnosis is common. Getting it wrong can sometimes mean that a person who might otherwise recover has their life-support machine switched off.
The brain waves associated with sleep and dreaming could be helpful for distinguishing between people in a persistent vegetative state and those who are minimally conscious – a distinction that could seal the fate of the individual.
Comment Added on Dec 01, 2011: The mystery of anaesthesia:
"For years we had been looking at vegetative and coma patients whose brains were
responding to speech and getting terribly seduced by these images, thinking that
they were conscious," says Owen. "This told us that they are not conscious."
Similar findings are coming in from studies of people in a coma or persistent
vegetative state (PVS), who may open their eyes in a sleep-wake cycle, although
remain unresponsive. Laureys, for example, has seen a similar breakdown in
communication between different cortical areas in people in a coma. "Anaesthesia
is a pharmacologically induced coma," he says. "That same breakdown in global
neuronal workspace is occurring."
Comment Added on Dec 05, 2011: Ambien Revives the Unconscious:
"In 1999, Louis Viljoen was hit by a truck and declared vegetative, kept alive by machines for three years before his doctor prescribed him zolpidem thinking it might stop him from clawing his mattress in the middle of the night. Twenty minutes after receiving his first dose, he woke up and started talking to his mother. He floated in and out of consciousness over the next several days, waking up for increasingly long periods after receiving his zolpidem until he stayed awake without the drug."http://the-scientist.com/2011/12/05/sleep-aid-revives-unconscious/
Added on Apr 06, 2012: As you awaken from anesthesia:
"We expected to see the outer bits of brain, the cerebral cortex (often thought to be the seat of higher human consciousness), would turn back on when consciousness was restored following anesthesia. Surprisingly, that is not what the images showed us. In fact, the central core structures of the more primitive brain structures including the thalamus and parts of the limbic system appeared to become functional first, suggesting that a foundational primitive conscious state must be restored before higher order conscious activity can occur."
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-04-primitive-consciousness-emerges-awaken-anesthesia.html
Added on 16 Jun 2012: Communicating with people in a vegetative state:
"Despite highly controversial debate of consciousness, Owen believes that up to20 percent of people in a vegetative state in the United States are capable of communicating. "What we're seeing here is a population of totally locked-in patients. Over the past decade, he has used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) as a sort of interrogation tool—mapping the brain activity of comatose people as he asks them a series of questions. He has found that in a subset of patients thought to be far gone, the brain activity in response to questioning was comparable to what's observed in healthy people."
http://the-scientist.com/2012/06/14/fmri-mind-reader/
(See also: Brain Scans of Comatose Patients
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=do-brain-scans-comatose-patients-reveal-conscious-state)
Added on 14 Nov 2012: An “Unconscious” Man Talks:
"Scott Routley, a 39-year-old Canadian patient that doctors had considered vegetative and incapable of communicating following a car crash 12 years ago, was able to tell doctors that he’s not in pain via functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of his brain. Scott has been able to show he has a conscious, thinking mind."
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33264/title/An--Unconscious--Man-Talks/
Added on 27 Nov 2012: Brain in a Coma:
"Compared with healthy patients in the study, high-traffic hubs of brain activity are dark in coma patients while more quiet regions spring to life. Scientists still don't understand exactly how human consciousness works, but the twilight state of a coma could reveal some insight. Past research revealed that a person in a coma is closer to being anesthetized than being asleep. Other studies have found that vegetative and minimally conscious patients have very different brain activity. But for the most part, it was hard to find obvious differences in brain functioning between healthy patients and those who have lost consciousness. In healthy patients, about 40 regions lit up in concert with many other parts of the brain. These high-traffic hubs, like busy airports, apparently process much of the electrical firing in the brain. But in the coma patients, many of these hubs were darkened, and other, normally peripheral regions took their place. Intriguingly, coma patients had fewer hubs in a region called the precuneus, which is known to play a role in consciousness and memory."
http://www.livescience.com/25030-coma-brain-reorganized.html
Added on 05 Dec 2012: Brain networks restructured in comatose patients:
"By analysing the connectivity at a local level, the authors of the study have observed that some brain regions ("hubs"), which are highly connected in healthy volunteers, are less well connected in comatose patients. Conversely, the less densely connected regions in the network in healthy subjects become "hubs" in comatose patients."
Added on 19 Apr 2013: Measuring Consciousness:
"Over the past 5 years, researchers have made significant progress
in understanding what happens in the brain as consciousness departs and
returns. Peering into the anesthetized brain with neuroimaging and
electroencephalograph (EEG) recordings, scientists have found evidence to
support the "integrated-information theory," which holds that
consciousness relies on communication between different brain areas, and fades
as that communication breaks down. EEG studies have also revealed distinctive
brain wave patterns that signal when consciousness is lost and regained,
offering easily identifiable markers for this impairment of communication.
Though many questions remain, advances in brain activity monitoring promise to
shed light the neural basis of consciousness."
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/35140/title/Measuring-Con\sciousness/
Also See: http://beyond-advaita.blogspot.com/2010/09/research-on-non-dualism-self-and.html
http://www.the-scientist.com//?articles.view/articleNo/35140/title/Measuring-Con\sciousness/
Also See: http://beyond-advaita.blogspot.com/2010/09/research-on-non-dualism-self-and.html
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
YOU CREATE YOUR OWN WORLD!
Recent Advances in Understanding the Working of Brain – Two TED Videos of about 15 mins
Neuroscience already debunked the existence of a 'self' (the small separate "me" we think we have inside us). It also established that there is a 'disconnect' between 'reality' out there and our 'perception.'
Your brain shows an interpretation of what is perceived depending on what it learnt in its past, the stored impressions. The brain even fills gaps in the information to show you what you need to know. Even the colors you see are not necessarily what exactly are out there. We know only what our brain ‘maps’ as what is out there rather than what exactly IS there!
Watch this entertaining and informative TED talk of Beau Lotto at:
https://www.ted.com/talks/beau_lotto_optical_illusions_show_how_we_see
Scientists are now able to tease out how the 100 billion neurons and their interconnections in the brain create a world for you. Dr. Henry Markram "uses complex models to precisely simulate the human brain top layers in 3D..... it has been edging up on some deep, contentious philosophical questions about the mind ."
You can have a peek at his work in the TED video at: Henry Markram: A brain in a supercomputer | TED Talk
Advaita philosophy tells in unequivocal terms that the perceived world is an illusion. The world we create is nothing more than a thought. It is merely a "castle in the air." We build the castle because of the force of our past impressions – the Vedantic term is vasanas. We trap ourselves in that bubble of a castle, our own creation. And being caught up in the imaginary world of ours is described as "bondage." You cannot even destroy this world because you cannot physically hammer to pieces a purely imaginary construction which is not really there. "Freedom" or "Moksha" is to jump out of it and just “Be.”
Will modern neuroscience take us nearer to the Truth that advaita has been telling us for millennia of years?
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