148 research outputs found
Report of the Committee on Resolutions- Declaration
Pamphlet concerning a declaration made by the National Educational Association at the forty-fourth annual convention
Neural representations of the sense of self
The brain constructs representations of what is sensed and thought about in the
form of nerve impulses that propagate in circuits and network assemblies
(Circuit Impulse Patterns, CIPs). CIP representations of which humans are
consciously aware occur in the context of a sense of self. Thus, research on
mechanisms of consciousness might benefit from a focus on how a conscious sense
of self is represented in brain. Like all senses, the sense of self must be
contained in patterns of nerve impulses. Unlike the traditional senses that are
registered by impulse flow in relatively simple, pauci-synaptic projection
pathways, the sense of self is a system- level phenomenon that may be generated
by impulse patterns in widely distributed complex and interacting circuits. The
problem for researchers then is to identify the CIPs that are unique to
conscious experience. Also likely to be of great relevance to constructing the
representation of self are the coherence shifts in activity timing relations
among the circuits. Consider that an embodied sense of self is generated and
contained as unique combinatorial temporal patterns across multiple neurons in
each circuit that contributes to constructing the sense of self. As with other
kinds of CIPs, those representing the sense of self can be learned from
experience, stored in memory, modified by subsequent experiences, and expressed
in the form of decisions, choices, and commands. These CIPs are proposed here to
be the actual physical basis for conscious thought and the sense of self. When
active in wakefulness or dream states, the CIP representations of self act as an
agent of the brain, metaphorically as an avatar. Because the selfhood CIP
patterns may only have to represent the self and not directly represent the
inner and outer worlds of embodied brain, the self representation should have
more degrees of freedom than subconscious mind and may therefore have some
capacity for a free-will mind of its own. S everal lines of evidence for this
theory are reviewed. Suggested new research includes identifying distinct
combinatorially coded impulse patterns and their temporal coherence shifts in
defined circuitry, such as neocortical microcolumns. This task might be
facilitated by identifying the micro-topography of field-potential oscillatory
coherences among various regions and between different frequencies associated
with specific conscious mentation. Other approaches can include identifying the
changes in discrete conscious operations produced by focal trans-cranial
magnetic stimulation
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