Intro. Cognitive Neuroscience Essays

Chapter 8 Attention and Consciousness

Williams James - 1890 Principles of Psychology - captures what Psychology was at that time.

100yrs ago - some kind of special place that we can create in our head. We can do thought experience and test things out. Assimilations that I can run in my own head.

Single Photon
Single Molecule (olfactory system)
Single Hair Cell(pin drop - buzzing in the ear(hair cells dying) this happens every milisecnd

Attention is filtering the above out.
-constructing the world want it to be

Goals
-Truthful perception of the world is neither required nor necessary

top/down - I made a conscious decision of what I want to pay attention to

attention/conscious - hierarchical ...pay attention then you're conscious of it

selective attention - voluntary/automatic
-attentional bias - chose to pay attention(lose info/gain info-important to you)

Consciousness
Williams James 1890 -
-Consciousness is a constantly moving stream of thoughts, feelings, and emotions

-Consciousness can be viewed as our subjective awareness of mental events

-Functions of consciousness: -monitoring mental events -control consciousness allows us to formulate/reach goals

-Consciousness may have evolved to direct or control behavior in adaptive ways

Controlled processing - your monitoring too much which causes either to fall over or makes it harder to do. Critical for learning Automated processing - produces for unconscious and critical for performance.

Libet's Half-second Delay
-Electrical stimulated in patients somatosensory cortices -
-minimum level of stimulation necessary
-at this intensity, 1/2 of continuous stimulation before any perception
-shorter stimulation requires greater intensity

500 ms to brain to person being aware of this stimulation

reaction time: 200ms, recognition can take 300-400ms, but libet's delay is 500ms

-our body responds before we are conscious of why its responding

subjective referral: after neuronal adequacy is reached, the event is referred back to the point at which it occurred

choices/planning -

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex - active during conscious control tasks

Attention
-Ann Treisman's - 1960's attention is a visual processing mode.Attentional spotlight was required to combine different aspects of stimulus into a reportable event. Popout

Divided attention - two sources of info left(words/right(numbers)
Central attention(executive) - conscious process put together some of the words heard. (attention is not truthful)

Michael L. Posner
-two attention systems -anterior frontal lobe - planning/writing(forward planning0 -posterior parietal lobe - playing tetris/vigilance tasks

-Reticular Activating System (RAS)-sleep/arousal -

-daydreams - shifts in attention toward internal thoughts/imagined scenarios

-college students spend 50% of time in daydreams

Psychodynamic View of Consciousness
-conscious -
-preconscious
-unconscious - mental events inaccessible

-Tip of the tongue - unconscious/conscious processing youre trying to get to but cannot.

Information-processing view can be extended to analyses of unconscious processes

notion is that many brain mechanisms operate in parallel -some of these mechanisms operate outside of the level of consciousness

functional significance of unconscious mechanisms
-efficient/rapid
-can operate simultaneously

Blindsight - conscious awareness

EEG - some people do/don't dream
-motor paralysis
-REM - associated with dreaming
-NREM - deep sleep

Brain waves
Alpha
Beta
Theta
Delta

3/27 Tape recordings 29/30

4/1 Tape recordings 36/37
4/3 Tape recordings 38
4/8 Tape 39/40
4/10 Tape 41
4/15 Tape 42/43
4/17 Tape 44
4/24 Tape 45
4/29 Tape 46
5/2 Tape 47
Chapter 9 Learning & Memory

Attention has one function allows us to do something in that assimilated world and then we do it in the real world

learning helps to

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