"Studying human consciousness is an immensely difficult problem, and it’s the reason why so many scientists, philosophers, and theologians have been trying to explain it for millennia. However, within the last two centuries, humans gained an unlikely ally in exploring the inner depths of the human mind: anesthesia. It isn’t a method that could directly solve what’s known as the hard problem or why the human mind creates subjective experiences, but it can help elucidate what happens when we purposefully turn off the lights of consciousness.
The relationship between traveling waves and information transfer has been suggested previously,” the team writes in the study. “However, it has never been directly examined whether traveling waves preferentially enhance information flow along their propagation direction… compared to the other directions.
By comparing awake rats with those under anesthesia, the team noticed counterintuitive differences between the two. Surprisingly, the drugged brain contained more absolute transfer entropy (a mathematical quantification of the flow of information), but the curves of these waves were messy and chaotic. In conscious rats, however, the brain channeled information with more precision along the axis of traveling waves.
The team theorizes that the mind undergoes a phenomenon known as “informational tuning” while awake, essentially selecting and “tuning” information from the unending flow of waves. So while the state of consciousness doesn’t impact the absolute amount of this information (in fact, there’s more of it when the rats are unconscious), the waking brain is what tunes this unorganized flow.
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Interesting but it doesn’t seem possible to jump into a conversation about it. A moment of silence for all the lab life-forms that gave their lives so that we can be healthy. …
Thank you. Better yet, let’s now open our mouths and start yelling angrily about it. Animals do not belong to us. They didn’t “give their lives”; no one consulted them.
All the study really seems to show is that anaesthetics put the brain in a disorganized state. The flashy headline conclusion that consciousness is some kind of informational tuner doesn’t seem supported.
Ok. We should seek forgiveness then, for having experimented on so many animals for our wellness. As for yelling at the top of our voice, perhaps this not the time for that.
AFAICT this experiment is one of thousands that are being performed and by itself seems very parochial.
I wonder how well the original author’s view was represented in that conclusion.
I interpreted the experimental results as suggesting that the traveling electrical waves played a significant role in guiding the flow of information within the brain in an orderly way, and rat consciousness is dependent on such orderly flow of information.
Perhaps the original author would be more apt to agree with, “Consciousness is dependent on various sorts of tuning within the neural environment.”
There are people who do that. RSPCA and PETA are prominent and vocal in their condemnation of carnism and experimentation on animals. A bit ironic that the experiment is on animal consciousness.
Academic studies of this nature require review and approval by an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) or equivalent body (such as Kyoto University’s Animal Experiment Committee) and veterinary approved anesthetic agents were used to transition the rats between conscious and unconscious states.
It deals with one of the core questions of Epistemology, among others, that asks how we know what is real. If our waking mind is constantly suppressing chaotic background data to build a coherent picture of the world, is consciousness working through a selective filter? The study proves many points, one example:
Integrated Information Theory suggests that if you increase the sheer volume of information exchange within a neural network, consciousness should emerge. The study demonstrates that an unconscious brain handles more total raw information flow than a waking one.
Imagine you’re in a room that has every radio station turned on at full volume at the exact time. This room has a massive amount of raw sound and data far more than if you were just listening to a single, clear station. But you wouldn’t hear a coherent song or news report; you would just hear deafening, chaotic overall.
The Sleep state (Radio Noise): When the rat was knocked out, its brain cells didn’t stop talking. Instead, they started broadcasting everywhere all at once in a disorganized mess. The total volume of raw data actually went up, but it was just meaningless background static.
The Awake state: When the rat woke up, the brain turned down the overall static and tuned in to one specific station. It routed signals carefully along precise paths so the animal could pay attention and make sense of its surroundings.
What if I were to come into the room and use a drug that puts you into a lucid state being half awake and half asleep?
What this study is saying is you don’t turn on or get awake for a day. You’re consciousness suppresses and filters everything into a range of possibilities. You’re going from a room of infinite possibilities into a select radio station or stations by shutting down background noise everytime you wake up. It confirms that your waking experience is not a direct, unfiltered view of the objective world.
This also reinforces physicialism viewpoint over descartes dualism. I also suspect that for some, the subconscious is what the background noise is. Regardless though, if one can local tune their networks in the prefrontal cortex while their background noise remains high, you could get hybrid states where you are conscious inside a surreal, self-generated reality. What you experience as normal reality is actually one specific configuration of the brain’s filtering settings. Altered states are not supernatural per say, it is what happens when your conscious is set to different frequencies, from your baseline, that allows for a completely different version of subjective reality to enter into your awareness. It also suggests that we are all experiencing different realities of experiences from each other.
It’s a long, sad story. So-called oversight groups give their approval to a wide range of experiments that animal-liberation advocates find unacceptable. There are vast ethical differences between the way such groups use terms like “necessary” and “minimizing distress”, and the way animal advocates use them.
I must have tuned into the wrong forums when I woke up this morning my bad. Stupid brain filtering wrong. Don’t make me visit the wizard of oz to get a new one.
It does work with global workspace theory. If consciousness were merely the strongest signal, an unconscious or anesthetized brain should show a drop in raw signal strength. Instead, the study found that consciousness doesn’t make a signal louder, it makes the surrounding environment quieter. It acts as a selective dampener that actively suppresses chaotic background cross-talk so that a very specific, directionally routed wave can travel clearly.
Yeah you’re right. This “informational tuning” model helps to explain why dream scenarios are so convincing for some. You could experience surreal scenarios like (flying, talking animals, shifting landscapes) that feel completely believable in the moment, even though they violate the laws of waking reality. The consciousness doesn’t flag the absurdity. When you are lucid dreaming, it must be some in-between such as the visual wave I am perceiving is real, but the environment doesn’t match laws that i’m familiar with. It accepts the inputs to a degree. You being on the right station as others would determine if it’s a dreamscape/shared dream or if it all was coming from you.
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