Consciousness

[DBT]

You cannot claim anything, with any credibility, unless and until you acknowledge your error and (if you want to recover a little respect as well as a trace of credibility) apologize to beero1000 for your completely unwarranted accusation that he lied.

Go away you pest.

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I said MRI does not have any effect on consciousness and a bunch of morons starting posting things about magnetic stimulation, which is really just electrical stimulation, in response.

Don't blame me because morons can't read.

It was your choice of examples that is moronic,

No it wasn't. Not in the least.

The problem is I presented it to a bunch of morons.

Wow, aren't you a sweetheart.

 

[DBT]

You continue omit to consider all that is said, instead picking and choosing what you want to see. I said that information processing is both chemical - synaptic clefts - and electrical to the point of the synaptic cleft.

One cannot function without the other, without electrical impulses there is no communication between cells, without chemical connectivity there is no communication between cells.

You need to grasp that it takes both, that this is an electrochemical process and that chemical imbalances can effect cognition as can electrical brain stimulation....both chemistry and the electrical system effecting changes to consciousness.

Please read more carefully and consider all that's been said without picking an choosing the bits that suit your needs.

You need to start reading.

I made the comment that cells do not communicate between themselves via electric current. Which is a fact.

Then you jumped in with this bunch of erroneous nonsense.

The point is, stimulating a cell with an electric current tells us nothing about normal function. It is not normal activity.

You need to start reading.

As I said before. I understand all of this a lot better than you.

You continue to miss the point that electrical impulses transmit information right to the synaptic cleft, so when a nerve impulse arrives at the terminal of one neuron, a chemical ''messenger'' is released through the membrane, traveling in milliseconds across the gap.

So transmission of information between cells involves both electrical signals and chemical transmitters. One does not work without the other.

It's irrelevant to say transmission of information between cells is chemical when in fact it involves both.

 

[bilby]

Agree. He wouldn't know an inductor from hypnotic induction. I wonder if he knows how transformers work. Of course (the barbaric procedure) electroshock therapy affects a brain, inducing amnesia among other things.

Nobody every claimed an MRI creates an electric charge in the brain. I in fact have several times pointed out the distinction between MRI and an artificial electric charge applied to the brain, which is really all magnetic conduction is.

What was claimed by others was consciousness is some "pattern" of electrical activity. A fact pulled from thin air.

And what I said was: If consciousness is some electrical effect it should be effected when exposed to a strong magnetic field. Not changed because the MRI is creating electricity. But changed because magnetic fields have effects on electric fields.

It is assumed by some that consciousness is an electrical effect because we can measure electrical activity in the brain.

There is no evidence consciousness is an electrical effect.

But that doesn't stop some people from claiming it is one.

I don't recall anyone saying consciousness is an electrical effect. This would appear to be (yet) another case of your failure at reading comprehension.

I did say that consciousness was a pattern of activity in the brain; And that's undeniable and obvious - the living brain itself is a pattern of interactions between molecules; and if consciousness exists at all (and I know that at least one does), and if the physical world exists as well (and I am assuming that it does as my best current guess) then some part of that pattern IS consciousness.

The molecules themselves are not sufficient to constitute a brain; It's only the arrangement of, and dynamics of, those molecules that makes them a living brain, rather than a dead brain, or a bucket of sludge. It's only the pattern of dynamic interactions between these molecules (and all of the significant interactions are electromagnetic, in the sense of being mediated by the electromagnetic force; the other three forces are not relevant at the scale of human brains) that makes them a living brain - when the pattern of interactions is disrupted, consciousness is modified, and if the disruption is sufficiently large, unconsciousness or even death ensues.

That you do not, and quite possibly cannot, understand this, is not my problem. Your description of obvious and well known facts as 'pulled from thin air' is laughable; What you mean is 'not understood by untermensche, and therefore to be denigrated, lest it becomes obvious that untermensche is not all knowing'.

But the joke's on you - everyone is laughing at your pathetic attempts to salvage your ego from your latest round of pratfalls. We are painfully aware of just how limited your knowledge is - even if you are not.

 

[bilby]

You need to start reading.

I made the comment that cells do not communicate between themselves via electric current. Which is a fact.

Then you jumped in with this bunch of erroneous nonsense.

The point is, stimulating a cell with an electric current tells us nothing about normal function. It is not normal activity.

You need to start reading.

As I said before. I understand all of this a lot better than you.

You continue to miss the point that electrical impulses transmit information right to the synaptic cleft, so when a nerve impulse arrives at the terminal of one neuron, a chemical ''messenger'' is released through the membrane, traveling in milliseconds across the gap.

So transmission of information between cells involves both electrical signals and chemical transmitters. One does not work without the other.

It's irrelevant to say transmission of information between cells is chemical when in fact it involves both.

For sure.

The division of electrical from chemical interactions is a fairly arbitrary categorization of phenomena that is not analogous to any actual subdivision of reality. There are no 'bright lines' dividing the biochemical from the electrochemical from the electromagnetic interactions in the brain, the categories are parts of a spectrum, and their use is descriptive, not prescriptive.

 

[Bomb#20]

And what I said was: If consciousness is some electrical effect it should be effected when exposed to a strong magnetic field. Not changed because the MRI is creating electricity. But changed because magnetic fields have effects on electric fields.

I think maybe this is the root of the misunderstanding. It's not quite correct to say magnetic fields have effects on electric fields. Rather, what has an effect on electric fields is changes in magnetic fields. So if consciousness is some electrical effect it should be affected when exposed to a strong magnetic field that suddenly gets a lot stronger, or suddenly shuts off, or suddenly changes direction. This is why the example of an MRI doesn't prove what you think it proves. The strong magnetic field in an MRI stays almost steady -- it changes, but it changes so gently that a person having an MRI won't notice anything funny happening in his brain.

The argument you're having is sort of like if one person said driving into a tree at 60 mph would kill you, and the other person said this couldn't possibly be right because astronauts survived being shot to the moon at 25,000 mph. High speed itself doesn't mangle your body; it's large sudden changes in speed that mangle your body. The astronauts got up to 25,000 mph gradually, without ever speeding up by 60 mph in the 0.1 second it would take to drive into a tree. If their rocket had sped up that fast it would have killed them.

 

[ryan]

You need to start reading.

I made the comment that cells do not communicate between themselves via electric current. Which is a fact.

That is actually wrong.

There are 2 very different kinds of cell signaling between neurons, electrical and chemical. The chemical signalling is the slower and less direct of the 2. This is what you are talking about that use neurotransmitters to flow through a synaptic cleft to the next neuron. But the electrical signals are actually ions that signal by way of electrical current. They are practically an instantaneous transmission from one neuron to another. And this kind of signalling use neurons that are actually connected by gap junction channels that the ions flow through.

So this really would allow neurological brain activity by electromagnetic induction.

Here is a reference, http://cbm.msoe.edu/markMyweb/ddtyResources/documents/synapseTypes.pdf

 

[untermensche]

I don't recall anyone saying consciousness is an electrical effect. This would appear to be (yet) another case of your failure at reading comprehension.

You did.

This is part of your insane screed:

Consciousness is a set of patterns of electro-chemical activity in the cerebral cortex.

We know this, because interfering with those patterns (either electrically, chemically, or magnetically) causes reports of changes to consciousness by the subject of that interference.

Nothing else is involved, because there's nothing else that is physically able to communicate with the cerebral cortex to either collect information about the interference, or to transmit back a response. We know what is there, and we know how it communicates with the rest of the body and thereby the rest of the universe.....

Here you are making all kinds of absurd claims, as if you have the slightest clue what consciousness is.

Your comments here were pulled from thin air. There are no facts to support this gibberish.

Here's a clue, being able to interfere with consciousness does not tell us what it is. It only tells us how it can be interfered with.

 

[untermensche]

You need to start reading.

I made the comment that cells do not communicate between themselves via electric current. Which is a fact.

That is actually wrong.

There are 2 very different kinds of cell signaling between neurons, electrical and chemical. The chemical signalling is the slower and less direct of the 2. This is what you are talking about that use neurotransmitters to flow through a synaptic cleft to the next neuron. But the electrical signals are actually ions that signal by way of electrical current. They are practically an instantaneous transmission from one neuron to another. And this kind of signalling use neurons that are actually connected by gap junction channels that the ions flow through.

So this really would allow neurological brain activity by electromagnetic induction.

Here is a reference, http://cbm.msoe.edu/markMyweb/ddtyResources/documents/synapseTypes.pdf

You are missing the point.

The neurons on the outer part of the cortex, that are stimulated in these artificial stimulation experiments, are not these rare specialized neurons that can conduct a charge. When you look at the brain the vast majority of cells communicate via neurotransmitters. They do not conduct a charge. There is no electricity flowing through the brain except in the rare tracts connecting to glands. There is electrical activity in the individual neuron. But communication with the next neuron is via chemical transmitter. This is not a flow of electricity.

So when these neurons are excited with an external charge you are not replicating normal function.

You are creating abnormal function.

 

[untermensche]

You continue to miss the point that electrical impulses transmit information right to the synaptic cleft, so when a nerve impulse arrives at the terminal of one neuron, a chemical ''messenger'' is released through the membrane, traveling in milliseconds across the gap.

So transmission of information between cells involves both electrical signals and chemical transmitters. One does not work without the other.

The action potential is really just a flow in and out of charged ions. It is not the movement of electrons down the nerve.

It is not like an electric current through a wire.

And communication between cells is purely chemical, not electrical, in most cases.

So the introduction of an electric current is a totally foreign event and it does not tell us about normal function.

It tells us about abnormal function.

 

[bilby]

I don't recall anyone saying consciousness is an electrical effect. This would appear to be (yet) another case of your failure at reading comprehension

You did.

This is part of your insane screed:

Consciousness is a set of patterns of electro-chemical activity in the cerebral cortex.

We know this, because interfering with those patterns (either electrically, chemically, or magnetically) causes reports of changes to consciousness by the subject of that interference.

Nothing else is involved, because there's nothing else that is physically able to communicate with the cerebral cortex to either collect information about the interference, or to transmit back a response. We know what is there, and we know how it communicates with the rest of the body and thereby the rest of the universe.....

Nowhere there do I say "Consciousness is an electrical effect".

You appear to be responding to something other than reality. Perhaps you should seek psychiatric assistance.

 

[beero1000]

Let's not pass over the whole "you can't learn about normal function by studying abnormal function" thing, cuz that's blatantly false statement #1864 that's just getting swamped by all the other wrong things being said here.

 

[fromderinside]

We have no idea HOW, in terms of what motivates and carries out the changes.

Again. Yes the fuck we do. Ever hear of event related potentials. These are brain potentials recorded from electrodes on the surface of the brain of event, both stimulus and response, potential to those events. We know what caused them in terms of activation and source and we know where they arise in the brain. We have for over 70 years.

As for EEG, there is much EEG that is useful and much, mostly that recorded claiming some focus for this or that emotion or motive prior to 1950, that is uesless. Modern methods and interpretations, those developed around 1960 to 1970, have standardized how we idntify EEG sources. You want to destroy any meaning for EEG all you need to do is fill some gourds with jello, congealed, and record from both the brain and the gourd for response to some event say a fire cracker going off one foot away from the object. They are amazingly similar, as are serially hooked up earth worms, and some mixtures of clay.

So first you have to establish what you are talking about and then you have to provide credible references supporting what you are talking about.

We stand ready to listen and to be instructed. All you need do is provide evidence for what you claim. This is, after all a place where the best reasoned argument, the one with the most credible support, is valued above all else. This is not some freshman logic class.

 

[bilby]

Let's not pass over the whole "you can't learn about normal function by studying abnormal function" thing, cuz that's blatantly false statement #1864 that's just getting swamped by all the other wrong things being said here.

Indeed, that is the opposite of true - you can't learn anything about anything without disrupting that thing at least to some degree. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics))

And in biology, study of the ways in which you can make a system stop working is one of the most common tools for understanding how that system works.

But while someone is able to claim that I said something I didn't say, and to back that claim with a quote of me not saying it, I suspect that discussion of the finer points of research methodology might be a little too advanced for the audience.

Basic reading comprehension is the first step, and so far even that seems to be a step too far.

 

[untermensche]

Let's not pass over the whole "you can't learn about normal function by studying abnormal function" thing, cuz that's blatantly false statement #1864 that's just getting swamped by all the other wrong things being said here.

I'm trying to ignore all the wrong things being said around here.

Like people claiming I was saying an MRI could induce a current.

Or that consciousness is some "patterns" of something.

It seems everything I say is distorted for some reason.

My claim is you can't learn what consciousness is by using electricity to artificially stimulate the brain in a manner it is never stimulated.

We can learn things about apparent location of function, if we employ subjective reporting.

But knowing areas of function does not take us one step closer to understanding what consciousness is.

 

[fromderinside]

It is assumed by some that consciousness is an electrical effect because we can measure electrical activity in the brain.

There is no evidence consciousness is an electrical effect.

But that doesn't stop some people from claiming it is one.

If we are talking about MRI we are talking about measuring indirectly oxygen uptake by cells in specific loci. MRI measures iron movement or activity in the brain. Blood is the obvious player in these measurements because it carries oxygen using iron. Higher blood flow in a given area provides evidence of increased metabolic activity through measuring blood flow rates. The cells in the vicinity of the activity are seen as the targets of this activity and they are linked strongly to other evidence of what these cells do. That is how we are able to say decide or choose. Those are things consciousness is supposed to perform.

The rest of your harangue is meaningless.

 

[untermensche]

It is assumed by some that consciousness is an electrical effect because we can measure electrical activity in the brain.

There is no evidence consciousness is an electrical effect.

But that doesn't stop some people from claiming it is one.

If we are talking about MRI we are talking about measuring indirectly oxygen uptake by cells in specific loci. MRI measures iron movement or activity in the brain. Blood is the obvious player in these measurements because it carries oxygen using iron. Higher blood flow in a given area provides evidence of increased metabolic activity through measuring blood flow rates. The cells in the vicinity of the activity are seen as the targets of this activity and they are linked strongly to other evidence of what these cells do. That is how we are able to say decide or choose. Those are things consciousness is supposed to perform.

The rest of your harangue is meaningless.

MRI looks at hydrogen.

Hydrogen nuclei absorb energy via the magnetic field then release it.

I think you might be talking about PET scans.

I know you want to ignore my comments because you want to pretend you understand something.

The question is?

Since with a PET scan we can see activity moving from one area to another, how is the brain doing this? How does the brain move activity from one place and then to another?

Once again, the truth is, we don't have the slightest clue.

 

[bilby]

If we are talking about MRI we are talking about measuring indirectly oxygen uptake by cells in specific loci. MRI measures iron movement or activity in the brain. Blood is the obvious player in these measurements because it carries oxygen using iron. Higher blood flow in a given area provides evidence of increased metabolic activity through measuring blood flow rates. The cells in the vicinity of the activity are seen as the targets of this activity and they are linked strongly to other evidence of what these cells do. That is how we are able to say decide or choose. Those are things consciousness is supposed to perform.

The rest of your harangue is meaningless.

MRI looks at hydrogen.

Hydrogen nuclei absorb energy via the magnetic field then release it.

I think you might be talking about PET scans.

I know you want to ignore my comments because you want to pretend you understand something.

The question is?

Since with a PET scan we can see activity moving from one area to another, how is the brain doing this? How does the brain move activity from one place and then to another?

Once again, the truth is, we don't have the slightest clue.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that activity is an object that needs to be moved from place to place.

This is (yet) an(other) error.

 

[fromderinside]

We can learn things about apparent location of function, if we employ subjective reporting.

But knowing areas of function does not take us one step closer to understanding what consciousness is.

Here are two twisted sentences. As to the first clinical subjective reporting, like ethological journals, is useless unless there are physical evidence to back up what is being claimed by observers.

As to the second knowing the areas where functions are located permit us to test, with tools like MRI and experiments designed to elicit determinable responses, whether an area predicts specific subject micro behavior. How this sort of research isn't useful in determining where or whether consciousness is operative or operating escapes me.

 

[untermensche]

MRI looks at hydrogen.

Hydrogen nuclei absorb energy via the magnetic field then release it.

I think you might be talking about PET scans.

I know you want to ignore my comments because you want to pretend you understand something.

The question is?

Since with a PET scan we can see activity moving from one area to another, how is the brain doing this? How does the brain move activity from one place and then to another?

Once again, the truth is, we don't have the slightest clue.

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that activity is an object that needs to be moved from place to place.

This is (yet) an(other) error.

No. That doesn't follow and once again adds nothing to the discussion.

You are right if you are implying what is happening is an increase in activity.

We can't explain this increase either.

Which moves from place to place in the brain.

 

[bilby]

You seem to be labouring under the misapprehension that activity is an object that needs to be moved from place to place.

This is (yet) an(other) error.

No. That doesn't follow and once again adds nothing to the discussion.

You are right if you are implying what is happening is an increase in activity.

We can't explain this increase either.

Which moves from place to place in the brain.

Well, you are right that your claim adds nothing to the discussion.