Nice post!
Interesting, and indeed very reasonable with comp, in its expectable
natural realizations. I agree on points on salvia too, except that
salvia's reports witness extreme asymmetrical phenomena, which
suggests some disconnection between the left brain and the right
brain. Of course it is a very complex matter, but there are tools
(some a bit toxic though, some other not).
Salvia action is believed to be very specific, and what makes salvia
attractive for such studies is that when smoked, the experience last
for 4m to 8m in the average, on sober people. You feel quite well
after (unless the goal was taking a superdose for making a funny video
for youtube in company of light and noisy sitters, that is using it
contradicting the user guide, or common sense when you know what the
plant is capable of).
No doubt we will come back on this. I have *many* theories on salvia
in the comp realm. Including possible different report predictions for
different people.
Nice paper, but it still miss Everett's and comp's ways of
differentiation of consciousness.
Comp is not just testable, it is improvable, but to play fair the
game, and keep the comp qualia/quanta distinction, the improvement
should not just be based with the experimental facts, but with the
arithmetical formulation of the measure problem.
Consciousness is not located in the brain. It is a "quasi-
arithmetical" notion, like "arithmetical truth itself". Its
differentiation will make it seemingly related to special
representations, but that might be transitory, and the uniqueness of
them is a delusion.
You said you don't believe in comp, and I guess you meant that you
believe that comp is untrue, isn't it? What is your opinion on
Everett? I think you told us that you reject it? I am not sure. If you
reject Everett it is normal that you reject comp. (Note that Crick use
comp in the paper, and indeed it is common in that field, even
Hameroff use comp (only Penrose suggested a non-comp theory, where
indeed gravitation collapse the wave in a way non predictible by QM).
Bruno
On 28 May 2014, at 17:23, ghib...@gmail.com wrote:
they were more likely to believe they were in an environment
completely different from the physical space they were actually in
-----> sounds familiar
they often believed to be interacting with "beings" such as
hallucinated dead people, aliens, fairies or mythical creatures
------> machines
the often reported "ego dissolution", a variety of experiences in
which the self ceased to exist in the user's subjective experience.
------> 3p?
Is the key to consciousness in the claustrum?
by Klaus M. Stiefel, The Conversation
The location of the claustrum (blue) and the cingulate cortex
(green), another brain region likely to act as a global integrator.
The person whose brain is shown is looking to the right (see the
inset in the top right corner). Credit: Brain ...more
Consciousness is one of the most fascinating and elusive phenomena
we humans face. Every single one of us experiences it but it remains
surprisingly poorly understood.
That said, psychology, neuroscience and philosophy are currently
making interesting progress in the comprehension of this phenomenon.
The main player in this story is something called the claustrum. The
word originally described an enclosed space in medieval European
monasteries but in the mammalian brain it refers to a small sheet of
neurons just below the cortex, and possibly derived from it in brain
development.
The cortex is the massive folded layer on top of the brain mainly
responsible for many higher brain functions such as language, long-
term planning and our advanced sensory functions.
Interestingly, the claustrum is strongly reciprocally connected to
many cortical areas. The visual cortex (the region involved in
seeing) sends axons (the connecting "wires" of the nervous system)
to the claustrum, and also receives axons from the claustrum.
The same is true for the auditory cortex (involved in hearing) and a
number of other cortex areas. A wealth of information converges in
the claustrum and leaves it to re-enter the cortex.
The connection
Francis Crick - who together with James Watson gave us the structure
of DNA - was interested in a connection between the claustrum and
consciousness.
In a recent paper, published in Frontiers in Integrative
Neuroscience, we have built on the ideas he described in his very
last scientific publication.
Crick and co-author Christoph Koch argued that the claustrum could
be a coordinator of cortical function and hence a "conductor of
consciousness".
Such percepts as colour, form, sound, body position and social
relations are all represented in different parts of the cortex. How
are they bound to a unified experience of consciousness? Wouldn't a
region exerting a (even limited) central control over all these
cortical areas be highly useful?
This is what Crick and Koch suggested when they hypothesised the
claustrum to be a "conductor of consciousness". But how could this
hypothesis about the claustrum's role be tested?
Plant power alters the mind
Salvia divinorum (Herba de Maria). Credit: Wikipedia, CC BY
Enter the plant Salvia divinorum, a type of mint native to Mexico.
The Mazatecs civilisation's priests would chew its leaves to get in
touch with the gods.
It's a powerful psychedelic, but not of the usual type. Substances
such as LSD andpsylocibin (the active compound in "magic" mushrooms)
mainly act by binding to the serotonin neuromodulator receptor
proteins.
It is not completely understood how these receptors bring about
altered states of consciousness, but a reduction of the inhibitory
(negative feedback) communication between neurons in the cortex
likely plays a role.
In contrast, Salvia divinorum acts on the kappa-opiate receptors.
These are structurally related, but their activation has quite
different effects than the mu-opiate receptorswhich bind substances
such as morphine or heroin.
In contrast to the mu-opiate receptors, which are involved in the
processing of pain, the role of the kappa-opiate receptors is
somewhat poorly understood.
Where are these kappa-opiate receptors located in the brain? You
might have guessed it, they are most densely concentrated in the
claustrum (and present at lower densities in a number of other brain
regions such as the frontal cortex and the amygdala).
So, the activity of Salvia likely inhibits the claustrum via its
activation of the kappa-opiate receptors. Consuming Salvia might
just cause the inactivation of the claustrum necessary to test Crick
and Koch's hypothesis.
Any volunteers?
Did we administer this psychedelic to a group of volunteers to then
record their hallucinations and altered perceptions? Well, no. To
get ethics approval for such an experiment with a substance outlawed
in Australia would be near impossible.
While Salvia is not known to be toxic or addictive, the current
societal climate is not very sympathetic towards psychoactive
substances other than alcohol.
But fortunately we had an alternative. The website Erowid.org hosts
a database of many thousand trip reports, submitted by psychedelic
enthusiasts, describing often in considerable detail what went on in
their minds when consuming a wide selection of substances.
We analysed trip reports from this website written by folks who had
consumed Salvia divinorum and, for comparison, LSD.
We found that subjects consuming Salvia were more likely to
experience a few select psychological effects:
they were more likely to believe they were in an environment
completely different from the physical space they were actually in
they often believed to be interacting with "beings" such as
hallucinated dead people, aliens, fairies or mythical creatures
the often reported "ego dissolution", a variety of experiences in
which the self ceased to exist in the user's subjective experience.
... and this means?
Altered surroundings, other beings and ego dissolution - this surely
hints at a disturbance of the "conductor of consciousness", as
expected if the conductor claustrum is perturbed by Salvia divinorum.
If a region central to the integration of consciously represented
information is disturbed in its function, we would expect
fundamental disturbances in the conscious experience. The core of a
person's consciousness seems to be altered by Salvia divinorum,
rather than merely some distortions of vision or audition.
We believe that the psychological effects of Salvia divinorum,
together with the massive concentration of the kappa-opiate
receptors (the target molecules of Salvia divinorum) in the
claustrum support its role as a central coordinator of consciousness.
It's worth noting that our results were not black-and-white. The
users of LSD also experienced (albeit to a lesser degree)
translation into altered environments, fairies and ego dissolution.
This, together with a review of the literature convinced us that the
claustrum is one of the conductors of consciousness, with brain
areas cingulate cortex and pulvinar likely being the other ones.
Still, the claustrum appears to be special in the brain's
connectivity and we think thatSalvia can inactivate it. We hope that
the experimental neuroscience community will take advantage of the
window into the mind which this unique substance provides.
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