Reddit reviews Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

You might be interested in Consciousness and the Brain by Dehaene. It details a lot of the recent experiments that scientists have been using to probe consciousness.

> i would like to read up on this.

There are a whole bunch of interesting books on neuroscience (and psychology), written for us laypeople. Some really wild facts to read and think about. I think one of the craziest that I learned is that we essentially "hallucinate" our world, because we have discovered that the optic nerve simply cannot transfer all pixels of data from our retinas. Instead there are several channels of "pieces" of our visual picture, such as curves, edges, movement, color, etc., and the brain reconstructs it somehow into the HD picture that we perceive we are seeing.

Anyway, I cannot recall for sure if it was the book I read about with the brain activity reaching into conscious awareness or not, but you might check out Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. Also, a lot of modern psychology 101 books have tons of interesting observations.

The Ego Tunnel by Metzinger

Consciousness and the Brain by Dahaene

Self Comes to Mind by Damasio

Consciousness and the Social Brain by Graziano

After /u/hopeless_poet was gifted the book [Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0143126261/ref=aw_wl_vv_dp_3_6?colid=2A05ZAVPIGIXE&coliid=I3RXBO7N8BX5IE) his body itched with the desire to observe a brain himself. The thought of a stranger strapped onto a table, squirming and pleading for release, a sharp scalpel in his hand so carefully cutting through skin and bone, so transfixed in the process that the ear-wrenching screams were nothing more than background noise -- it was a thought that fueled him, a thought that controlled his existence and made it impossible for him to concentrate on his everyday life activities. He longed for the blood, for the fragile organ that, like magic, manages to give functionality to such disgusting, undeserving creatures. This desire soon overpowered him and he began to drive endlessly into the night, stopping only when he had found a good location, and proceeding to walk the streets in search for the perfect test subject. At last, after tireless weeks of searching, he found her. She, too, walked the streets at night, but her intentions were much more appalling. She was the scum of society, a pathetic drug addict willing to sell every inch of herself in attempt to satisfy her foul habit. His disgust and anger rose as he watched her - she wouldn't be missed by anyone, nor would her disappearance even be noticed. It was easy to subdue her and he did so quickly and efficiently, making sure no one saw or heard. He threw her in the truck of his car carelessly, like he would any other useless object. He brought her into his house and dragged her down to the basement that he had been perfecting for weeks in preparation for this moment. A single lightbulb swung silently in the middle of the room like a pendulum, serving as a reminder that his victim's time was running out. Directly below it was a metal table with restraints attached and next to it lay all the tools he would need. He strapped her onto the table, as he had done so an in-numerous amount of times before in his thoughts. His tools lay in front of him, glistening in the little light there was. She pleaded with him to let her go, she could give him money, drugs, sex. "Shut up, you pathetic whore," he growled as he punched her. The begging stopped. He picked up his scalpel...

HOPELESS_BRAINSURGEON. COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU. DECEMBER 2017.

Hello, cognitive neuroscientist here. As you may guess, I find it rather preposterous that you suggest that "consciousness exists externally and independently from the brain." In my field, we study the relationship between brain states/events and behavior, many of these states which require the conscious phenomenological experience (perception) of stimuli.


It may be the case that you have a fundamentally different definition of conscious ness than the ones that are often used in experimental settings in my field. In my case, I'm referring to consciousness as the ability to attend to, perceive, and ultimately recognize that you have perceived. For example, you can present people with stimuli for periods of time that are so brief, that there responses to those stimuli are effectively random (they're guessing), which we could then infer that the stimuli weren't consciously perceived at all. In fact, we can even "shut off" parts of the brain in real-time and see the effects on behavior using a method called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Here's a concise paper on the topic. Pay particular attention to the section "creating virtual patients", as well as figure 3.

Here is another more recent paper that seems to discuss consciousness from a broader perspective.

Here is another even more recent paper that seems to directly assess your question. This one seems more technical, but try to stick through it. With this paper, be sure to look at the references! It seems like it could be a good source for you. In fact, if you see any other papers in the reference list that you find interesting, let me know and I'll get them for you :) It appears that this researcher is generally interested in consciousness, and has a trade book available that seems right up your alley here.

That all being said, I think it's very important to note that you seem to be making a claim (consciousness exists outside of and independently of the brain) that has no real empirical evidence to support it. What evidence can you bring to me that would change my view? I have given you one of many sources that demonstrate the casual manipulation of conscious perception via manipulation of the synchronous activity of the brain. How would your perspective respond to the vast literature that has reported similar findings (both in TMS studies and with lesion patients)? According to your perspective, would we have to manipulate some unknown source literally detached from the body of the person being studied do observe these disruptions in conscious perception? Overall, I'm not certain how your perspective can hold up empirically. In order for your idea to be taken seriously from a scientific perspective, it first needs to be falsifiable (able to be demonstrated false). I'm not sure how this can be accomplished here, unless I'm missing something.

Finally, I would highly suggest that you do more basic reading in cognitive neuroscience. I would suggest this textbook.

Please take the time to read the information that I have provided for you. Afterwards, if you have any questions, let me know :)

The neuroscientist Antti Revonuso has a book "Consciousness: the science of subjectivity" which has a good mix of the philosophy and science of consciousness. Christof Koch, probably one of the leading neuroscientists who study consciousness, has a few books as well. The Quest for Consciousness is one of his, which has lots of neuroscience particularly visual neuroscience in it. That is mainly science, not much philosophy. Another neuroscientist who studies consciousness is Stanislas Dehaene who wrote a good book Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. These are a few off the top of my head. Click on the image of each book on the left in amazon (which opens up a preview) and scroll to the contents page and see if any of these books are the kind of thing you are looking for.

By the way, there is a free masterclass on consciousness with Christof Koch on the World Science U website. You may also be interested in that.

Additionally you may like to check out the subreddit /r/sciphilconsciousness, which is all about the sharing and discussion of content related to the science and philosophy of consciousness.

> What is consciousness?

Since neuroscience started to research this topic seriously, there's no more reason for mysticism. There's textbooks about it now. I personally read Dehaene's book and it cleared up all of my confusion.