Snippets about: Neuroscience
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Making Memories 101
How memories are made:
- Memories are formed through lasting physical changes in the brain in response to experiences. The process involves four steps:
- Encoding - translating sensory information into neurological language,
- Consolidation - linking related neural activity into a connected pattern,
- Storage - maintaining the neural pattern over time through structural changes,
- Retrieval - reactivating the stored neural pattern to recall the memory.
- The hippocampus is essential for consolidating new consciously retrievable memories by binding together disparate neural activity.
Section: 1, Chapter: 1
Book: Remember
Author: Lisa Genova
Split-Brain Patients Reveal The Divisibility Of Consciousness
Research on split-brain patients, whose cerebral hemispheres have been surgically disconnected, reveals some startling things about consciousness:
- The two hemispheres display a remarkable degree of functional specialization and independence when separated
- The hemispheres can have separate senses of self, different desires, and even fight against each other for control
- Consciousness itself is divisible by splitting the brain
Subjectively, there is only consciousness and its contents, but the unity of the mind depends on the normal functioning of the corpus callosum connecting the two hemispheres.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
REM Sleep And NREM Sleep: Distinct Neurological Profiles
REM sleep and NREM sleep are characterized by very different patterns of brain activity:
NREM sleep:
- Dominated by slow, synchronous brain waves
- Reflects a relatively quiescent, inactive brain state
- Plays a key role in memory consolidation and learning
REM sleep:
- Characterized by fast, desynchronized brain waves similar to wake
- Increased activity in visual, motor, emotional and memory centers
- Plays a key role in emotional processing, creativity and memory integration
Switching between NREM and REM sleep through the night allows the brain to carry out distinct but complementary cognitive processes that are vital for learning, memory, emotional health and overall brain function.
Section: 3, Chapter: 9
Book: Why We Sleep
Author: Matthew Walker
Consciousness Is Subjective Experience
At the heart of the mind-body problem lies the mystery of consciousness itself. Philosopher Thomas Nagel defined consciousness as essentially subjective experience - there is "something that it is like" to be a conscious creature.
Consciousness cannot be an illusion, because the very fact that things seem a certain way is what consciousness is in the first place. Even a brain in a vat having delusions is conscious simply by virtue of having experience at all. Consciousness, in this sense, is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
Consciousness Arises From Unconscious Processes
Cognitive science reveals that much of our mental life takes place unconsciously, shaping conscious experience behind the scenes. Stimuli can influence behavior and trigger emotional responses without ever entering awareness. The conscious mind isn't the whole mind - it's more like the tip of an iceberg, with unconscious processes making up the unseen bulk beneath the surface.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
Consciousness Is What Matters
"Despite the obvious importance of the unconscious mind, consciousness is what matters to us—not just for the purpose of spiritual practice but in every aspect of our lives. Consciousness is the substance of any experience we can have or hope for, now or in the future...It is easy to see that any further developments in physics, chemistry, or biology will do nothing to close the explanatory gap. Consciousness is just a matter of what things seem like to a subject - and where there is no subject, there is no seeming."
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
No One Knows How Consciousness Emerges From The Brain
Despite all that neuroscience has learned about the brain, no one really knows how networks of neurons produce the inner światło of consciousness. It seems impossible to explain subjective experience in terms of physical processes.
There appears to be an unbridgeable "explanatory gap" between objective descriptions of the brain and first-person experience. Some philosophers argue this gap can never be closed by science. Others believe consciousness may remain a mystery forever.
Section: 1, Chapter: 2
Book: Waking Up
Author: Sam Harris
