Secondary consciousness
Encyclopedia
Secondary consciousness, a term coined by Gerald Edelman
, is an individual’s accessibility of their past history and future plans, as well as consciousness of their consciousness
. The ability allows its possessors to go beyond the limits of the remembered present of primary consciousness
. Primary consciousness can be defined as simple awareness that includes perception
and emotion
. As such, it is ascribed to some animals. By contrast, secondary consciousness depends on and includes such features as self-reflective awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition
.
, it became a general consensus that the mind had become a matter of philosophy
and that science was not able to penetrate the issue of consciousness- that consciousness was outside of space and time. However, over the last 20 years, many scholars have begun to move toward a science of consciousness. Such notable neuroscientists that have led the move to neural correlates of the self and of consciousness are Antonio Damasio
and Gerald Edelman
. Damasio has demonstrated that emotions and their biological foundation play a critical role in high level cognition, and Edelman has created a framework for analyzing consciousness through a scientific outlook. The current problem consciousness researchers face involves explaining how and why consciousness arises from neural computation. In his research on this problem, Edelman has developed a theory of consciousness, in which he has coined the terms primary consciousness
and secondary consciousness. Despite being an often criticized theory, Edelman’s theory of consciousness is regarded as the most neurobiologically sound and accurate description of consciousness to date. The author puts forward the belief that consciousness is a particular kind of brain process; linked and integrated, yet complex and differentiated.
of neural systems that gave rise to consciousness, but not on selection for consciousness itself. He is noted for his theory of neuronal group selection, also known as Neural Darwinism
, which displays the belief that consciousness is the product of natural selection. He believes consciousness is not something separate from the real world, thus the attempt to eliminate Descartes’ “dualism
” as a possible consideration. He also rejects theories based on the notion that the brain is a computer or an instructional system. Instead, he suggests that the brain is a selectional system, one in which large numbers of variant circuits are generated epigenetically
. He claims the potential connectivity in the neural net “far exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe”
Edelman elaborates on the dynamic core hypothesis (DCH), which is a term used to loosely describe the thalamocortical region- the region believed to be the integration center of consciousness. The DCH reflects the use and disuse of interconnected neuronal networks during stimulation of this region. It has been shown through computer models that neuronal groups existing in the cerebral cortex
and thalamus
interact in the form of synchronous oscillation
. The interaction between distinct neuronal groups forms the ‘dynamic core’ and may help explain the nature of conscious experience.
Re-entry
Edelman integrates the DCH hypothesis into Neural Darwinism, in which metastable interactions in the thalamocortical region cause a process of selectionism through re-entry
, a host of internal feedback
loops. “Re-entry”, as Edelman states, “provides the critical means by which the activities of distributed multiple brain areas are linked, bound, and then dynamically altered in time during perceptual categorization. Both diversity and re-entry are necessary to account for the fundamental properties of conscious experience.” These re-entrant signals are reinforced by areas Edelman calls "degenerate". Degeneracy doesn't imply deterioration, but instead redundancy as many areas in the brain handle the same or similar tasks. With this brain structure emerging in early humans, selection could favor certain brains and pass their patterns down the generations. Habits once erratic and highly individual ultimately became the social norm.
have long-term memory, they lack explicit narrative, and, at best, can only deal with the immediate scene in the remembered present. While they still have an advantage over animals lacking such ability, evolution
has brought forth a growing complexity in consciousness, particularly in mammals. Animals with this complexity are said to have secondary consciousness.
Secondary consciousness is seen in animals with semantic capabilities, such as the four great apes
. It is present in its richest form in the human species, which is unique in possessing complex language
made up of syntax
and semantics. In considering how the neural mechanisms underlying primary consciousness arose and were maintained during evolution, it is proposed that at some time around the divergence of reptiles into mammals and then into birds, the embryological development of large numbers of new reciprocal connections allowed rich re-entrant activity to take place between the more posterior brain systems carrying out perceptual categorization and the more frontally located systems responsible for value-category memory. The ability of an animal to relate a present complex scene to its own previous history of learning conferred an adaptive evolutionary advantage. At much later evolutionary epochs, further re-entrant circuits appeared that linked semantic and linguistic performance to categorical and conceptual memory
systems. This development enabled the emergence of secondary consciousness.
Self-recognition
For the advocates of the idea of a secondary consciousness, self-recognition serves as a critical component and a key defining measure. What is most interesting then, is the evolutionary appeal that arises with the concept of self-recognition. In non-human species and in children, the “mirror test
” has been used as an indicator of self-awareness
. In these experiments, subjects are placed in front of a mirror and provided with a mark that cannot be seen directly but is visible in the mirror.
There have been numerous findings in the past 30 years which display fairly clear evidence of possessors of self-recognition including the following animals:
It should be mentioned that even in the chimpanzee, the species most studied and with the most convincing findings, clear-cut evidence of self-recognition is not obtained in all individuals tested. Occurrence is about 75% in young adults and considerably less in young and old individuals. For Monkeys, non-primate mammals, and in a number of bird species, exploration of the mirror and social displays were observed. However, hints at mirror-induced self-directed behavior have been obtained.
Self-recognition study in the magpie
It was recently thought that self-recognition was restricted to mammals with large brains and highly evolved social cognition but absent from animals without a neocortex
. However, in a recent study, an investigation of self-recognition in corvids was carried out, and significant result quantified the ability of self-recognition in the magpie. Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last common ancestor
nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror and mark tests showed that neocortex-less magpies are capable of understanding that a mirror image belongs to their own body. The findings show that magpies respond in the mirror and mark test in a manner similar to apes, dolphins and elephants. This is a remarkable capability that, although not fully concrete in its determination of self-recognition, is at least a prerequisite of self-recognition. This is not only of interest regarding the convergent evolution of social intelligence; it is also valuable for an understanding of the general principles that govern cognitive evolution and their underlying neural mechanisms. The magpies were chosen to study based on their empathy/ lifestyle, a possible precursor for their ability of self-awareness.
Research on animal consciousness
Many researchers of consciousness have looked upon such types of research in animals as significant and interesting approaches. Ursula Voss of the Universität Bonn believes that the theory of protoconsciousness may serve as adequate explanation for self-recognition found in this bird species, as they would develop secondary consciousness during REM sleep. She added that many types of birds have very sophisticated language systems. Don Kuiken of the University of Alberta finds such research interesting as well as if we continue to study consciousness with animal models (with differing types of consciousness), we would be able to separate the different forms of reflectiveness found in today’s world.
, NREM sleep, REM sleep, and waking states, many dream researchers are attempting to scientifically explore consciousness. When exploring consciousness through the concept of dreams, many researchers believe the general characteristics that constitute primary and secondary consciousness remain intact:
“Primary consciousness is a state in which you have no future or past, a state of just being…. no executive ego control in your dreams, no planning, things just happen to you, you just are in a dream. Yet, everything feels real…Secondary is based on language, has to do with self-reflection, it has to do with forming abstractions, and that is dependent of language. Only animals with language have secondary consciousness”.
, NREM sleep, REM sleep and waking states. The goal of these studies is often to seek physiological correlates of dreaming and apply them in the hopes of understanding relations to consciousness.
Prefrontal cortex
Some notable, albeit criticized findings include the functions of the prefrontal cortex
that are most relevant to the self-conscious awareness that is lost in sleep, commonly termed as ‘executive’ functions. These include self-observation, planning, prioritizing and decision-making abilities, which are, in turn, based upon more basic cognitive abilities such as attention, working memory, temporal
memory
and behavioral inhibition Some experimental data which display differences between the self-awareness experienced in waking and its diminution in dreaming can be explained by deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during REM sleep. It has been proposed that deactivation results from a direct inhibition of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortical neurons by acetylcholine
, the release of which is enhanced during REM sleep.
In one study, researchers sought physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. They showed that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like reflective awareness and agentive control experienced in lucid dreams is paralleled by significant changes in electrophysiology
. Participants were recorded using 19-channel Electroencephalography
(EEG), and 3 achieved lucidity in the experiment. Differences between REM sleep and lucid dreaming were most prominent in the 40-Hz frequency
band. The increase in 40-Hz power was especially strong at frontolateral and frontal sites. Their findings include the indication that 40-Hz activity holds a functional role in the modulation of conscious awareness across different conscious states. Furthermore, they termed lucid dreaming as a hybrid state, or that lucidity occurs in a state with features of both REM sleep and waking. In order to move from non-lucid REM sleep dreaming to lucid REM sleep dreaming, there must be a shift in brain activity in the direction of waking.
Other well-known contributing scholars involved with lucid dream research and consciousness, yet primarily based in fields such as psychology and philosophy include:
, a creator of the Activation-synthesis hypothesis
, has been developed through dream research and involves the idea of a secondary consciousness. Hobson suggests that brain states underlying waking and dreaming cooperate and that their functional interplay is crucial to the optimal functioning of both. Ultimately, he proposes the idea that REM sleep provides opportunities to the brain to prepare itself for its main integrative functions, including secondary consciousness, which would explain the developmental and evolutionary considerations to be taken with birds. This functional interplay which occurs during REM sleep constitutes a ‘proto-conscious’ state which preludes consciousness and can develop and maintain higher order consciousness.
has evolved, it has metamorphosed into the three-dimensional framework known as the AIM model. The AIM model describes a method of mapping conscious states onto an underlying physiological state space. The AIM model relates not just to wake/sleep states of consciousness, but to all states of consciousness
. By choosing activation, input source, and mode of neuromodulation
as the three dimensions, the proposers believe to have selected “how much information is being processed by the brain (A), what information is being processed (I), and how it is being processed (M).
Hobson, Schott, and Stickgold propose three aspects of the AIM model:
as a model, which entails the true difficulty in understanding consciousness.
The most common of recent criticisms include:
Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman is an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules...
, is an individual’s accessibility of their past history and future plans, as well as consciousness of their consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. The ability allows its possessors to go beyond the limits of the remembered present of primary consciousness
Primary consciousness
Primary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form of consciousness is also...
. Primary consciousness can be defined as simple awareness that includes perception
Perception
Perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of the environment by organizing and interpreting sensory information. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs...
and emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
. As such, it is ascribed to some animals. By contrast, secondary consciousness depends on and includes such features as self-reflective awareness, abstract thinking, volition and metacognition
Metacognition
Metacognition is defined as "cognition about cognition", or "knowing about knowing." It can take many forms; it includes knowledge about when and how to use particular strategies for learning or for problem solving...
.
Brief history and overview
Since Descartes’ proposal of dualismDualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
, it became a general consensus that the mind had become a matter of philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and that science was not able to penetrate the issue of consciousness- that consciousness was outside of space and time. However, over the last 20 years, many scholars have begun to move toward a science of consciousness. Such notable neuroscientists that have led the move to neural correlates of the self and of consciousness are Antonio Damasio
Antonio Damasio
Antonio Damasio is David Dornsife Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, where he heads USC's Brain and Creativity Institute and Adjunct Professor at the Salk Institute. Prior to taking up his posts at USC, in 2005, Damasio was M.W...
and Gerald Edelman
Gerald Edelman
Gerald Maurice Edelman is an American biologist who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for work with Rodney Robert Porter on the immune system. Edelman's Nobel Prize-winning research concerned discovery of the structure of antibody molecules...
. Damasio has demonstrated that emotions and their biological foundation play a critical role in high level cognition, and Edelman has created a framework for analyzing consciousness through a scientific outlook. The current problem consciousness researchers face involves explaining how and why consciousness arises from neural computation. In his research on this problem, Edelman has developed a theory of consciousness, in which he has coined the terms primary consciousness
Primary consciousness
Primary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form of consciousness is also...
and secondary consciousness. Despite being an often criticized theory, Edelman’s theory of consciousness is regarded as the most neurobiologically sound and accurate description of consciousness to date. The author puts forward the belief that consciousness is a particular kind of brain process; linked and integrated, yet complex and differentiated.
Evolution Towards Secondary Consciousness
Edelman argues that the evolutionary emergence of consciousness depended on the natural selectionNatural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
of neural systems that gave rise to consciousness, but not on selection for consciousness itself. He is noted for his theory of neuronal group selection, also known as Neural Darwinism
Neural Darwinism
Neural Darwinism, a large scale theory of brain function by Gerald Edelman, was initially published in 1978, in a book called The Mindful Brain...
, which displays the belief that consciousness is the product of natural selection. He believes consciousness is not something separate from the real world, thus the attempt to eliminate Descartes’ “dualism
Dualism
Dualism denotes a state of two parts. The term 'dualism' was originally coined to denote co-eternal binary opposition, a meaning that is preserved in metaphysical and philosophical duality discourse but has been diluted in general or common usages. Dualism can refer to moral dualism, Dualism (from...
” as a possible consideration. He also rejects theories based on the notion that the brain is a computer or an instructional system. Instead, he suggests that the brain is a selectional system, one in which large numbers of variant circuits are generated epigenetically
Epigenetics
In biology, and specifically genetics, epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence – hence the name epi- -genetics...
. He claims the potential connectivity in the neural net “far exceeds the number of elementary particles in the universe”
Dynamic core hypothesis and re-entry
Dynamic core hypothesisEdelman elaborates on the dynamic core hypothesis (DCH), which is a term used to loosely describe the thalamocortical region- the region believed to be the integration center of consciousness. The DCH reflects the use and disuse of interconnected neuronal networks during stimulation of this region. It has been shown through computer models that neuronal groups existing in the cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...
and thalamus
Thalamus
The thalamus is a midline paired symmetrical structure within the brains of vertebrates, including humans. It is situated between the cerebral cortex and midbrain, both in terms of location and neurological connections...
interact in the form of synchronous oscillation
Oscillation
Oscillation is the repetitive variation, typically in time, of some measure about a central value or between two or more different states. Familiar examples include a swinging pendulum and AC power. The term vibration is sometimes used more narrowly to mean a mechanical oscillation but sometimes...
. The interaction between distinct neuronal groups forms the ‘dynamic core’ and may help explain the nature of conscious experience.
Re-entry
Edelman integrates the DCH hypothesis into Neural Darwinism, in which metastable interactions in the thalamocortical region cause a process of selectionism through re-entry
Reentry (neural circuitry)
Reentry is a neural structuring of the brain, specifically in humans, which is hypothesized to allow for widely distributed groups of neurons to achieve integrated and synchronized firing, which is proposed to be a requirement for consciousness, as outlined by Gerald Edelman and Giulio Tononi in...
, a host of internal feedback
Feedback
Feedback describes the situation when output from an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or occurrences of the same Feedback describes the situation when output from (or information about the result of) an event or phenomenon in the past will influence an occurrence or...
loops. “Re-entry”, as Edelman states, “provides the critical means by which the activities of distributed multiple brain areas are linked, bound, and then dynamically altered in time during perceptual categorization. Both diversity and re-entry are necessary to account for the fundamental properties of conscious experience.” These re-entrant signals are reinforced by areas Edelman calls "degenerate". Degeneracy doesn't imply deterioration, but instead redundancy as many areas in the brain handle the same or similar tasks. With this brain structure emerging in early humans, selection could favor certain brains and pass their patterns down the generations. Habits once erratic and highly individual ultimately became the social norm.
Exhibiting secondary consciousness in the animal kingdom
While animals with primary consciousnessPrimary consciousness
Primary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form of consciousness is also...
have long-term memory, they lack explicit narrative, and, at best, can only deal with the immediate scene in the remembered present. While they still have an advantage over animals lacking such ability, evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
has brought forth a growing complexity in consciousness, particularly in mammals. Animals with this complexity are said to have secondary consciousness.
Secondary consciousness is seen in animals with semantic capabilities, such as the four great apes
Great Apes
Great Apes may refer to*Great apes, species in the biological family Hominidae, including humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans*Great Apes , a 1997 novel by Will Self...
. It is present in its richest form in the human species, which is unique in possessing complex language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
made up of syntax
Syntax
In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing phrases and sentences in natural languages....
and semantics. In considering how the neural mechanisms underlying primary consciousness arose and were maintained during evolution, it is proposed that at some time around the divergence of reptiles into mammals and then into birds, the embryological development of large numbers of new reciprocal connections allowed rich re-entrant activity to take place between the more posterior brain systems carrying out perceptual categorization and the more frontally located systems responsible for value-category memory. The ability of an animal to relate a present complex scene to its own previous history of learning conferred an adaptive evolutionary advantage. At much later evolutionary epochs, further re-entrant circuits appeared that linked semantic and linguistic performance to categorical and conceptual memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
systems. This development enabled the emergence of secondary consciousness.
Self-recognition
For the advocates of the idea of a secondary consciousness, self-recognition serves as a critical component and a key defining measure. What is most interesting then, is the evolutionary appeal that arises with the concept of self-recognition. In non-human species and in children, the “mirror test
Mirror test
The mirror test is a measure of self-awareness, as animals either possess or lack the ability to recognize themselves in a mirror.The test was developed by Gordon Gallup Jr. in 1970, based in part on observations made by Charles Darwin. While visiting a zoo, Darwin held a mirror up to an orangutan...
” has been used as an indicator of self-awareness
Self-awareness
Self-awareness is the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals...
. In these experiments, subjects are placed in front of a mirror and provided with a mark that cannot be seen directly but is visible in the mirror.
There have been numerous findings in the past 30 years which display fairly clear evidence of possessors of self-recognition including the following animals:
- Chimpanzees, orangutans, pygmy chimpanzees, and gorillas.
- Dolphins and elephants. Findings suggestive of self-recognition in mammals other than apes have been reported.
- Magpies.
It should be mentioned that even in the chimpanzee, the species most studied and with the most convincing findings, clear-cut evidence of self-recognition is not obtained in all individuals tested. Occurrence is about 75% in young adults and considerably less in young and old individuals. For Monkeys, non-primate mammals, and in a number of bird species, exploration of the mirror and social displays were observed. However, hints at mirror-induced self-directed behavior have been obtained.
Self-recognition study in the magpie
It was recently thought that self-recognition was restricted to mammals with large brains and highly evolved social cognition but absent from animals without a neocortex
Neocortex
The neocortex , also called the neopallium and isocortex , is a part of the brain of mammals. It is the outer layer of the cerebral hemispheres, and made up of six layers, labelled I to VI...
. However, in a recent study, an investigation of self-recognition in corvids was carried out, and significant result quantified the ability of self-recognition in the magpie. Mammals and birds inherited the same brain components from their last common ancestor
Ancestor
An ancestor is a parent or the parent of an ancestor ....
nearly 300 million years ago, and have since independently evolved and formed significantly different brain types. The results of the mirror and mark tests showed that neocortex-less magpies are capable of understanding that a mirror image belongs to their own body. The findings show that magpies respond in the mirror and mark test in a manner similar to apes, dolphins and elephants. This is a remarkable capability that, although not fully concrete in its determination of self-recognition, is at least a prerequisite of self-recognition. This is not only of interest regarding the convergent evolution of social intelligence; it is also valuable for an understanding of the general principles that govern cognitive evolution and their underlying neural mechanisms. The magpies were chosen to study based on their empathy/ lifestyle, a possible precursor for their ability of self-awareness.
Research on animal consciousness
Many researchers of consciousness have looked upon such types of research in animals as significant and interesting approaches. Ursula Voss of the Universität Bonn believes that the theory of protoconsciousness may serve as adequate explanation for self-recognition found in this bird species, as they would develop secondary consciousness during REM sleep. She added that many types of birds have very sophisticated language systems. Don Kuiken of the University of Alberta finds such research interesting as well as if we continue to study consciousness with animal models (with differing types of consciousness), we would be able to separate the different forms of reflectiveness found in today’s world.
Lucid vs. non lucid dreaming as a model
In the last couple of decades, dream research has taken a turn into the field of consciousness. Through lucid dreamingLucid dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
, NREM sleep, REM sleep, and waking states, many dream researchers are attempting to scientifically explore consciousness. When exploring consciousness through the concept of dreams, many researchers believe the general characteristics that constitute primary and secondary consciousness remain intact:
“Primary consciousness is a state in which you have no future or past, a state of just being…. no executive ego control in your dreams, no planning, things just happen to you, you just are in a dream. Yet, everything feels real…Secondary is based on language, has to do with self-reflection, it has to do with forming abstractions, and that is dependent of language. Only animals with language have secondary consciousness”.
Circuitry/anatomy
There have been studies used to determine what parts of the brain are associated with lucid dreamingLucid dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
, NREM sleep, REM sleep and waking states. The goal of these studies is often to seek physiological correlates of dreaming and apply them in the hopes of understanding relations to consciousness.
Prefrontal cortex
Some notable, albeit criticized findings include the functions of the prefrontal cortex
Prefrontal cortex
The prefrontal cortex is the anterior part of the frontal lobes of the brain, lying in front of the motor and premotor areas.This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behaviors, personality expression, decision making and moderating correct social behavior...
that are most relevant to the self-conscious awareness that is lost in sleep, commonly termed as ‘executive’ functions. These include self-observation, planning, prioritizing and decision-making abilities, which are, in turn, based upon more basic cognitive abilities such as attention, working memory, temporal
Temporal
Temporal can refer to:* of or relating to time** Temporality in philosophy** Temporal database, a database recording aspects of time varying values** The Temporal power of the Popes of the Roman Catholic Church...
memory
Memory
In psychology, memory is an organism's ability to store, retain, and recall information and experiences. Traditional studies of memory began in the fields of philosophy, including techniques of artificially enhancing memory....
and behavioral inhibition Some experimental data which display differences between the self-awareness experienced in waking and its diminution in dreaming can be explained by deactivation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during REM sleep. It has been proposed that deactivation results from a direct inhibition of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortical neurons by acetylcholine
Acetylcholine
The chemical compound acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter in both the peripheral nervous system and central nervous system in many organisms including humans...
, the release of which is enhanced during REM sleep.
Research
Experiments and studies have been taken out to test neural correlations of lucid dreams with consciousness in dream research. Although there are many difficulties in conducting lucid dreaming research (e.g. number of lucid subjects, ‘type’ of lucidity achieved, etc.), there have been studies with significant results.In one study, researchers sought physiological correlates of lucid dreaming. They showed that the unusual combination of hallucinatory dream activity and wake-like reflective awareness and agentive control experienced in lucid dreams is paralleled by significant changes in electrophysiology
Electrophysiology
Electrophysiology is the study of the electrical properties of biological cells and tissues. It involves measurements of voltage change or electric current on a wide variety of scales from single ion channel proteins to whole organs like the heart...
. Participants were recorded using 19-channel Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography
Electroencephalography is the recording of electrical activity along the scalp. EEG measures voltage fluctuations resulting from ionic current flows within the neurons of the brain...
(EEG), and 3 achieved lucidity in the experiment. Differences between REM sleep and lucid dreaming were most prominent in the 40-Hz frequency
Frequency
Frequency is the number of occurrences of a repeating event per unit time. It is also referred to as temporal frequency.The period is the duration of one cycle in a repeating event, so the period is the reciprocal of the frequency...
band. The increase in 40-Hz power was especially strong at frontolateral and frontal sites. Their findings include the indication that 40-Hz activity holds a functional role in the modulation of conscious awareness across different conscious states. Furthermore, they termed lucid dreaming as a hybrid state, or that lucidity occurs in a state with features of both REM sleep and waking. In order to move from non-lucid REM sleep dreaming to lucid REM sleep dreaming, there must be a shift in brain activity in the direction of waking.
Other well-known contributing scholars involved with lucid dream research and consciousness, yet primarily based in fields such as psychology and philosophy include:
- Stephen LaBergeStephen LaBergeStephen LaBerge is a psychophysiologist and a leader in the scientific study of lucid dreaming. In 1967 he received his Bachelor's Degree in mathematics. He began researching lucid dreaming for his Ph.D. in Psychophysiology at Stanford University, which he received in 1980...
- most known for his lucid dreaming education and facilitation. His technique of signaling to a collaborator monitoring his EEGEEGEEG commonly refers to electroencephalography, a measurement of the electrical activity of the brain.EEG may also refer to:* Emperor Entertainment Group, a Hong Kong-based entertainment company...
with agreed-upon eye movements during REM sleep became the first published, scientifically-verified signal from a dreamer's mind to the outside world. - Thomas MetzingerThomas MetzingerThomas Metzinger is a German philosopher. he holds the position of director of the theoretical philosophy group at the department of philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz and is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies and on the advisory board of the...
- known for his correlate of neuroscience and philosophy in understanding consciousness. He is praised for his ability to probe and link fundamental issues between these fields. - Paul TholeyPaul TholeyPaul Tholey was a German Gestalt psychologist, and a professor of psychology and sports science.Paul Tholey started the study of oneirology in an attempt to prove that dreams occur in color...
- most known for his research on rare, non-ordinary ego experiences and OBEs that arise with lucid dreaming. He has also studied the cognitive abilities of dream characters in lucid dreams through various experiments.
Theory of Protoconsciousness
The Theory of Protoconsciousness, developed by Allan HobsonAllan Hobson
John Allan Hobson, M.D. is an American psychiatrist and dream researcher.He is known for his research on Rapid eye movement sleep. He is Professor of Psychiatry, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School,...
, a creator of the Activation-synthesis hypothesis
Activation-synthesis hypothesis
The activation-synthesis hypothesis, proposed by Harvard University psychiatrists John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, is a neurobiological theory of dreams first published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in December 1977...
, has been developed through dream research and involves the idea of a secondary consciousness. Hobson suggests that brain states underlying waking and dreaming cooperate and that their functional interplay is crucial to the optimal functioning of both. Ultimately, he proposes the idea that REM sleep provides opportunities to the brain to prepare itself for its main integrative functions, including secondary consciousness, which would explain the developmental and evolutionary considerations to be taken with birds. This functional interplay which occurs during REM sleep constitutes a ‘proto-conscious’ state which preludes consciousness and can develop and maintain higher order consciousness.
AIM model
As the activation-synthesis hypothesisActivation-synthesis hypothesis
The activation-synthesis hypothesis, proposed by Harvard University psychiatrists John Allan Hobson and Robert McCarley, is a neurobiological theory of dreams first published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in December 1977...
has evolved, it has metamorphosed into the three-dimensional framework known as the AIM model. The AIM model describes a method of mapping conscious states onto an underlying physiological state space. The AIM model relates not just to wake/sleep states of consciousness, but to all states of consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
. By choosing activation, input source, and mode of neuromodulation
Neuromodulation
In Neuromodulation several classes of neurotransmitters regulate diverse populations of central nervous system neurons...
as the three dimensions, the proposers believe to have selected “how much information is being processed by the brain (A), what information is being processed (I), and how it is being processed (M).
Hobson, Schott, and Stickgold propose three aspects of the AIM model:
- Conscious states are in large part determined by three interdependent processes, the level of brain activationActivationActivation in chemical sciences generally refers to the process whereby something is prepared or excited for a subsequent reaction.- Chemistry :...
(“A”), the origin of inputs (“I”) to the activated areas, and the relative levels of activation of aminergic (noradrenergic and serotonergicSerotonergicSerotonergic or serotoninergic means "related to the neurotransmitter serotonin". A synapse is serotonergic if it uses serotonin as its neurotransmitter...
) and cholinergicCholinergicThe word choline generally refers to the various quaternary ammonium salts containing the N,N,N-trimethylethanolammonium cation. Found in most animal tissues, choline is a primary component of the neurotransmitter acetylcholine and functions with inositol as a basic constituent of lecithin...
neuromodulators (“M”).
- The AIM Model proposes that all of the universes’ possible brain-mind states can be exemplified with a three-dimensional state space, with axes A, I, and M (activation, input, and mode), and that the state of the brain-mind at any given instant of time can be described as a point in this space. Since the AIM model represents brain-mind state as a sequence of points, Hobson adds that time is a fourth dimension of the model.
- The AIM model proposes that all three parameters defining the state space are continuous variables, and any point in the state space can in theory be occupied.
Criticism of lucid dreaming model
Secondary consciousness, as it remains a controversial topic, has received often contrasting findings and beliefs regarding lucid dreamingLucid dreaming
A lucid dream is a dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik van Eeden . In a lucid dream, the dreamer can actively participate in and manipulate imaginary experiences in the dream environment. Lucid dreams can seem real and...
as a model, which entails the true difficulty in understanding consciousness.
The most common of recent criticisms include:
- The analyzed circuitry involved in lucid dreaming, REM sleep, NREM sleep, and waking states used to determine reflective ability. If, as many scholars have come to suggest, typical non-lucid REM dreaming reflects primary consciousnessPrimary consciousnessPrimary consciousness is a term the American biologist Gerald Edelman coined to describe the ability, found in humans and some animals, to integrate observed events with memory to create an awareness of the present and immediate past of the world around them. This form of consciousness is also...
, the belief that typical non-lucid dreaming is accompanied by de-activation of the DL-PFC becomes significant. Although the Dorsolateral Prefrontal CortexDorsolateral prefrontal cortexThe dorsolateral prefrontal cortex , according to a more restricted definition, is roughly equivalent to Brodmann areas 9 and 46. According to a broader definition DL-PFC consists of the lateral portions of Brodmann areas 9 – 12, of areas 45, 46, and the superior part of area 47. These regions...
(DL-PFC) is believed to be the site of “executive ego control”, it has never been tested. - The idea of “executive ego control” and its articulation. Kuiken has stated that typical non-lucid REM dreaming may involve another form of self-regulative activity that is not related to activation of the DL-PFC. There is evidence that the subtle self-regulation characteristic of musical improvisationMusical improvisationMusical improvisation is the creative activity of immediate musical composition, which combines performance with communication of emotions and instrumental technique as well as spontaneous response to other musicians...
is similar in pattern to the activations and de-activations (including de-activation of the DL-PFC) that characterize REM sleep. It is probable that the loss of one conscious form of self-regulation during non-lucid dreaming creates the possibility for the adoption of an unconscious, but “fluid” form of self-regulation that resembles that of musical improvisation. It is possible, he believes, that non-lucid dreaming entails self-regulated but fluid openness to ‘what comes,’ rather than the direct self-monitoring and inhibition that enable ‘rational’ planning and decision making. In a recent study, it has been proven that unconscious task-relevant signals can actively trigger and initiate an inhibition to respond, thereby breaking the alleged close correlation between consciousness and inhibitory control. This proves that self-regulative activities (a characteristic of secondary consciousness for many scholars) can occur independently of consciousness of consciousness.
- Using lucid dreaming as a model of secondary consciousness. Some scholars believe lucid dreaming does not constitute a single type of reflectiveness. It is already argued that there may be different kinds of reflectiveness that might define secondary consciousness, so the difficulty in using lucid dreaming as a model is greatly increased. For example, there may be a realization in a dream that will often go without gaining control. There are different amounts of ‘executive functions’ taken between lucid dreams, thus displaying how there are many different types of reflectiveness involved in ‘lucid’ dreaming.