Consciousness and the Brain

•Consciousness – our awareness of ourselves and our environment

–States of consciousness: sleeping, waking, and altered states

•daydreaming, meditating, drug induced hallucinating

We have the answers! Except we have none at all… crap.• Cognitive Neuroscience – study of brain

activity linked with mental processes (called cognition)

• Two schools of thought– Conscious experience based on specific neural

circuits firing in a specified manner– Conscious experiences produced by

synchronization of entire brain

Dual Processing – we know more than we know we know… ya know?

• On vs. off staging• Conscious left brain vs. intuitive right brain

• Concept that we process information simultaneously on separate conscious and unconscious tracks

The Two-Track Mind - Vision

• Dual processing system– Visual perception track: unconscious creating

that allows us to think about the world– Visual action track: conscious guide for our

moment to moment actions

• The Hollow Face Illusion– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc6LRxjqzkA&

feature=related

• Dual processing system– Visual perception track: unconscious creating

that allows us to think about the world– Visual action track: conscious guide for our

moment to moment actions

• The Hollow Face Illusion– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc6LRxjqzkA&

feature=related

So what does this show us?

• Much of our everyday thinking happens outside of our conscious awareness

• Parallel unconscious tracks – imagine driving a car or walking home (automatic pilot)

Serial Conscious Processing

• Slower than parallel processing• Allows us to solve new problems which

require focus

• Volunteers?

Selective Attention

• Relate back to bias– Class experience: awareness of your nose, fingers,

hands, feet, smells, sounds, sights – or are you just taking notes?

• Selective Attention: focusing conscious awareness on PARTICULAR stimulus

Selective Inattention

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJG698U2Mvo

Selective Inattention• Inattentional Blindness: failing to see visible

objects when our attention is directed elsewhere

• Change Blindness: failing to notice changes in the environment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkrrVozZR2c

Other types of blindness

• Choice-blindness: people seldom notice deception and will in fact readily explain a wrong preference– Johansson experiment (2005)

• Choice-blindness blindness: people tend believe they have the ability to perceive deception when it occurs