DrmDoc

I agree that synapes activation would normally necessitate the transmission of information between neurons via some electrochemical process; however, the OP here seems to be asking could consciousness exist among a collective of active neurons without neurotransmitters, which is without that which enables neuronal sharing of information. My position is that consciousness cannot exist between individually active neurons that do not have a means to share their information with other neurons to coordinate and unify their activity.

Would this sensory information reach consciousness without a neuronal means or ability to send or transmit that information? Isn't that means or ability the purpose of neurotransmitters between neurons? We know that consciousness involves an interconnected confluence of neuronal activity. If we remove the neurotransmitters and somehow allow each neuron to remain individually active, how would those separate neurons unify the process that constructs consciousness? In figurative terms, can individual construction workers (singular neurons) build a skyscraper (consciousness) without a means to coordinate and unify (neurotransmitters) their efforts?

If I understood correctly, the OP was asking if consciousness could be produced by activating individual neurons without the substance (neurotransmitters) that enable communication between neurons. Consciousness is a product of neurons working together in a concert of consciousness-producing neural activity. A single neuron or billions of active neurons cannot individually spark or create consciousness without the support of other neurons through a means to communicate and unify that process. Without a unifying link between neurons, individual activation would merely produce disjoined, chaotic, and aimless neuronal activity. If the hypothetical case involves an artificial means of communication between neurons, then I agree that consciousness could be possible.

Consciousness arises from a confluence of cortical, subcortical, and sensory activity. All this activity is made possible by neurotransmitters; i.e., consciousness is activated and informed by the transmission of neural information. Without neuratransmitters there would be no communication between the neurons that comprise and complete the circuit of brain activity from which consciousness arises; therefore, activation of individual neurons without communication between the neurons that give rise to consciousness will not produce the confluence or concert of brain activity that leads to consciousness. In short, activation of individual neurons does not equate consciousness.

Your doctor should have order a CT scan or referred you to either a sleep specialist or neurologist. Your altered perceptual experiences could be a symptom of some underlying neuropathy that has yet to fully manifest. I suggest that you return to your doctor and insist on receiving the proper medical attention your experience deserves.

Perhaps; however, I don't believe there was ever a time when ancestral animals had to make a distinction between real experience and dream experience. It's likely that the brain structures associated with memory formation evolved in an environment where real experience was the only experience. In other words, the brain structures associated with memory evolve inconjunction with afferent stimuli from the actual sensory structures of the body. During the dreaming phase of sleep, much of that actual sensory stimuli is muted by deactivations in the brain stem at the onset of atonia. Without unmuted stimuli--which informs the brain that its sensory experiences are real--those brain structures associated memory formation remain understimulated throughout the dreaming phase of sleep. The prefrontal cortex, for example, experiences a state of low-activation (hypofrontality) at the onset of dreaming. This suggests that our dream experiences do not generate the stimuli that our dreaming brain identifies as emerging from the actual sensory experiences of the body. Our animal ancestors likely didn't have to make a distinction between reality and dreaming because their brains where predisposed to stimuli originating from the real physical/material sensory experiences of the body.

There are some who might argue that dreams are forgotten because they are not meant to be remembered. However, the reason why we forget our dreams quickly involves the evolved nature of memory and the incongruity of memory with experiences that are not concurrent with real physical/material sensory experiences. Succintly, memory was evolved for the real physical/material wellbeing of ancestral animals. Our animal ancestors evolved memory through the experience of influences that had a real physical/material impact on their survival. Dreams do not involved real sensory experiences concurrent in physical/material reality. Consequently, certain memory-associated areas of the brain do not become active when the brain is dreaming because those areas are not stimulated by the faux physical/material sensory experiences of dreams. We forget our dreams quickly because their experience is not concurrent with true physicality. The lack of real physical/material stimuli concurrent with the experiences in our dreams also explains why we experience a state what many mistakenly refer to as sleep paralysis. That state is more accurately described as muscle atonia, which isn't paralysis but a relaxed condition of muscle elasticity and readiness. There is evidence suggesting that what we remember about our dreams form during the arousal process as real physical/material stimuli reenters brain structure and stimulates those areas associated with memory formation. This suggests that what we remember about our dreams suggests the way our waking-state brain interprets what it believes it experienced amid sleep. The inference is that those experiences amid sleep do not contain the imagery and experiences we recall as dreams until our waking-state brain interprets them that way--as a way, perhaps, of making the experience relatable to conscious experience. What this all suggests is that what you remember most about your dream is what your conscious mind likely perceived as most relevant or relatable to your conscious experience. However, I wouldn't suggest obsessing over remebering them without learning how to decipher whatever relevance or meaning they may have. Why remember what may not be important enough to understand? If, however, you remain interested in keeping a diary, I would suggest keeping a digital recorder at bedside for later diary transcription. I hope this helps.

That is a very definitive statment. What is your basis? Is this merely your opinion or is it based on some evidence in brain study? Please, elaborate.

I don't think we can definitively say that "a salamander has no notion of death". What we can say with some certainty is that its responses--physiological and behavioral--suggests that a salamander may feel pain and certain emotions on an instinctual level. However, I do agee that there is a significant distinction between the basal experience of fear or pain and experiencing same when informed by intellect.

Although I agree that human cognition likely modifies the experience of emotions in ways that are distinctly human, that distinction may only apply to the thought and assessment processes subsequent to the initial stimuli rather than to the basal experience and instinctual effects suggested by the initial physiological and behavioral responses we share with other animals under similar emotional stimuli. Although we may interpret an animal's physiological changes and behavioral displays as emotional effects, we cannot presently determine whether that animal recognizes or interprets its experience as we do. Again, this is a distinction between what the animal may be feeling and what it may be thinking.

However, with emotions, the issue is what the salamander is feeling rather than what it is thinking. Emotions aren't necessarily about words or some cognitive assessment, reasoning, or forethought of action or outcome. For example, fear, like pain, elicit instinctive physiological and behavioral responses that do not require an assessment of the experience beyond the instinctive responses associated with immediately avoiding or eliminating some perceived threat--like when we instinctively jump when surprised by loud noises. Instantly, we feel fear and respond, without thought, with behaviors distancing us from the noisy threat. There is no thought of dying or even of injury in the initial moments, just the drive to move away from some threat that has engaged our fight or flight instinct. It isn't until after our initial responses to the noise that we engage in the mental assessment processes we cannot adequatedly determine in other animals. With emotions, it isn't as much about thought processes as it is about the perceptions that drive our behavioral responses. In my view, fear is both a behavioral response and behavioral drive. In your salamander example, what drives its behaviors is likely its perception of a threat, which produces all the physiological and cognitive changes essential to avoiding or eliminating that threat. Although we cannot definitively say that fear is among those motivating cognitive changes, we can evaluate the salamander's physiological changes while under threat, compare them to what we know of comparable changes in humans experiencing fear, and make a cogent assessment of what the threatened salamander might be feeling relative to humans.

The same could be said about whether lizards or other animals experience pain. Injury to some animals, including lizards, causes physical reactions and detectible levels of physiological changes suggestive of pain much like those suggestive of emotion, particularly fear. The greatest distinction between humans, lizards, and other animals, as I perceive, is our inability to interpret all the expressions of pain and emotion by other animals as we are able to interpret the expressions of our own. Although we are able to detect similar physiological and certain behavioral responses suggestive of humanlike emotion in other animals, we'd probably be more confident of those responses as emotion if they were accompanied by all the human markers of emotions--but they aren't, therefore, our only recourse is to rely on what the physical evidence suggests.

Actually, I said: Although our brains may be dissimilar to other animals, some do appear to engage behaviors suggestive of emotions.

Although our thyroid and sex glands may stimulate our emotions, their structure is not where emotion is perceived or experienced. Rather than a source or location of emotion, our adrenals activate in response to directives from our emotional centers. If the OP is asking about the location in the brain where emotional stimuli is received and where a response to that stimuli is initiated, that location is in the structures of the brain stem. Without the function structures like the amygdala and hypothalamus provide, our behaviors would likely be without emotional content.

With just the brain stem, emotions are more about physical reactions to stimuli than cognitive recognition and assessment. For us, the experience of emotions without cortical function would be much like our experience of pain, wherein, the intensity of our reactions are immediate, instinctive, and correspond to the intensity of the pain experienced. The experience of emotions by more instinctually driven animals likely correspond to the intensity of the instinct-affecting influence; e.g., the greater a threat, the more intense the fight or flight response.

As what seems the general nature of emotions, fear and rage are behavioral responses to stimuli. Therefore, such animals may only experience those emotions when adequately stimulated. However, having a brain stem does not automatically confer emotions on a species. The brain stem appears to confer instinctual behaviors and animals with only brain stemlike structures likely react with the emotions we associate with instinctual behavior. Although brain stem function is the likely source of instinctual behaviors, cortical function enhances the mediation of those behaviors. It is the cortex that gives us the ability to mediate our fear, rage, hunger, and sexual desire in ways that can produce behavior more favorable to our immediate goals and circumstances. Through cortical function, we process our emotional responses with a consideration of consequences exceeding the instinctual needs or desires of the moment. Our cortex gives us the measure of cognition, forethought, and planning that has enabled our continual dominance of other instinctually driven species.

What you are suggesting here applies to the plasticity of neocortical structure and function. The hypothalamus is a subcortical structure (brain stem) where we find more specilized function. The cortex is known to compensates for damage to cortical function and structure, which is why it can sustain considerable damage without causing death. The function of brain stem structures is more highly specialized, which is why damage to these structures often has fatal consequences. Emotional behaviors such as fear and rage have instinctual roots and are likely to reside in the more primitive segments of our central nervous system (CNS) because these instinct-based behaviors were likely more vital to the survival of ancestral animals than higher cognitive functions. Spinal cord aside, the brain stem is the most primitive segment of our CNS.

Well, we don't have to switch off other brain areas, we simply have to evaluate cases--and we have--involving hypothalmic injury or disorder in humans. The behavioral aberrance we observe through these cases should suggest whether or what the hypothalamus contributes to our behaviors.

The earliest evidence for the production of an emotion in brain structure was suggested by decerebrate study of cats that produced rage postures with portion of the hypothalamus as the only remaining hierarchal structure in the brain cavity after surgery. As the center of our primary drives, the hypothalamus is likely most critical to the production of all emotional behaviors. However, amygdalectomy in primates have produced the strongest evidence for the amygdala as the center of fear responses and social behavioral activity possibly driven by fear. I hope this helps.

Again, there is nothing in the reams of studies on human sleep deprivation that suggest the kind of rolling "offline" brain function observed in sleep deprived rats. The effects of sleep deprivation in humans appear to be brainwide rather than localized. Humans are not well adapted to remain alert when sleep deprived. This seems consistent with a distinction of humans as a species whose survival is not as dependent on continual vigilance as is the survival of other species. This sleep study, in my opinion, merely suggest that the brains of rats appear to be better adapted for sustained periods of vigilance than humans.

Court opinion notwithstanding, there has never been a proven case of unihemispheric sleep in humans with intact brains. Although there have been some court cases where somnambulism was used as a successful defense for murder, I never believed in the validity of such opinions. There are no brain studies in somnambulism which suggests that the brain is engaged in sleep function. In my opinion, the condition is akin to hypnosis wherein the hypnotized engage behaviors they normally would not without the lower inhibitions hypnosis evokes. Murder, even under hypnosis, is still murder in my opinion. Sleep deprived activity in rats is not relatable to somnambulism in humans because there is no evidence of unihemispheric sleep processes in humans as in rats. If the goal is to understand the nature of sleep deprivation and sleep-walking in humans, how are rat studies more relatable than human studies? Are there no humans who experience sleep deprivation and sleep-walking? Other than for vivsection or drug testing purposes, how are rats more suitable for this kind of human-equivalent study?

Sleep deprivation has been studied ad nauseum over many years. A quick Google Scholar (GS) search returned over 54,000 such studies between 1992 and 2011 alone. Among the thousands of papers and studies I've personally reviewed on sleep not a single one suggested or showed unihemispheric sleep in humans under any circumstance. Even with a GS search, I did not find any reference to such sleep behaviors in humans with intact brains. If it were possible under sleep deprivation, unihemispheric sleep in humans would have been determined decades ago. Although I did not read the article, it is unlikely that the discovery of unilateral sleep--evoked by sleep deprivation--in the brains of rats has any implication for similar sleep processes or behaviors in humans. I question the validity of rat studies of sleep deprivation when human study provides the most direct and relatable evidence to humans even in extreme cases such as fatal familial insomnia.

Although animal studies show a strong association with spatial memory formation and hippocampal damage has produced a number of autonomic and behavioral effects, the hippocampus in humans has been functionally associated with the formation of explicity or declarative memory. In humans, our implicit and/or procedural memory formation remain largely intact when the hippocampus is damaged; however, our ability to form new memories of recent events and facts (explicit memory) becomes severely impaired. Rather than memory retrieval, memory formation seems to be the primary function of the hippocampus. Recent studies are suggesting an association between the right hippocampus and the "aquisition of new spatial information." I hope this helps.

Although you did not quote your source or provide a citation, that Wikipedia article on Lateralization of brain function--from which you obviously supplemented your general knowledge on this topic--is a good start, I would recommend that readers here view the article for themselves then move on to more substantial sources of neuroscience and neuropsychology such as: Kolb B., Whishaw IQ., Fundamentals of Human Neuropsychology, New York: Worth Publishers. Nolte,J., The Human Brain: An Introduction to Its Functional Anatomy, St. Louis: Mosby Publishers. These published works explore the current research and research history in exceptional detail. Happy hunting!

Neither will I; however, I selected the article you previously cited and indeed it does discuss social dominance in a theorethical context. In that article, social status versus social power were discussed as key elements of social dominance. Among other constituent qualities relative to social status, prestige was described and discussed as a key component. A discussion of prestige is, by definition, as discussion of "the level of respect at which one is regarded by others" (American Heritage Dictionary). Rather than a "wobbly poorly-defined phenomenon", respect is a quality of significant social relevance and real psychological import. Conversant or not, misunderstandings, misperceptions, and misconceptions can and do occur in every discussion where individuals take opposite positions. Even with prior experience and knowledge through research, we can become more conversant in defense of our knowledge base through mature and constructive exchanges rather than witless quips, monosyllabic replies, or subtle insults. I wish you well.