Consciousness is a Process
Last week my fellow Phenom Ed Yong wrote a postabout what happens to consciousness when animals die. According to theresearch Ed described, a rat’s brain shows signs of consciousness for atleast 30 seconds after its heart stops.
That study got a lot of buzz, understandably, because of what itimplies about near-death experiences: namely, that they’re more likelythe product of a human mind than of some mystical power.
But Ed’s post also raised some more nuanced — and I think, more profound — questions about the work. For example, coma expert Steven Laureysof the University of Liège pointed out that nobody really knows yet howto determine whether an animal is conscious or unconscious by lookingat its brain waves alone. “It’s terribly hard to make strong claimsabout what these rats actually perceived, or about possible consciousexperiences,” Laureys told Ed.
But that line of research is advancing rapidly. Just two days afterthe rat study came out, researchers in Italy reported a new method fordecoding neural signals of consciousness — in people. Marcello Massimini’steam from the University of Milan found that people in different statesof consciousness will respond to a non-invasive electromagnetic pulsewith distinctive patterns of brain waves.
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