Links to Consciousness: Consciousness Links
Posted by Paul Mason on August 26, 2008
It takes around eight minutes and twenty seconds for light from the sun to reach the earth. It then takes another half a second for that light to be reflected off an object, detected by the retina, trigger signals that travel along the optic nerve, pass the optic chiasm, continue down the optic tract, go through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus, arrive at the primary visual cortex and spread to wider areas of the cortex and to finally then somehow become part of consciousness. If we decide to move in response to that light, there is a similar time lapse. Specific neurons in the brain must activate continuously for at least half a second before we make the decision to move. To some, consciousness is divine; to others consciousness is the result of the contemporaneous firing of distributed populations of neurons feeding through a dynamical core of deep brain activity.
Links
Consciousness and Neuroscience
The Problem of Consciousness, John R. Searle
Journal of Consciousness studies
Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness
Robert said
I know this isn’t germane to the meat of the post, but it actually takes light about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth from the Sun.
Paul Mason said
Noted. Do you have a reference for that please? –cos I don’t… just going off my high school science prof, who actually kicked me out of class once, so maybe I should never have trusted him in the first place… hmmm…
Mind you 500ms from retina to cortex is from Edelman…
David said
The K-bomb discusses the emergence of consciousness and it’s effects upon the individual as well as society.