This is a book review from New Scientist, 25 August 2012:

"The Ravenous Brain" by Daniel Bor, Basic Books.

It is a long-standing philosophical conundrum: is consciousness somehow separate from the physical world or merely an illusion conjured up by our complex brains?  It took his father's stroke to convince Daniel Bor which side he was on.

Bor, who had previously been considering a PhD in the philosophy of mind, opted instead for one in the neuroscience of consciousness.  To see his father 'robbed of his identity because a small clot on his brain had potently wounded his consciousness' hammered home all too well that the mind really is the output of nothing more than a small sac of jelly.

But what an amazing sac of jelly it is.  In 'The Ravenous Brain', Bor takes us on a tour of the fascinating world of consciousness research.  He engages in 'technological telepathy', taking part in a conversation where he communicates his thoughts using only an MRI brain scanner.

He also introduces us to conjoined twins with linked brains, an autistic synaesthete who can memorise the digits of pi up to 22,514 decimal places and chimpanzees that practise sophisticated mind games.  

As well as providing a primer in the most popular current theories of consciousness, Bor introduces one of his own.  That is that consciousness evolved to facilitate information processing, and thus learning and innovation.

One of Bor's research areas is a type of information processing called 'chunking'.  We can normally hold only a few things in our working memory at any one time.  But if we chunk items into groups so that the group represents all the items it contains, we can manipulate more and more concepts simultaneously.  MRI scans show that the prefrontal-parietal network, a broad area seen as the home of consciousness, lights up particularly when we do tasks that involve such chunking.

If that seems speculative, it's nothing compared with the final chapter, where Bor interprets several neurological and psychiatric conditions as disorders of consciousness.  Autism is, for instance, a kind of 'super-charged consciousness', he believes, whereas his wife's depressive episodes arising from her bipolar disorder could stem from an underactive one.  

Whether or not you agree with those ideas, Bor's engaging and knowledgeable prose, liberally sprinkled with personal vignettes and coupled with a knack for explaining complex concepts in everyday language, make this a book well worth reading.  

By Clare Wilson.

I wouldn't call it a conundrum, more like a false dichotomy.  Consciousness clearly exists.  The question is whether there is anything supernatural about it.  We may conclude that there is not, which would effectively eliminate the possibility of an immortal soul as western religions tend to understand it, or we may choose to persist in our belief that there is some sort of magic involved in the every day facts of existence.  But disproving the soul does not disprove consciousness, not at all.  

Other than that, it sounds like a fascinating book.  I used to have a great interest in minds and mental tricks.  I believe the mind is a muscle and can be trained to do many impressive feats.  Like other muscles there will also be tricks that are beyond some minds.

What a great way to put it!  I like that a lot.  And it's very true.
Alison

I wouldn't exactly describe it as a muscle... that is implying those that cannot do certain things just need to "practice enough" to get it...and as we know, this is not true for all things.

It's a complex network...and how it is accessed and what is available for our use depends on genetics plus environment...

Just think about how hard some people train, but they will never be Michael Jordan.  Then there's people born with muscular dystrophy, low muscle tone.  The principle is sound.

This post was last modified: 08-27-2012 10:44 PM by Lang.

I'll agree to disagree on that one. Perhaps its an efficient way of describing it given a narrow selection of relevance, but I think there are better analogies out there...

Consciousness is simply a property of intelligence IMO.

Not something limited to humans or to higher primates. Anyone who has ever had an intelligent dog for a pet knows that they are a fellow conscious being. There is perhaps a sliding scale of consciousness encompassing every living creature with a brain that can learn.

The tricky thing will be knowing if a machine (computer) is actually conscious. I doubt if any machine is there yet, but who really knows?

Somewhere I've read that a goldfish has a three second memory.  Yet they do come to the surface to be fed when a human approaches.

That's been proven false.  Some fish have quite sophisticated memory: for instance, those that migrate back to their birthplace to spawn apparently use the memory of the scent or taste of that place in the water to guide them, even if it's so dilute as to be almost undetectable.  And studies have been done to show that they do remember other things pretty well over a period of months.  I think the idea that animals humans eat have no memory is simply to ease human guilt.  It's easier to mistreat or kill and eat a creature if you think it's just a bundle of programmed responses.  
Alison

More than that, it's the reason for the debate about consciousness and the soul and "what distinguishes humans from animals."

I once read about a suggestion that something called p-zombies exist.  A p-zombie is something that appears to be capable of suffering, thinking, relating, etc.;essentially all of the qualities you would have used to define a "person" but isn't a person.   As if we were extremely desperate for more concepts that are impossible to prove or even define per sē.

This post was last modified: 08-28-2012 01:03 AM by Lang.

I was talking about goldfish; not fish in general.

I've heard that pigs are actually very, very smart.  They can sense death as the time for slaughter will come up.

Another thought: As you probably already know, Temple Grandin invented a method to peacefully and mercifully (and I suppose, seductively) kill cattle.  They walk in a spiral of which it's walls gradually get tighter on the cattle's body.  Then the bovine falls into a pit to its death.  (I'm pretty sure that's the method for the moment of the kill).

A fall does not sound merciful at all.

I was thinking the same thing.

I'd have to research more carefully, but this is what I vaguely remember.  I suppose the fall (if indeed that's the case), means an instant death as opposed to restraining the animal and sticking a knife to it's jugular.

When I was in the Philippines, at 2:00 AM, I used to always hear these blood curdling sounds of random frequencies.  After about 10 or 15 minutes, the eerie squealing would suddeny stop.  The sound was a pig at a slaughterhouse, getting restrained.  A knife would be thrust ito it's jugular.  By 7:00 AM the pig was "dressed" and all of it's meat and organs were out to market.

The idea behind Temple Grandin's method is that as the animals walk up the slope the walls get tighter so that they support the animal when it is killed so that it appears to keep walking even after death. That means the animal immediatly behind does not become distressed and carries on to its death.

The fall occurs out of sight of any living animal and after death.