What is consciousness?
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Since I’ve never had surgery or procedures that required anesthesia, my awareness of consciousness changing happens when I drift off to sleep. That is … before my strokes.
The night of my first TIA (transient ischemic attack), I liken to speeding and not getting caught, until you’re pulled over. Over the years my blood pressure would spike (during pregnancies and corporate mergers). I’d make lifestyle changes: healthier eating and exercise. I even tried biofeedback. My blood pressure would come down and then I’d get caught up in life and it’d creep up again.
Then, 15 years ago I watched myself in the mirror while having my hair colored. My stylist added waves of caramel (and a bit of red for my husband). I got caught. As I told my stylist a funny story about a trip to Rome with my mother, something was off. I tilted my head — that’s odd … I can hear the words in my head, but they’re not coming out of my lips. My inside conscious experience wasn’t connected to my outside body experience.
What is consciousness? What’s its purpose? And why is understanding consciousness so important?
what is consciousness?
How to describe consciousness? There are thoughts, memories, ideas, and perceptions all swirling in our heads, but there’s something else. An awareness; an observer of sorts that isn’t the thought or memory.
Consciousness is all about awareness.
According to neuroscientist Anil Seth, Co-Director of the Centre of Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex, there’s been an explosion of scientific research on consciousness over the last 25 years: neuroscience, biology, psychology, physics, computer science, etc.
Intelligence is not consciousness. Consciousness has more to do with our nature as living and breathing organisms.
Anil explains in his Ted Talk there are two different ways to think about consciousness:
experiences of the world around us: sights, sound, smells, multi-sensory
experience of Being You
Our perceptions of the world surrounding us are constructed. Our brains exist in a hard, bony skull. No light, no sound penetrates that protective structure. Information comes into our brains via electrical impulses. Our brains combine this information and make the best guess based on our previous experiences.
Our brains are prediction machines. The world comes to us as much from the inside out as from the outside in.
During my TIA, I felt like I was underwater listening to the hair salon fan sucking fresh air in and dye chemicals out. I was fully aware of the disconnect between my inside thoughts and my outside body’s lack of agency. Not scared. Very curious. I smiled and thought — This is really weird. What’s happening? Everything seemed to be happening in slow-motion.
My brain had no experience of a stroke to “predict” a stroke experience. Maybe if I were standing and my legs collapsed I’d of been more scared.
Anil Seth’s How your brain hallucinates your conscious reality TedTalk.
the average weight of the adult human brain is 3 pounds
brain 2% of body weight; uses 20% of the total body oxygen & energy
neurons travel 150 mph in the brain
95% of all decisions take place in the subconscious
brain waves are more active during dreaming than in the normal waking state when we walk around, think, feel, talk, and do stuff
we have 2 brains:1 found in our head & 1 found in our gut
what is the purpose of consciousness?
Within each of our brains, there are billions of neurons generating a conscious experience. Our unique conscious experience. Nobody shares the same experience. We can’t, we’re different living organisms. Without consciousness, there is no world and no self.
In Annaka Harris’ book Conscious she describes how consciousness, our awareness of an experience, is slightly after the fact. That means consciousness, as an observer, needs all the signals going into the brain to sync up first. In neuroscience, this is referred to as “binding.” A fancy editing trick because signals enter the brain at different speeds.
Imagine you’re playing tennis. For vision, light waves travel faster than the sound waves of the ball hitting the racket. All our sensory inputs reach our nervous system and brain at different speeds. They need to be combined by the brain before we “experience” the tennis ball thwacking the racket.
“Your perception of reality is the end result … the brain hides the difference in arrival times. How? What it serves us as reality is actually a delayed version. Your brain collects all the information from the senses before it decides upon a story of what happens … The strange consequence is that you live in the past.”
Conscious by Annaka Harris
why is understanding consciousness so important?
Previously I described dreaming as a downshifting in my consciousness, not an off-button or snooze button.
Question: when I’m dreaming, does my consciousness hang out tethered to me? And the same with every person and living creature? If so, where are our edges? Do they overlap or bump into each other and then back off?
When I’m awake and interacting with upset people, I often feel off. Is that energy from their consciousness spilling out? Have we become entangled? From a scientific measurement perspective, I’m intrigued by new scientific measurements for brain activity - how our thoughts can be measured outside our heads.
There are various methods of measuring the electrical impulses in our brains:
MRI (magnetic resonance imaging): still image of the brain’s structures
fMRI (functional MRI): observes the brain while functioning
MEG (magnetoencephalography): extracts patterns of electrical activity inside the brain from the measured magnetic field outside the head
There’s a light storm of synapses firing when consciousness is active. Our consciousness is a form of embodied energy — a capturing of all the memories and experiences we hold in our bodies and minds walking around with each of us. It’s not like a coat you decide to leave in the closet. Although there are personas that we, I put on, a layer of protection when I feel vulnerable and protective of my energy being drawn elsewhere without my permission like a tornado pulling me in.
When exploring consciousness as an awareness, Annaka introduced a new term to me. Umwelt: the given experience of any particular animal, based on the senses used by that organism to navigate its environment. Pet owners will attest to conscious experiences they witness with their companions. But overall, we humans think we are the smartest, therefore the only ones with consciousness.
After watching documentaries like My Octopus Teacher with Craig Foster, I’m humbled by the intelligence and umwelt in other living creatures. According to Craig, the most important lesson he learned was that we are not visitors here. We are part of the process.
Documentary with Craig Foster My Octopus Teacher
Here I am fifteen years later. I appreciate the complexity of my memories and the cataloging of my experiences that create my consciousness, an ecosystem called me. When I see someone struggling with getting the right words out. My granddaughter learning to speak, a foreigner at the airport struggling to communicate, or someone with Alzheimer’s, or aphasia from a stroke or other brain injury. I try to slow down. Look them in the eye. Listen to understand what their consciousness wants to communicate to my consciousness.
Over the centuries science continues to confirm what seemed ludicrous for a long time. Copernicus demonstrated that we are not the center of the universe. Darwin taught us through evolution that we are related to all living creatures. With consciousness research, we continue to see that we humans are part of not apart from the rest of nature.
How do you perceive your consciousness?
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