This blog post explores the definition of consciousness from different sources.
How would you define consciousness? In the documentary “Perception Deception” from NOVA, consciousness is defined as our awareness of the world. Some may think that being conscious means being able to perceive the world around you. In reality, perception is separate from the conscious experience. One way that this documentary explores consciousness is through medical data gathered at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Their technology explores the idea of consciousness through pinging the brain using a magnetic pulse, and looking for an electrical echo. If these echos are long, and become more complex, it means that the patient is conscious and unaware. For this study, it is assumed that a patient can be “conscious”, even if they are seemingly unresponsive. In this medical environment, they consider a patient to be “unconscious” if they are in deep sleep, in a coma, or under anesthesia. A 2014 publication from the Journal of Medicine and Life describes consciousness as a “part of a system of information that governs our experience and decision making process”. Unlike Perception Deception, this definition puts consciousness in a frame of experience and decision making, which is more on the side of the emotional experience of consciousness, rather than the brain activity data in the documentary. Through these sources, it is interesting to explore the different definitions of consciousness, both from a scientific perspective as well as an awareness perspective. What is your opinion? Do you have to be awake to be conscious?
Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956087/