Introduction to Biopsychology[PSB 4002]

Professor Robert LickliterDM 260 / 305-348-3441licklite@fiu.eduwebsite: dpblab.fiu.edu

Consciousness

• How do brain processes result in conscious states?

• Is consciousness localized in certain regions of the brain or is it a global phenomenon?

• If it is confined to certain brain regions, which ones?

Some Big Questions

• What is the right level for explaining consciousness? Is it the level of neurons and synapses, or do we have to go to higher functional levels such as neuronal maps or networks of neurons?

• Might we even have to go beyond the boundaries of the brain?

Big Questions (Cont.)

• Can we explain consciousness with existing theories or do we need some revolutionary new theoretical concepts to explain it?

• What is “it”?

Big Questions (Cont.)

• Consciousness consists of inner, qualitative, subjective states and processes of awareness.

• In other words – being aware of being aware

A Working Definition of CONSCIOUSNESS:

• Consciousness, so defined, begins when we wake in the morning from sleep and continues until we fall asleep again, die, go into a coma, or otherwise become “unconscious”

• It includes all of the enormous variety of the awareness we think of as characteristic of our waking life

Consciousness…

• feeling a pain• perceiving objects

visually• states of anxiety

or depression• working out

crossword puzzles

• playing chess• trying to remember

your aunt’s phone number

• arguing about politics• or just wishing you

were somewhere else

It includes everything from:

• Even though we take it for granted, one thing we will need to understand is why and how we all experience ourselves as “being someone”

• For example, at this moment you all have the impression that it is you who is hearing this lecture. And it is you who is forming thoughts about it.

Being Someone

• For humans, consciousness is always tied to an individual,

first-person perspective:

“I” “me”

“mine”

Consciousness

• how far does consciousness go? • which species have it and which don’t?

A big question:

Primary (Core) ConsciousnessPrimary (Core) Consciousness

• The ability to build a multimodal scene based on several different sources of concurrent information.

• Does not necessarily contain any self-referential aspect - it lives in the present (“here” and “now”), tied to the succession of events in real time.

Biological functions of brain structures which

support core consciousness appear to

overlap… (even though they are

widely distributed in the brain):

1) regulating homeostasis and signaling body structure and state

2) participating in processes of attention3) participating in the processes of

wakefulness and sleep4) participating in the processes of emotion

and feeling5) participating in the learning process

Higher-Order (Human) ConsciousnessHigher-Order (Human) Consciousness

• Emerges when reference to the past, future, and self become available.

• Appears to be tied to the ability for autobiographical memory, the ability for language, and being situated in a social/cultural network (to provide scaffolding)

• With the emergence of higher-order consciousness through autobiographical memory and language, there is an explicit coupling of feelings and values, yielding a subjectivity with narrative powers, creating a fabric of “identity”, “beliefs” and a “point of view”

Human Consciousness

• To be aware of oneself as well as to be aware of others

• To be able to feel and express emotions• To be able to engage in complex cognition,

including symbolic representations and in particular, language

• To be able to think about things not present in the immediate environment (imagination)

• To be able to predict the consequences of events never before experienced by simulating those events (including future events)

William James (1842-1910) – Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Moral and

Religious Philosopher

Published the hugely influential

two volume book“The Principles of

Psychology” in 1890.

William JamesWilliam James• In that important book James described

consciousness as:

– individual (private) –continuous and continually changing– intentional (about something) and

selective–a process, not a thing

The “flashlight” vs. the “floodlight” experience of time

Wow, remember that great bone I had last Thanksgiving?

Retrospection and Prospection

• This remarkable set of abilities requires both “retrospection” - the ability to re-experience the past AND “prospection” - the ability to pre-experience the future by simulating it in our conscious awareness

• This allows us to be able to go beyond “the information given”

• Most of the time our judgments and decisions in any situation are arrived at as a consequence of the evaluation of a set of internally generated “alternatives”. These alternatives are typically based on the seamless integration of the past, the present, and possible futures.

Paradox:

even though we can retrospect and prospect, thereby making our “temporal window” very large compared to other animals, this particular moment (now) is all we have to work with consciously (in other words, all consciousness occurs in “real-time”)

• These counterfactuals are constructed to compare what happened or is happening with what could have happened. Without such alternatives or simulations, it would be very difficult to fine tune our behavior and to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again, as well as anticipate and plan for needs not currently experienced.

Introduction to Biopsychology[PSB 4002]

Professor Robert LickliterDM 260 / 305-348-3441licklite@fiu.eduwebsite: dpblab.fiu.edu

Midterm #4 (Final Exam)

• Tuesday, December 10 from 12 – 2 pm

Chapters 21, 22, and 2 in your textbook

Lecture material through Thursday, December 5

Acting NOW in Anticipation of LATER

Examples:

Making your lunchFlossing your teethApplying to graduate schoolInvesting in a savings accountAddress threats of global warming??

• These remarkable abilities to “mental time travel” were not always available to us – coming to terms with the flow of time and becoming skilled at using the past and possible futures to inform and direct our actions, choices, and goals emerged over a long period of time during early childhood

• Of course, now we take such abilities for granted and can’t imagine operating any other way

Comprehension of yesterday and tomorrow emerges gradually over the preschool years.

Recent evidence suggests that imagining the future depends on the same neural circuits and mechanisms that are needed for remembering the past.

Simulation of future events seems to require a system that can flexibly re-combine details from past events.

According to this idea, thoughts of past and future events draw on similar information stored in episodic memory.

This notion has been termed the:

constructive episodic simulation hypothesis

and is generally presumed to be unique to humans

For example, if young children have limited skills at reconstructing the events of the past, they will likely also have limited ability to anticipate or predict the future

Oh boy, chocolate pudding!

Modulation of internal and external events through the construct of ‘self’ allows us to remove ourself from the present and construct “alternative” interpretations of past, present, and future events. In normal individuals, this “off-line” ability to consciously evaluate and adjust behavior relies in large part on the activity of the prefrontal cortex.

plans, goals, strategies, decisions

The prefrontal cortex is thought to be crucial for integrating and discriminating internally and externally derived models of the world. These functions occupy a major portion of our conscious awareness, including rumination on the past, speculation about the future, and real-time daydreams about a different present and possible futures.

Mind & BehaviorMind & Behavior• The brain is embodied and the body is

embedded in its environment – you can’t separate the activity of the brain from the body or the environment

• Further, in humans, society and its culture distributes cognitive activity across many brains. We do not have an “isolated” mind. In contrast, non-human animals do. What they know is what they have experienced directly.

Starting from scratch, guided by only the preceding generation

Because of our use of language, because of our extended period of development (and the scaffolding its requires), because of our societies and cultures and their artifacts, we don’t have to “start over” each generation.

Just by being born human, we each “inherit” an enormous potential store of knowledge and information. We can stand on (and benefit from) the shoulders of the many generations of people who came before us, and who left us their insights, experiences, failures and successes.

Extelligence

In humans, society and its culture distributes cognitive activity across many brains. We do not have an “isolated” mind. In contrast, non-human animals do. What they know is limited to what they have experienced or observed directly.

When children are educated, ideas and technologies are maintained across generations, spanning the gaps left by the passing of individual brains. When reading and writing are mastered, ideas and technologies can be maintained by anyone with access to a teacher, books, and more recently a computer (including the ideas and histories of a different culture, different country, different era). 

The combination of prospective thinking and extelligence extends the mind’s reach, allowing for long-term planning, formulation of possible scenarios, “virtual” experiences to guide, constrain and add meaning to our “real” or direct experiences.

This allows a wide range of human activities not seen in other animals, including art, music, literature, film, as well as multiple forms of “entertainment”, such as sports, gambling, video games, shopping, amusement parks, etc.

The external environment, actively structured by us, becomes a source of cognitively enhancing “wideware” - external items, artifacts, tools, etc. that scaffold our cognitive skills and abilities.

Examples: smart phones, calculators, calendars, audio and video recordings, etc.

“externalizing the nervous system”

Introduction to Biopsychology[PSB 4002]

Professor Robert LickliterDM 260 / 305-348-3441licklite@fiu.eduwebsite: dpblab.fiu.edu

Our trans-generational advantage

broken brains

Psychiatric DiseasePsychiatric Disease• The general characteristics of psychiatric

(mental) disease:

–perceptual awareness and orientation–symbolic conceptual functioning–emotional responses–executive control

Psychiatric DiseasePsychiatric Disease• A given syndrome or disorder is not:

– “just a matter of biochemistry” or– “just a matter of neuroanatomy”, or – “just a matter of genetics”, or– “just a matter of individual history”• It is always some combination of these

varied factors. Thus, no two patients will be alike and no two successful treatments will be alike.

Risk and Protective Factors

• Individuals vary in their exposure to certain environments and the biological systems they inherit.

• Mediators and moderators: influence the onset and maintenance of psychiatric and developmental disorders.

Multifinality

Shared Experience or Trait

Equifinality

Shared Outcome

Psychiatric DiseasePsychiatric Disease

• The example of schizophrenia: –Type I. psychotic episodes, delusions,

hallucinations, disordered and paranoid thoughts

–Type II. Loss of emotional response (flat affect), abnormal postures, lack of spontaneous speech

Epidemiology of Schizophrenia

• Onset is variable, but most common onset is in the 20’s and 30’s.

• Some evidence for early life development risk factors.

• A “spectrum” disorder• Thought to involve abnormalities in:

– Hippocampus– Cortex (loss of grey matter)– Dopamine imbalance

Treatment

• Some success with antidopaminergic medications, but not without consequence.

• As of now, there is no “cure” for chronic schizophrenia, however episodic manifestations may come and go based on environmental context.

• Animal models of the disorder have proven elusive.

Developmental Disorders

• Atypical development of brain/body systems leads to developmental disorders such as:

Autism• inability to recognize other’s emotions and intentions,

low language production, high degree of emotional reactivity, self-stimulation, and repetitive behaviors (also a spectrum disorder).

Introduction to Biopsychology[PSB 4002]

Professor Robert LickliterDM 260 / 305-348-3441licklite@fiu.eduwebsite: dpblab.fiu.edu

The Use of Robotics to Discover the Dynamics of Embodiment

Embodied or Epigenetic Robotics

• Makes the assumption that behavior is result of the complex interaction between the system and its circumstances, and not directly specified by or predicted from a description of its initial state

• Rodney Brooks, a pioneering roboticist, has termed this “intelligence without representation”

Assumptions• The key idea is that an intelligent system will be emerge

from initially limited perception-action couplings. • Such a system is defined not by its”programmed”

function (knowledge representation) but by its activity.• The range and possibilities for actions are context

dependent, that is depend on the situation the system finds itself in.

• This embeds development in a physical, biological, and social world

The Challenges of Epigenetic Robotics

• Learning about objects and events• Learning about people• Learning about the self

(sound familiar?)

Lessons from Human Development

how does a learner who does not know what there is to learn manage to learn anyway?

(remember, you don’t know what you don’t know)

be multi-modal

be incremental

be physical (explore)

be social

learn a language

• knowing danger, fear, pain, loss, and death

The costs of extended consciousness

• Our extended knowledge is obtained in a bargain we did not choose-the cost of a deeper and wider existence is

the loss of innocence about that existence

• As humans, we are aware from a young age that we and those we love will certainly die

Free Will• Do we control our own minds?

– Most people assume they have conscious access to their intentions and motives and assume they consciously guide their choices and actions

– Evidence from biopsychology and neuroscience suggests these assumptions are optimistic at best. Indeed, many of our actions and ideas spring to life in a way that can only admire – or at times regret.

SENSORY STIMULATION

GENETIC ACTIVITY

Cell membrane

Intracellular biochemistry

Protein synthesis

PHYSICAL INFLUENCES

Individual nerve cell

activity

Patterned neural activity

Neural connectivity

Neural growth

Non-neural activity

Non-neural growth

Extracellular biochemistry

Johnston & Edwards (2002)

BEHAVIOUR