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A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness
A comparison is made between the frequency of local minima in the analytic power (AP) of intracranial EEG (ECoG) from waking and unconscious human subjects and the frequency of putative frames of consciousness reported in earlier psychological literature. In ECoG from unconscious subjects, the frequ...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Frontiers Research Foundation
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241343/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22203811 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00377 |
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author | Pockett, Susan Brennan, Barry J. Bold, Gary E. J. Holmes, Mark D. |
author_facet | Pockett, Susan Brennan, Barry J. Bold, Gary E. J. Holmes, Mark D. |
author_sort | Pockett, Susan |
collection | PubMed |
description | A comparison is made between the frequency of local minima in the analytic power (AP) of intracranial EEG (ECoG) from waking and unconscious human subjects and the frequency of putative frames of consciousness reported in earlier psychological literature. In ECoG from unconscious subjects, the frequency of deep minima in AP is found to be a linear function of bandwidth. In contrast, in ECoG from conscious subjects, the bandwidth/minima-frequency curve saturates or plateaus at minima frequencies similar to the frequencies of previously reported frames of consciousness. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that local minima in AP may act as the shutter in a cinematographic model of consciousness. The fact that artificially generated samples of black noise with power spectra similar to ECoG data give similar results in the analyses above suggests that the discontinuous nature of consciousness is not due to some specifically biological factor, but is simply a consequence of the physical properties of the 1/f (aka power law) oscillations that are widely found in nature. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3241343 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Frontiers Research Foundation |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32413432011-12-27 A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness Pockett, Susan Brennan, Barry J. Bold, Gary E. J. Holmes, Mark D. Front Psychol Psychology A comparison is made between the frequency of local minima in the analytic power (AP) of intracranial EEG (ECoG) from waking and unconscious human subjects and the frequency of putative frames of consciousness reported in earlier psychological literature. In ECoG from unconscious subjects, the frequency of deep minima in AP is found to be a linear function of bandwidth. In contrast, in ECoG from conscious subjects, the bandwidth/minima-frequency curve saturates or plateaus at minima frequencies similar to the frequencies of previously reported frames of consciousness. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that local minima in AP may act as the shutter in a cinematographic model of consciousness. The fact that artificially generated samples of black noise with power spectra similar to ECoG data give similar results in the analyses above suggests that the discontinuous nature of consciousness is not due to some specifically biological factor, but is simply a consequence of the physical properties of the 1/f (aka power law) oscillations that are widely found in nature. Frontiers Research Foundation 2011-12-16 /pmc/articles/PMC3241343/ /pubmed/22203811 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00377 Text en Copyright © 2011 Pockett, Brennan, Bold and Holmes. http://www.frontiersin.org/licenseagreement This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial License, which permits non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in other forums, provided the original authors and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Psychology Pockett, Susan Brennan, Barry J. Bold, Gary E. J. Holmes, Mark D. A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title | A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title_full | A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title_fullStr | A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title_full_unstemmed | A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title_short | A Possible Physiological Basis for the Discontinuity of Consciousness |
title_sort | possible physiological basis for the discontinuity of consciousness |
topic | Psychology |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3241343/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22203811 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00377 |
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