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Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective
Awareness or consciousness in the context of stimulus perception can directly be assessed in well controlled test situations with humans via the persons’ reports about their subjective experiences with the stimuli. Since we have no direct access to subjective experiences in animals, their possible a...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331465/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35910003 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.941534 |
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author | Ehret, Günter Romand, Raymond |
author_facet | Ehret, Günter Romand, Raymond |
author_sort | Ehret, Günter |
collection | PubMed |
description | Awareness or consciousness in the context of stimulus perception can directly be assessed in well controlled test situations with humans via the persons’ reports about their subjective experiences with the stimuli. Since we have no direct access to subjective experiences in animals, their possible awareness or consciousness in stimulus perception tasks has often been inferred from behavior and cognitive abilities previously observed in aware and conscious humans. Here, we analyze published human data primarily on event-related potentials and brain-wave generation during perception and responding to sensory stimuli and extract neural markers (mainly latencies of evoked-potential peaks and of gamma-wave occurrence) indicating that a person became aware or conscious of the perceived stimulus. These neural correlates of consciousness were then applied to sets of corresponding data from various animals including several species of mammals, and one species each of birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects. We found that the neural markers from studies in humans could also successfully be applied to the mammal and bird data suggesting that species in these animal groups can become subjectively aware of and conscious about perceived stimuli. Fish, cephalopod and insect data remained inconclusive. In an evolutionary perspective we have to consider that both awareness of and consciousness about perceived stimuli appear as evolved, attention-dependent options added to the ongoing neural activities of stimulus processing and action generation. Since gamma-wave generation for functional coupling of brain areas in aware/conscious states is energetically highly cost-intensive, it remains to be shown which animal species under which conditions of lifestyle and ecological niche may achieve significant advantages in reproductive fitness by drawing upon these options. Hence, we started our discussion about awareness and consciousness in animals with the question in how far these expressions of brain activity are necessary attributes for perceiving stimuli and responding in an adaptive way. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9331465 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-93314652022-07-29 Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective Ehret, Günter Romand, Raymond Front Syst Neurosci Systems Neuroscience Awareness or consciousness in the context of stimulus perception can directly be assessed in well controlled test situations with humans via the persons’ reports about their subjective experiences with the stimuli. Since we have no direct access to subjective experiences in animals, their possible awareness or consciousness in stimulus perception tasks has often been inferred from behavior and cognitive abilities previously observed in aware and conscious humans. Here, we analyze published human data primarily on event-related potentials and brain-wave generation during perception and responding to sensory stimuli and extract neural markers (mainly latencies of evoked-potential peaks and of gamma-wave occurrence) indicating that a person became aware or conscious of the perceived stimulus. These neural correlates of consciousness were then applied to sets of corresponding data from various animals including several species of mammals, and one species each of birds, fish, cephalopods, and insects. We found that the neural markers from studies in humans could also successfully be applied to the mammal and bird data suggesting that species in these animal groups can become subjectively aware of and conscious about perceived stimuli. Fish, cephalopod and insect data remained inconclusive. In an evolutionary perspective we have to consider that both awareness of and consciousness about perceived stimuli appear as evolved, attention-dependent options added to the ongoing neural activities of stimulus processing and action generation. Since gamma-wave generation for functional coupling of brain areas in aware/conscious states is energetically highly cost-intensive, it remains to be shown which animal species under which conditions of lifestyle and ecological niche may achieve significant advantages in reproductive fitness by drawing upon these options. Hence, we started our discussion about awareness and consciousness in animals with the question in how far these expressions of brain activity are necessary attributes for perceiving stimuli and responding in an adaptive way. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-07-14 /pmc/articles/PMC9331465/ /pubmed/35910003 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.941534 Text en Copyright © 2022 Ehret and Romand. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. |
spellingShingle | Systems Neuroscience Ehret, Günter Romand, Raymond Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title | Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title_full | Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title_fullStr | Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title_full_unstemmed | Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title_short | Awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
title_sort | awareness and consciousness in humans and animals – neural and behavioral correlates in an evolutionary perspective |
topic | Systems Neuroscience |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9331465/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35910003 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnsys.2022.941534 |
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