Researchers from the George Washington University have managed to switch consciousness on and off in an epileptic woman by stimulating a single region of the brain with electrical impulses. While this is a single case study, it provides an exciting insight into the neural mechanisms behind consciousness, a subject of great interest that is poorly understood despite decades of research. The study has been published in Epilepsy & Behavior.
Consciousness is a fascinating topic that has both intrigued and puzzled scientists and philosophers for centuries. Despite significant advances in our understanding of the brain, little is known about the neural networks that underpin consciousness. However, research has hinted that consciousness is likely the result of an integration of activity from numerous different areas of the brain, marrying all of our perceptions together into one experience. But what is the central hub to this process?
A few years back, Francis Crick, one of the scientists involved in deciphering the structure of DNA, and colleague Christof Koch proposed that a brain region known as the claustrum may be at the heart of consciousness, stringing together the constant input of information arriving from different brain networks.
Now, in the latest study, researchers demonstrate that their hypothesis might be correct after all. The scientists stumbled upon this finding whilst stimulating different areas of the brain of an epileptic woman and measuring resultant activity in order to find the epicenter of her seizures. They discovered that electrical stimulation with an electrode placed between the left claustrum and anterior-dorsal insula caused the woman to lose consciousness. She completely stopped moving, became unresponsive and her breathing slowed.
When the researchers stopped the stimulation, she regained consciousness and couldn’t remember the event. Furthermore, the effects were reproducible as the same outcome occurred each time they stimulated this region over a period of two days. To make sure they were not merely interfering with motor control or speech, they asked the woman to repeat a particular word or perform a certain movement as the stimulation commenced. The woman gradually spoke more quietly and moved less and less as she became unconscious, rather than immediately stopping, suggesting this was affecting consciousness. They also did not identify any associated epileptic activity, suggesting it was not merely a seizure.
According to Ervin Laszlo, the coherence of the atom and the galaxies is the same coherence that keeps living cells together, cooperating to form life. When a complex system made up of many interacting parts is operating, sometimes an unexpected jump to a new level of complex organization happens. Our human body is made up of many such levels, each formed by another jump in complexity. Our lowest level of the cell jumps up a level to body tissue, to body organ, to body system and to the whole body. We are therefore formed with many onion skin like levels that all cooperate in complex ways to make one whole human being. It is really amazing how it all fits together.
At the same time, in the human realm of consciousness, we are – as far as we know – the only creatures able to contemplate who we are, why we are here and how we fit into the universe. We can even contemplate on the fact that we can contemplate about who we are and how we fit into the universe. This coherence also allows evolution to happen and that has enabled us to evolve from a microscopic bacterium right through to the complex beings that we are with all our mental, physical, emotional and spiritual capabilities.
Ervin Laszlo presents a theory that helps to tie both together. He proposes that the quantum vacuum – which we know contains all the information of our history from the Big Bang to now – is also consciousness. Everything in the universe therefore has consciousness; from a pebble to a tree, to a cloud, to a person. While this goes against the view of mainstream science, there are some highly respected scientists such as Freeman Dyson, David Bohm and Fritjof Capra, who support the idea that the universe is in fact conscious. Ervin Laszlo says that life happens because it comes from the quantum vacuum.
What is consciousness? Consciousness is about being aware of our own existence and the environment in which we live. So if one sub-atomic particle reacts in line with another particle somewhere else in the universe, we could say it is aware of what the other one is doing. In a way it is aware of itself in the universe. So, the question is: Is it enough to say all particles in the universe are conscious?
We are conscious of our existence and have evolved a brain able to access and use the consciousness held in quantum vacuum. Consciousness is yet another manifestation of coherence allowing a mass of nerve cells to co-operate and form a unified sense of self.
Ervin Laszlo equates this quantum vacuum with the Akashic Field of ancient Hindu spiritual tradition. The Hindu say the Akashic record is a field from which all the universe is formed and which holds all that ever was, is or will be. The Hindu also say that the Big Bang that started the universe, and the big crunch that will happen when the universe goes into reverse and collapses back into itself, is only a part of many cycles of universes, just like ours, appearing and disappearing, just like the subatomic particles in our world.
Ervin Laszlo states that information can be transferred from one cycle to the next, which explains how the precise numbers for gravity, electromagnetism etc. come to be so exact when there has not been enough time for these to have formed randomly. Those numbers are transferred from previous universes.