Conscious Mental Activity Research Articles

On Psychodynamic Defense

The concept of defense mechanisms has problems and deficiencies, the most serious its neglect of unwitting, but conscious mental activity in the defense process. Clinical observation shows that individuals, not conscious of their purpose, reflexively think and act in ways that forestall or dispel anxiety. Contrary to Anna Freud’s claim, the process of defense is in some measure observable. Self-deception by subjects of coercion can be seen also as a defense against external threat similar to that of internal threat.

Brain microstate spatio-temporal dynamics as a candidate endotype of consciousness

Consciousness can be defined as a phenomenological experience continuously evolving. Current research showed how conscious mental activity can be subdivided into a series of atomic brain states converging to a discrete spatiotemporal pattern of global neuronal firing. Using the high temporal resolution of EEG recordings in patients with a severe Acquired Brain Injury (sABI) admitted to an Intensive Rehabilitation Unit (IRU), we detected a novel endotype of consciousness from the spatiotemporal brain dynamics identified via microstate analysis. Also, we investigated whether microstate features were associated with common neurophysiological alterations. Finally, the prognostic information comprised in such descriptors was analysed in a sub-cohort of patients with prolonged Disorder of Consciousness (pDoC). Occurrence of frontally-oriented microstates (C microstate), likelihood of maintaining such brain state or transitioning to the C topography and complexity were found to be indicators of consciousness presence and levels. Features of left–right asymmetric microstates and transitions toward them were found to be negatively correlated with antero-posterior brain reorganization and EEG symmetry. Substantial differences in microstates’ sequence complexity and presence of C topography were found between groups of patients with alpha dominant background, cortical reactivity and antero-posterior gradient. Also, transitioning from left-right to antero-posterior microstates was found to be an independent predictor of consciousness recovery, stronger than consciousness levels at IRU’s admission. In conclusions, global brain dynamics measured with scale-free estimators can be considered an indicator of consciousness presence and a candidate marker of short-term recovery in patients with a pDoC.

EEG Microstates in Altered States of Consciousness.

Conscious experiences unify distinct phenomenological experiences that seem to be continuously evolving. Yet, empirical evidence shows that conscious mental activity is discontinuous and can be parsed into a series of states of thoughts that manifest as discrete spatiotemporal patterns of global neuronal activity lasting for fractions of seconds. EEG measures the brain’s electrical activity with high temporal resolution on the scale of milliseconds and, therefore, might be used to investigate the fast spatiotemporal structure of conscious mental states. Such analyses revealed that the global scalp electric fields during spontaneous mental activity are parceled into blocks of stable topographies that last around 60–120 ms, the so-called EEG microstates. These brain states may be representing the basic building blocks of consciousness, the “atoms of thought.” Altered states of consciousness, such as sleep, anesthesia, meditation, or psychiatric diseases, influence the spatiotemporal dynamics of microstates. In this brief perspective, we suggest that it is possible to examine the underlying characteristics of self-consciousness using this EEG microstates approach. Specifically, we will summarize recent results on EEG microstate alterations in mind-wandering, meditation, sleep and anesthesia, and discuss the functional significance of microstates in altered states of consciousness.

Effects of Cognitive Training upon Working Memory in Individuals with ADHD: An Overview of the Literature

Commercial cognitive training programs have been proposed as a non-pharmacological treatment of ADHD-related outcomes, such as learning difficulties and academic achievement. Most of these programs focus on working memory, an essential cognitive ability sustaining nearly every conscious mental activity. In this article, we present and summarize the main studies assessing the effectiveness of such training programs on working memory. The reported studies have failed to show a positive far-transfer and long-term effect of cognitive training both in typically developing individuals and children with ADHD. In the end, we present emerging alternative approaches to the use of cognitive training to improve working memory functioning in children with ADHD.

First-person dimensions of mental agency in visual counting of moving objects

Counting objects, especially moving ones, is an important capacity that has been intensively explored in experimental psychology and related disciplines. The common approach is to trace the three counting principles (estimating, subitizing, serial counting) back to functional constructs like the Approximate Number System and the Object Tracking System. While usually attempts are made to explain these competing models by computational processes at the neural level, their first-person dimensions have been hardly investigated so far. However, explanatory gaps in both psychological and philosophical terms may suggest a methodologically complementary approach that systematically incorporates introspective data. For example, the mental-action debate raises the question of whether mental activity plays only a marginal role in otherwise automatic cognitive processes or if it can be developed in such a way that it can count as genuine mental action. To address this question not only theoretically, we conducted an exploratory study with a moving-dots task and analyze the self-report data qualitatively and quantitatively on different levels. Building on this, a multi-layered, consciousness-immanent model of counting is presented, which integrates the various counting principles and concretizes mental agency as developing from pre-reflective to increasingly conscious mental activity.

Questioning Searle’s Explanation of Unconscious Mental State

Upholding the principle of Biological Naturalism, John Searle requires that explanation of mental phenomenon must be coherent with findings in scientific studies. To meet the requirement of coherence, Searle puts forward his “connection principle”. This paper contends that his requirement is not well met in his own study of unconscious mental states. Firstly, his classification of unconscious mental states is not reasonable. For example, he has classified “knowledge of language” into deep unconscious mental state, which in nature belongs to nonconscious mental state. The classification is not in accord with findings in linguistic studies, nor with linguistic practice. Secondly, his explanation for the unconscious mental process is doubtful. Based on his “connection principle”, unconscious mental state is nothing but potential conscious mental state and therefore the processing of unconscious mental activity should resemble that of conscious mental activity. But this explanation is not coherent with findings in cognitive science. The paper concludes that Searle fails in his requirement of coherence.

ПСИХОЛОГИЧЕСКОЕ СОДЕРЖАНИЕ КАРЬЕРЫ С ПОЗИЦИЙ СИСТЕМОГЕНЕТИЧЕСКОГО ПОДХОДА

This theoretical article examines the structure of the concept of «career». The relevance of this issue is associated with a number of reasons: the emergence of various studies on this issue, insufficient methodological study of research, and the need for sound psychological support for a professional's career. The purpose of the article is to present the psychological content of the concept of career from the standpoint of the systemogenetic approach. Two career considerations stand out: external and internal. Externally, a career appears as a career path, expressed in the form of career-related events, changes in status and professional roles. Internal psychological career plan defined as a process and as a result. As a career process as a general theoretical construct that allows to analyze this phenomenon. Career functional blocks are also highlighted in the article: career motives, career goals, career plans, career decision-making, career information basis, performance assessment, career important qualities. As a result, in the internal plan, the career appears in the form of a mental phenomenon, which can be designated as «The mental representation of a career.» From a psychological point of view, career is a conscious mental activity of a subject, which encourages, directs, implements and regulates the process of a person's professional life. Professional activity is understood as all processes associated with the functioning, formation, development of a person as a professional. Based on the structure and functional blocks, the designated functions that the career is fulfilling: incentive function; function of goal-setting (guiding function); planning function; evaluative function; regulatory function; predictive function.

Association between Oxygen Saturation level, Cognitive Function, and the Academic Performance of Medical Students, Jouf University

Background and Aim: Many factors have an impact on academic performance, cognitive function one of the most important factor which affect the academic performance, cognitive means conscious mental activity as thinking, remembering, learning or using language. The objective of the study was to assess association between the oxygen saturation level, cognitive function and academic performance of medical students. Methods: This descriptive cross-sectional study conducted between October 2016 to April 2017. Simple random sampling of 88 medical students were included in the study. A self-administrated questionnaire including factors affect the oxygen saturation levels, measurement of the oxygen saturation by pulse oximeter, and digital span test which include forward and backward test. The data from this research were analyzed using mean descriptive and inferential statistical tests, standard deviation, and t-test and ANOVA with a significance level of p < 0.05. Results: Results showed that academic performance of the students had the highest correlation with the cognitive functions (p

Pengaruh Minyak Ikan Toman (Channa micropeltes) Terhadap Fungsi Kognitif Mencit Putih (Mus musculus L.) Galur Swiss Webster Jantan

Salah satu faktor utama yang memengaruhi fungsi kognitif adalah asupan zat gizi. Asupan zat gizi yang harus diperhatikan antara lain asam lemak omega-6, asam lemak omega-3 seperti Eicosapentaenoic Acid (EPA) dan Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA) dan asam lemak tak jenuh. Omega-3 banyak dikandung pada ikan salah satunya ikan toman. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui pengaruh pemberian minyak ikan toman (Channa micropeltes) terhadap fungsi kognitif mencit putih (Mus musculus L.) galur Swiss Webster jantan. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian eksperimental dengan rancangan pre-posttest with control group design. Subjek penelitian adalah 30 ekor mencit putih (Mus musculus L.) galur Swiss Webster jantan, umur 4-10 minggu, berat badan 20-35 gram yang dibagi menjadi 5 kelompok: kontrol positif (K1), kelompok kontrol negatif (K2), kelompok mencit yang diberikan dosis minyak ikan toman sebanyak 5% (K3), kelompok mencit yang diberikan dosis minyak ikan toman sebanyak 10% (K4) dan kelompok mencit yang diberikan dosis minyak ikan toman sebanyak 20% (K5) masing-masing sebanyak 6 ekor mencit. Fungsi kognitif dinilai menggunakan Uji MWM yang dilakukan sebanyak 2 kali. Pemberian minyak ikan toman selama 14 hari (p&lt;0,05) mengurangi waktu latensi pada dosis tinggi (20%). Sementara itu, kelompok dengan dosis rendah dan sedang (5% dan 10%) tidak menunjukkan adanya pengaruh pemberian minyak ikan toman terhadap waktu latensi. Minyak ikan toman (Channa micropeltes), dosis 20% meningkatkan fungsi kognitif mencit putih (Mus Musculus L.) galur Swiss Webster jantan.

The Primary Process: Freud’s Profound Yet Neglected Contribution to the Psychology of Consciousness

ABSTRACTThe primary process model is part of Freud’s struggle to define and distinguish conscious and unconscious mental activity. He created two embryonic models of unconscious mind. One he derived from studying symptoms of dynamic repression or sequestration of content already capable of symbolic mental representation. The other, the primary process, is his landmark effort to define a mental activity different from reflective representational thought, derived from studying dreaming. He could not clearly separate the repression model, as it is also based on the primary process. He vacillated as to whether the primary process is qualitatively different from representational symbolic thought. His efforts to articulate preconscious mentation suggest an ambiguous gray area between conscious thought and the primary process. Although he concluded that the primary process is unconscious because it is not intrinsically reflective, its manifestations are psychologically conscious and directly evident except in the physiologically unconscious state of dreaming. Similar problems color the efforts of others including Klein, Matte-Blanco, and theorists of attachment and implicit learning to separate conscious and unconscious mind and to articulate a model of mental function different from reflective consciousness. A model of conscious mental activity different from reflective representational consciousness, called primordial consciousness, is proposed to account for a wide spectrum of human phenomena both normal and pathological that share characteristics of immediacy and belief. They include, in addition to dreaming, psychosis, creativity, spirituality, and mental process in non-western cultures.

Time to lay the Libet experiment to rest: Commentary on Papanicolaou (2017).

Author(s): Kihlstrom, JF | Abstract: For more than 30 years, Libet has inspired and dominated philosophical and scientific discussions of free will and determinism. Unfortunately, this famous experiment has been compromised by a serious confounding variable (i.e., there has been no control for watching the clock), and the method of data collection ignored conscious mental activity that occurred prior to the decision to act. Because Libet's results appear to be wholly an artifact of his method, his experiment should be discounted in future discussions of the problem of free will.

Compare the Cognitive Abilities and Subjective Well-Being of Elderly Living With Families and Old Age Homes

Aging is not a disease, but the final stage of normal life. Cognitive abilities mean conscious mental activity as thinking, remembering, learning or using language. Considerable work has been done to understand the age-related decline in cognitive abilities. Subjective well-being is defined as people’s evaluation of their own lives. Such evaluations can be both cognitive judgements, such as life satisfaction, and emotional responses to events, such as feeling positive emotions. The present study focuses on Compare the cognitive abilities and subjective well-being of elderly living with families and old age homes. The study was carried out in lucknow. Random sampling technique was fallowed in the present study. The sample for this study comprised of 120 elderly individuals (60 females and 60 males respectively) from urban and semi-urban areas. Cognitive abilities scale: The cognitive abilities scale of elderly was assessed using cognitive abilities scale by Dr. Avishai Antonovsky (1987). Subjective Well-Being scale: The perception of Subjective well-being among elderly was measured using Subjective well-being scale developed by Prof. William Pavot. et al (1997)., The sample of this study were personally and individually contacted and data was obtained through face-to face interview. The positive clearly indicates that more cognitive abilities better will be the subjective well-being among elderly living at various places.

Development of Afterlife Beliefs in Childhood: Relationship to Parent Beliefs and Testimony

This study examined the development of children’s reasoning about the afterlife and its relationship with parental afterlife beliefs and testimony. A total of 123 children aged 5, 7, and 10 years were read a story describing the events that led to a person’s death. After hearing the story, children were asked questions about the dead agent’s biological, perceptual, epistemic-volitional, and emotional states and about the agent’s capacity to engage in conscious mental activity. Parents completed a scale assessing the strength of their afterlife beliefs and a questionnaire examining aspects of parental discourse with children about death and the deceased. The results showed that, with age, children become more accurate at predicting the cessation of biological functions, perceptual states, and mental activity. However, children at all ages were reluctant to claim the cessation of epistemic-volitional and emotional states. Parents’ afterlife beliefs and discourse about death and the afterlife were not related to children’s afterlife responses. Our findings converge with the view that children’s afterlife reasoning is grounded on cognitive mechanisms and may be less amenable to sociocultural input.

Psychophysical correlations, synchronicity and meaning

The dual-aspect framework which Jung developed with Wolfgang Pauli implies that psychophysical phenomena are neither reducible to physical processes nor to conscious mental activity. Rather, they constitute a radically novel kind of phenomena, deriving from correlations between the physical and the mental. In synchronistic events, a particular subclass of psychophysical phenomena, these correlations are explicated as experienced meaning.

XII-Perceiving the Passing of Time

Duration distortions familiar from trauma present an apparent counterexample to what we might call the naive view of duration perception. I argue that such distortions constitute a counterexample to naiveté only on the assumption that we perceive duration absolutely. This assumption can seem mandatory if we think of the alternative, relative view as limiting our awareness to the relative durations of perceptually presented events. However, once we recognize the constant presence of a stream of non-perceptual conscious mental activity, we can provide an attractive, purely relative account of temporal distortions quite consistent with the naive view. I also consider (and reject) a second empirical challenge to the naive view arising from the so-called ‘oddball effect’. I conclude by tentatively pointing to further empirical data, traditionally accounted for in terms of an internal clock model of timing, which, I suggest, may be understood more illuminatingly by appeal to the idea that we perceive duration in part relative to concurrent non-perceptual mental activity.

A "Conceptual Nervous System" for multiple sclerosis.

Neuropsychological diagnosis requires a structure-function correlation model or a Nervous System. The unpredictably variable, widespread, and multifocal nature of pathological changes in multiple sclerosis (MS) challenges the neuropsychological localizationist assumption. To be adapted to MS pathological and clinical heterogeneity, a Conceptual Nervous System should explain impairments associated with multifocal, subcortical, and white matter lesions that cause information processing slowing and working memory/executive function impairment. Our main goal in this theoretical study was to develop a Conceptual Nervous System for MS by integrating current neuropsychological conceptions of structural-functional correlations in MS with a model of conscious mental activity developed by Ernst Poppel , based on periodic reentrant activity between cortical and subcortical structures. Neuropsychological profiles in MS can be explained by both threshold and multiple disconnection mechanisms. The Conceptual Nervous System encompasses a functional and structural model of the human brain-mind. The functional model classifies mental function into material and formal. Material/semantic functions are modularly organized, and their impairment causes classical focal neuropsychological symptoms. Multiple sclerosis preferentially impairs formal/syntactic function related to widespread patterns of activation and temporal organization. The structural model specifies the system anatomically functions. The neuropsychological adequacy of the proposed Conceptual Nervous System to MS is analyzed by comparing its predictions to results of extant meta-analytic studies.

Intrinsic brain activity in altered states of consciousness: how conscious is the default mode of brain function?

Spontaneous brain activity has recently received increasing interest in the neuroimaging community. However, the value of resting-state studies to a better understanding of brain-behavior relationships has been challenged. That altered states of consciousness are a privileged way to study the relationships between spontaneous brain activity and behavior is proposed, and common resting-state brain activity features observed in various states of altered consciousness are reviewed. Early positron emission tomography studies showed that states of extremely low or high brain activity are often associated with unconsciousness. However, this relationship is not absolute, and the precise link between global brain metabolism and awareness remains yet difficult to assert. In contrast, voxel-based analyses identified a systematic impairment of associative frontoparieto-cingulate areas in altered states of consciousness, such as sleep, anesthesia, coma, vegetative state, epileptic loss of consciousness, and somnambulism. In parallel, recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have identified structured patterns of slow neuronal oscillations in the resting human brain. Similar coherent blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) systemwide patterns can also be found, in particular in the default-mode network, in several states of unconsciousness, such as coma, anesthesia, and slow-wave sleep. The latter results suggest that slow coherent spontaneous BOLD fluctuations cannot be exclusively a reflection of conscious mental activity, but may reflect default brain connectivity shaping brain areas of most likely interactions in a way that transcends levels of consciousness, and whose functional significance remains largely in the dark.

The Dual Process Account of Reasoning: Historical Roots, Problems and Perspectives

Despite the great effort that has been dedicated to the attempt to redefine expected utility theory on the grounds of new assumptions, modifying or moderating some axioms, none of the alternative theories propounded so far had a statistical confirmation over the full domain of applicability. Moreover, the discrepancy between prescriptions and behaviors is not limited to expected utility theory. In two other fundamental fields, probability and logic, substantial evidence shows that human activities deviate from the prescriptions of the theoretical models. The paper suggests that the discrepancy cannot be ascribed to an imperfect axiomatic description of human choice, but to some more general features of human reasoning and assumes the “dual-process account of reasoning” as a promising explanatory key. This line of thought is based on the distinction between the process of deliberate reasoning and that of intuition; where in a first approximation, “intuition” denotes a mental activity largely automatized and inaccessible from conscious mental activity. The analysis of the interactions between these two processes provides the basis for explaining the persistence of the gap between normative and behavioral patterns. This view will be explored in the following pages: central consideration will be given to the problem of the interactions between rationality and intuition, and the correlated “modularity” of the thought.

Invariant measures in brain dynamics

This note concerns brain activity at the level of neural ensembles and uses ideas from ergodic dynamical systems to model and characterize chaotic patterns among these ensembles during conscious mental activity. Central to our model is the definition of a space of neural ensembles and the assumption of discrete time ensemble dynamics. We argue that continuous invariant measures draw the attention of deeper brain processes, engendering emergent properties such as consciousness. Invariant measures supported on a finite set of ensembles reflect periodic behavior, whereas the existence of continuous invariant measures reflect the dynamics of nonrepeating ensemble patterns that elicit the interest of deeper mental processes. We shall consider two different ways to achieve continuous invariant measures on the space of neural ensembles: (1) via quantum jitters, and (2) via sensory input accompanied by inner thought processes which engender a “folding” property on the space of ensembles.

The Philosophy of Decapitation: Analysis, Biomedical Reform, and Devolution in London's Body Politic, 1830-850

_s O n 28 March 1836 one Edward Rigby read an eccentric paper, later published in the London Medical Gazette, to the Royal College of Physicians. Entitled the On the Pathology of Decapitation, it sought to explain the seemingly obvious problem of why causes a person's death. Rigby presented several strange cases in which facial movements continued after decapitation. He listed anecdotes of blinking and moving eyes, of wrinkled noses, of lips moving up to two minutes after the cut had been made, and because these actions occurred so long after decapitation, Rigby speculated on the possibility of conscious mental activity in the severed head (23-25). paper was immediately mocked in a rival medical journal's editorial entitled The Philosophy of Decapitation. Ironically praising Rigby for his staggering proofs, it proclaimed that the of decapitation was an important physiological question (152). Yet despite this ridicule, a discourse of did indeed exist in London biomedical researches of the 1830s and 1840s. It was