
Temporal circuit of brain activity supports human consciousness - hhs
https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/11/eaaz0087
======
jkhdigital
Man, I love seeing more research like this. My personal experience, as someone
who has dealt with a variety of issues in psychiatrists' offices and
rehabilitation rooms, is that a clear scientific understanding of what is
actually going on under my skull provides a much firmer basis for any
therapeutic approach. I'm really hoping that in my lifetime we will see
connections made between the physiological elements of consciousness and the
modern psychiatric plagues of depression, anxiety, and addiction that finally
produce the targeted, universally effective therapies that are desperately
needed.

~~~
kohtatsu
I was recently talking to a registered psych nurse, and we got talking about
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

I believe I've been self administering a form of it for a couple years, and I
summarized my understand of CBT as "moving more thinking from the amygdala to
the prefrontal cortex", and she confirmed that with "in laymen's terms; yes".

It's not like the fields are completely isolated, I guess is what I'm getting
at with that anecdote. It's hard to go from neuroscience to psychology, but
that's always being looked at. I reckon most big advancements will start
coming when we start understanding the connectome more, but it's not like all
advancements will come from there, and it's not like people aren't working
right now to bridge neuroscience and psychology.

Also I want to hang out with the laymen she does.

~~~
curo
I'm not qualified to contest this, but I do remember a side blurb from
"Principles of Neuroscience" (Kandel, Schwartz, Jessell) that said overactive
mPFCs are attributed with autism and below is some more research on it.

I don't think you're saying this overtly but I have seen people from the
Thinking Fast & Slow crowd glorify their PFCs as arbiters of cognitive bias
while forgetting that healthy social, emotional processing required integrated
functioning between all neural correlates involved, including the amygdala. I
would venture to guess CBT is effective because it stops overactive PFCs which
is the opposite of what the nurse's guess is. But as a laymen here, I can't
say one way or the other.

I remember a decade or two ago, the ACC+vmPFC combo was getting a lot of
praise as this balancing force between the dlPFC and the amygdala saying
strong ACC+vmPFC could be the clue to healthy brains. I think the answer will
always be, "hey all these parts are important. Just meditate, exercise, and
eat right. And don't believe your thoughts too much (CBT)"

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192959/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5192959/)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688328/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4688328/)

~~~
fsloth
As a depression patient, that's more or less healed, here's my take: \- In
depression you can get up lost in these cognitive negative loops

\- One of the feedback loops is between what you feel and what you think - a
bad feeling induces you to think some bad thoughts, and as those thoughts are
combined with the bad feeling, they are validated as true. Now the thought is
associated with a bad feeling, and one will give rise to the other , just like
tinkle of the bell induced pavlov's dog to drool. But in this case the
drooling of the dog can also make the bell tinkle, causing more drooling...

\- the amygdala response is about the bad feelings, and how the bad feelings
can induce more physiological discomfort due to amygdala kicking in and doing
"what it's supposed to" \- now your bad feelings are superchardged as well

\- so, I would say it's not only about cortex or amygdala, but in depression
the negative thought patterns and the physiological response can get linked
into this destructive loop of continuous feedback. Hence, it does not matter
that you can rationally say to yourself the bad thoughts you had are not that
serious because they just launched a full scale amygdala based storm of bad
feeling and anxiety

\- my ssri:s kind of felt like they cut out this bad loop. I felt like my
cognitive self was insulated from the physiological response, giving me space
to unlearn both cognitive and emotional bad habits one at a time without the
disruptive loop taking control

------
naasking
The anti-correlated behaviour of these two networks, and even their default
mode vs. attention functions, reminds of the attention schema theory of
consciousness [1].

Specifically, the attention schema theory posits that some constant back and
forth signal switching between internal and external models of the world
results in the illusion of subjective awareness, in an analogous manner to how
task switching provides the illusion of parallelism on single-core CPUs.

[1]
[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.0050...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00500/full)

~~~
hirundo
So psuedo basic for the consciousness algorithm:

    
    
      10 look at world
      20 look at my reaction to world
      30 goto 10
    

Which generates consciousness like frames per second generates motion. Or like
the colored lines over this black and white photo generate a color image:

[https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1248000332027715584/...](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1248000332027715584/photo/1)

~~~
_red
> 20 look at my reaction to world

who is the "my" you are referring to? you have an 'a priori' conflict.

~~~
KhoomeiK
By "my" I guess he's referring to an internal state that has been built up
over previous interactions with the external world? So more like:

    
    
      10 receive information from world
      20 do operations on information
      25 update state based on operation result
      30 goto 10

~~~
visarga
I think it's more like:

10 receive information about the world, body and reward signals

20 evaluate the current situation and possible actions

30 act

40 goto 10

Emotion results in step 20 when we judge situations and actions in the context
as good or bad. In this step two subsystems cooperate:

1\. a system for fast reaction - works best when there is no time to reason,
or when the action is repetitive, or when available information is uncertain

2\. a system for slow, reasoning based reaction - works when we can build a
mental model and imagine possible outcomes, is especially necessary when we
encounter novel situations and have the concepts necessary to reason about it

System 1 is based on instinct and system 2 is learned. They are both essential
as they are specialised in different situations. Using system 2 all the time
would be too expensive and probably impossible, we need to rely on instinct
which in turn relies on evolution to be fine tuned.

Learning happens through the reward signal. We reevaluate situations and
actions based on outcomes. Emotion is just a synonym for the value we assign
to our current state with regard to our goals and needs.

Our goals include adapting to the environment in order to assure the integrity
and necessities of life - the primary goal, then as secondary goals - being
part of a social group, learning, mastery, conceiving children, curiosity and
a few other instincts. We are born with this goal-program which is in turn
evolved.

------
ta1234567890
Sounds like the temporal circuit is acting like a clock, as in a computer
chip's clock. Pretty cool.

> We demonstrate that the transitions between default mode and dorsal
> attention networks are embedded in this temporal circuit, in which a
> balanced reciprocal accessibility of brain states is characteristic of
> consciousness. Conversely, isolation of the default mode and dorsal
> attention networks from the temporal circuit is associated with
> unresponsiveness of diverse etiologies. These findings advance the
> foundational understanding of the functional role of anticorrelated systems
> in consciousness.

------
sebringj
This feels right in terms how I experience things when I've had bad migraines
and notice parts of my capability going away temporarily such as understanding
speech or being able to read words or missing visual areas entirely. Things
get jumbled or confused, all the while, I am aware of these things happening
yet unable to control them. It feels like there are separate parts of me like
modules that go offline but the one that is constant is the sense of "me" or
the consciousness part. These episodes are few and far between but I am still
thankful to have a different perspective of our bio-mechanical nature. It also
makes me feel closer to my pets in the sense that awareness or consciousness
doesn't correlate with cognitive ability or intellect but that is just my
guess.

~~~
sebringj
relating to this...it makes me very curious about Neuralink or similar tech
impact on humanity once that becomes more advanced. If it is true we have
these specialized processing areas while our awareness is another specialized
area, it would follow that all sorts of capabilities the new tech brings would
simply be incorporated and assumed just as we assume our ability to remember a
name or add numbers in our head. It will be a crazy future that I hope to see.

------
akozak
> Here, we conservatively use the term “unresponsiveness” instead of
> “unconsciousness” to allow for the possibility that covert or disconnected
> consciousness could occur in the absence of behavioral response.

Conservatism is very wise! Given what they say in that quote, I'm very
confused why they think it's justified in the intro to suggest they've
identified 2 systems responsible for consciousness. Shouldn't they replace
every use of the word "consciousness" with "responsiveness"? They're relying
on a purely behavioral understanding of consciousness

Descartes famously thought that consciousness lived in the pineal gland, and
similar arguments has tended to generate some well deserved criticism from
philosophers of mind. Pointing at a physical thing and saying it's the source
of conscious experience should come with pretty extraordinary evidence.

~~~
hackinthebochs
>They're relying on a purely behavioral understanding of consciousness

They're relying on the fact that consciousness has physical manifestations in
behavior. The alternative is epiphenomenalism. While it may be a
philosophically interesting position, its useless scientifically and so its
fair to assume consciousness has some physical artifacts in a scientific
context.

~~~
akozak
I don't think we're forced to choose between behaviorism and epiphenomenalism.

But my point is more internal to the paper. They make claims about the
physical basis for consciousness and seem to believe they've generated
evidence for it, but they also explicitly say they've only gathered evidence
about responsiveness.

EDIT: To be clear I'm objecting to the semantics (which I consider important),
not the potential value of the research.

------
david_w
The brain is the most complicated structure in the known universe. The probes
currently available to science- fMRI and GSR - are both gross measures of
cortical electrical activity. They're enough to start to explore apparent
structural and (gross) electrical correlation between brain areas and (gross)
alterations in "consciousness", in this case unconsciousness invoked via
propofol and ketamine. Fair enough.

However, it irritates me when I hear scientists loosely throw the word
"consciousness" into these studies and here's why.

In these studies, consciousness is always implicitly defined operationally as
the electrical activity in some identified networks- DAT and DSM and front-
parietal and sensory motor etc.. But the concept of consciousness has another
life in philosophy where in works by people like Patricia Churchland and
others, it references something more subtle- the mystery of why there should
be anything we call experience at all.

Experience itself doesn't seem to be necessary to the working of any machine,
including our brains. We don't think our TVs have any experiences despite
(being capable of) accurately representing all human visual experiences. The
reason we don't think they experience what they're displaying is because we
know how they work and we know there's no ghost in the machine. Adding on
"experiences" to an explanation of how TVs work is gratuitous and unnecessary.

But that's not the case with humans-just the opposite. Experience is
absolutely foundational.

Descartes tried to boil his world down to what he could know with absolute
certainty and arrived at his famous "Cogito ergo sum" formulation, but
actually, he skipped a step; that step is simply- "There is experience".

Experience is perfectly gratuitous to any explanation of brain activity since
all that activity, like an electrical storm, could take place in exactly the
same way without it. We (our brains) could be, and most scientists believe
are, very complicated, but purely mechanical machines. They could be exactly
as they are with no more awareness- not to say feedback loops- than a blender.

But that account leaves the problem of experience or consciousness completely
untouched. That would be O.K. except we know we have it.

The mystery of consciousness is not totally defined by questions like of "can
I make you unconscious or conscious?" or "can I cause you to have this or that
illusory experience by stimulating your brain?". The mystery of consciousness
is _why is there anything like experience at all ?_

So whenever I read a paper that makes some confident assertion about
consciousness, it gets under my skin. It's electrical activity and perhaps
human behavior and speech they are actually examining, not consciousness. I
hear these papers gratingly assuming the consequent with respect to the
biggest mystery there is. They are implicitly saying "this is consciousness,
this pattern of electrical activity in the brain and here is what we have
discovered about consciousness". That's one perspective, but to philosophers,
both academic and non-academic, it's a form of punting on the real question.

Consciousness is to brain science what AGI is to AI. Researchers just love to
make assertions and grand predictions.

Actually the correlation between the two is closer than that since strong AI
claims that consciousness can be captured in a computer; Kurtzweil and his
Singularity concept is in this school of thought.

He and people like him claim that not only does experience arise as a direct
result of brain activity but any substrate- including general purpose computer
platforms- will similarly give rise to the same experiences if only they are
programmed in a particular way, specifically, if the computations are
functionally equivalent to the brain's computations.

Are badly programmed computers therefore experiencing chaos? Well, why not?
Are simpler computers, like a thermostat which "experiences" temperature
changes, also somehow dimly conscious? If that seems like a straw man argument
to you, you should know Marvin Minsky bought it and so do a lot of other
scientists whether they realize it or not.

All of this is just a non-starer to people like me. You don't get to skip a
step because it keeps your theory neat or provides you the promise of
immortality because you uploaded your "you" to a machine.

Consciousness, understood in this way, is a genuine mystery which for now at
least I don't think we have the conceptual tools to even define much less make
pronouncements about.

~~~
sofal
I think we're a long way from a good understanding of how consciousness works,
but I also think a lot of people are going to subscribe to a sort of
consciousness-of-the-gaps idea no matter how much progress is made in
understanding the actual mechanisms. Even if we fully understood and and could
reproduce it, there would be scores of people who would flat out refuse to see
the evidence and would simply assert that the ineffable "experience" does not
exist within beings for which they don't want to acknowledge it. The very
concept of p-zombies illustrates this a priori refusal to admit any possible
evidence whatsoever of consciousness. Another person could simply decide that
I am in fact a p-zombie and lock themselves in a closed system of thought out
of which there is no path to demonstrating that I "experience" anything at
all.

I think if you want to put forth a hypothesis that there is some ghostly
ineffable part of consciousness called "experience" that cannot ever be
touched or measured by scientific means, then you have a self-defeating
argument that cannot be supported. You might as well go full solipsism.
There's nothing stopping you.

Consciousness is a genuine mystery at this point, but I think some people will
still see it that way even if we solve it, and this is clearer to me every
time I see people trash any kind of effort or progress made by science in
understanding the brain, claiming that it is not in fact progress at all.

~~~
axguscbklp
On the other hand, I think that many people are emotionally invested in
believing that science must be capable of solving the hard problem of
consciousness even though there is no reason to assume that science is.

It is perfectly possible that the hard problem of consciousness is in
principle and forever beyond the reach of scientific investigation.

------
shireboy
ELI5 "anti-correlated" here? What I envision is the temporal circuit acting
like a computer clock, and the other as input/output. But "anti correlated"
makes it sound like that's not the case?

~~~
cjhveal
Not ELI5 exactly, but the article does a pretty good job of explaining in the
first paragraph:

> The default mode network (DMN) is an internally directed system that
> correlates with consciousness of self, and the dorsal attention network
> (DAT) is an externally directed system that correlates with consciousness of
> the environment... the DMN and DAT appear to be in a reciprocal relationship
> with each other such that they are not simultaneously active, i.e., they are
> “anticorrelated.”

The "temporal circuit" the paper describes is the neural architecture that
facilitates the transitions between these two networks.

~~~
abvdasker
Totally fascinating. It makes me wonder what kind of dysfunction would result
from both the DMN and DAT being active at the same time, and especially what
my subjective experience of that would be if it were happening to me.

~~~
lifty
I am not sure if this is accurate but intuitively, in strong psychedelic
experiences it feels that both the DMN and DAT are active at the same time,
which leads to, among many other things, a clearheaded view of mental
processes that are hard to observe otherwise. One example would be observing
emotions and how they affect your state of mind, while at the same time being
totally detached from them. Some studies [1] propose that this happens because
of an increase in connectivity between various parts of the brain, which could
also be the thing that leads to ego dissolution.

[1] [https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)...](https://www.cell.com/current-
biology/fulltext/S0960-9822\(16\)30062-8)

------
stcredzero
Language is a Virus. Consciousness is an OODA Loop. (You could write an
alternative set of lyrics to the Laurie Anderson song.)

------
a5ha54eha5e4
I'll be the asshole here: this is crap. They took some weak correlations
(anti-correlations whatever) between conscious brains and 'unconscious' brains
induced via Ketamine. The rest of the paper is just creating new jargon for
large vague regions of the brain, and tons of jump-the-shark assumptions about
how they work together.

Most notably, there's no mention of STDP, nor the cingulate gyrus, or any
reference to the fine-structure internals of the brain.

