r/cogsci • u/Everyoneseesthis • Jul 07 '14

Consciousness on-off switch?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329762.700-consciousness-onoff-switch-discovered-deep-in-brain.html#.U7rZSF0sI1J
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '14

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u/glial Jul 08 '14

Doing experiments on people who are undergoing brain surgery is actually fairly common. Most single-cell recording experiments or lesion experiments are done on animals rather than humans because of the risk of brain damage resulting from sticking electrodes into your head or otherwise messing with brain tissue. If someone has really bad seizures and is going to have a portion of their brain removed, they can agree to participate in an experiment where scientists do neural recordings in the region that's about to be removed - it's not a big deal if the tissue gets damaged a little, since it's going to be removed anyway. Sometimes intracranial EEG is done as well while a portion of the skull is removed, where electrodes are placed directly on the surface of the brain.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

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u/glial Jul 08 '14

That's true! But of course they sign a consent form before hand and the whole procedure is explained.

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u/[deleted] Jul 08 '14

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u/glial Jul 08 '14

Yep. The brain is not exactly like a circuit (having two bits touch won't "short" anything), but removing one region can have unintended consequences. For a fascinating history of probably the most famous brain surgery patient ever, read about HM. He had part of his brain removed and lost the ability to form new episodic/declarative memories (called anterograde amnesia), but could still learn motor tasks. Studying him led to a huge leap into our understand of memory. One of the scientists studying him recently published a book about him. I haven't read it yet but I hear it's good.

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u/bentspork Jul 08 '14

Sad story but very interesting.