Brain Science — Consciousness as Memory [Coma | Anesthesia | Psychedelics]
Consciousness stretches with what can be known. The more it is possible to know, the more conscious any system is, at any moment.
It is knowing, really that defines conscious experiences, since it can be there and seem like it, or not, but it is a function of what is known.
There are physical objects with molecules but they cannot know, hence are not conscious. There are others with cells with limited forms of knowing, like plants.
To think and feel are states of knowledge [because it is knowing that makes it possible to think and feel].
The smartphone is known. It can be thought about. If the screen breaks, sadness can be felt: knowing what it is and knowing what is felt.
Computers can somewhat know. They have data. They can analyze and make informed decisions, but they cannot feel if they are struck by something. The extent of knowing with respect to feelings, for them, is absent.
Why do humans have conscious experiences or why can’t a philosophical zombie be able to do what humans can simply do, without consciousness?
The memory is what enables conscious experiences just as it enables functions, abilities and states. To know how to swim or soar is a memory function ordered and regulated [or extended and limited] by memory.
It is the memory that allows parts in the same system to mean different experiences: for example, one hand is dominant and the other one is weak. It is memory that disables abilities in sickness, but enables them while healthy.
Though hormones, neurotransmitters, nerve cells and others are involved or neural correlates of consciousness, they build or construct memory for experiential interactions.
The vast wirings in the brain are a complex knowing network, interconnected for reaches of memory.
Appetite level is known or memory, possible by the hormone ghrelin, or by seeing food or being healthy, or imagining food, or following a sequence, or idleness or being ill, or lethargic, or being busy and not thinking of food and so on.
Sleep is memory. Dream is memory. Coma is memory. General anesthesia is memory. Symptomatic and asymptomatic is memory.
How?
What is the physiology of memory as a system in the brain, to determine experiences or consciousness?
During coma or general anesthesia, the brain still receives signals from the body, but in the memory, they don’t become prioritized, follow a common sequence or go to regular stores or destinations.
They could be pre-prioritized or processed minimally enough to have the experiences [without knowing] of internal senses, but not enough to be conscious, since they don’t go to stores for awareness or attention.
During sleep, there are also internal senses getting prioritized, as their cycle kicks in. For example, kidneys work in pre-prioritization, but during sleep could have times their functions get prioritized.
Also, kidneys, though generally functional in pre-prioritization, their work can get prioritized when it is time to pass water.
There are small [micro] and large [macro] memory stores. The small ones are those that switch between prioritization and pre-prioritization. During activities and interactions, they visit large stores to determine what to remember, feel-like, understand, how to function and so on. It is this interaction that defines doings and it is the key process of the memory, not predictions.
It is stretches of some memory stores for certain parts of the body that enable some people have better skills than others around roles like learning, sports, hunting, fishing and so on. This is similar to how some mammals have better sense of smell or vision, making them conscious of ranges beyond humans.
In brain science, most internal and external senses go to the thalamus, except smell that goes to the olfactory bulb. They are processed or integrated, before relay for interpretation at other parts of the cortex.
The thalamus and olfactory bulb can be described as entry ports, which sometimes open, close and determine what gets prioritized or pre-prioritized.
Sensory processing or integration can be said to be into a uniform unit or quantity, which represents or becomes the equivalent of senses, and can be said to be thought or a form of thought. So any stimuli into the brain become a thought version, which is what goes on for interpretation.
The smartphone is a thought version to the brain, which is how the brain can know it, by storing it in that form.
If the screen breaks, it is the thought version that becomes prioritized and goes into a small store which then goes to a large store of sadness, to feel-like sad, or just around to the location for the actual feeling of sadness, before reaction which could be parallel or perpendicular.
Interpretation in the cerebral cortex can be said to be knowing, feeling and reaction.
Knowing is memory, with large stores and small stores. It is in the large stores that functions, abilities, states, repetition and similarities are determined.
There is a large store for doors, chairs, writing, vision, smell, tables, blood vessels and so forth. These stores have different sides containing what regulation is, feel-like or okay or not, and so on.
Small stores contain the smallest possible unique information about anything. Though there are resident small stores, most small stores are ‘holding’ going directly to the large store during an activity or interaction.
Mind and body meet in the memory, where they all have stores. Mental health is aided by therapy because the condition and therapy meet in the memory and frequency of the therapy store to a large store removes from the feeling of the mental condition.
Certain psychedelics are able to remove trauma from where it hits the most because they have a memory function of a not having the trauma macro store at the principal spot.
Consciousness is a function of knowing, which is by thought or its form in stores.
A recent book by Joseph Jebelli, How the Mind Changed: A Human History of Our Evolving Brain explored consciousness, but what consciousness is, is never beyond what can be known, or memory.
