Scientific views of consciousness and well being

In this article, I touch briefly on some scientific views on consciousness and how to keep mental well being

Parts of the brain said to be responsible for consciousness

What is consciousness?

The first question for us is: what is consciousness? What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? What is the difference between a rock and a mammal? What is the difference between an unconscious person and a conscious person? Are plants and simple creatures like amoeba or jellyfish less conscious than humans? Or are they not conscious at all?

The above questions have a variety of answers. Some hold that consciousness has something to do with the nervous system and information that passes, via electrical spikes or chemical mechanisms, between different parts of the organism. Even plants have chemicals that are passed up and down their stem that can be said to represent messages akin to a nervous system in animals.

There are both top down (electrical pulses or spikes passed from the brain to the senses and limbs) and bottom up (senses to brain) aspects to the phenomenon.

Others hold that consciousness has to do with the advanced, later evolved parts of the brain, such as prefrontal cortex in mammals, which is responsible for higher level cognitive actions like language, reasoning, speech etc. In this theory, lower organisms and plants may be assumed to not have consciousness in the same way as animals higher on the scale of evolution.

From a scientific perspective, we discount phenomena that cannot be observed (things like a soul) and focus on what can actually be seen or measured. In this way, we can conclude that the brain activity is certainly correlated to consciousness and mind. Whenever a person does a conscious action, their brain is active, as can be observed from fMRI scans or EEG activity. Therefore, we have to just explain how the brain and neurons work together to create consciousness.

There are a number of important theories on consciousness, including Global workspace theory and integrated information theory. These theories seek to explain consciousness as a phenomenon related to information processing from different parts of the brain.

Ways to explain consciousness

Put briefly, consciousness might be understood as one or more of the following:

• An emergent property of neurons in the brain: the neurons communicate using electrical impulses or spikes, but some complex properties (like consciousness) may emerge out of the combined activity of the spikes that were not present in the simple summation of the individual spike activities.
• A quantum computing effect between parts of the brain: Some people like Roger Penrose have speculated that there might be interactions between different brain regions and consciousness might be a phenomenon that is quantum in nature, arising out of such interactions. Glial cells, which make up the white matter in the brain, have been stated as a potential candidate for such phenomena.
• A process that can be modelled: Some people have suggested that we can model the aspects or components of the phenomenon of consciousness. So if a computer or robot has the same components, that might be said to be conscious
• An illusion: Some scientists believe that what we call as consciousness might be just an illusion and not really existing as a phenomenon. It seems to us as real, but there is no such thing, just the neural activity etc. In this way it is similar to the illusion of free will (refer to Benjamin Libet’s experiments on free will, and VS Ramachandran’s book describing experiments with phantom limbs and split brain patients, who sometimes behave there are two minds in the same head with each mind not aware of the other)
• An attribution we make after an action is done: This means that consciousness is just a justification or attribution we make after the phenomenon has happened. For example, take any common phenomenon such as recognizing a person or a familiar voice after many years, or even such a simple phenomenon as lifting our left hand consciously. In many such cases, we may say it is because we were conscious, but in reality we might be not aware of making the action at the time of making it (which can be detected using readiness potential), and justified it later by thinking we were conscious of it.
• Neural correlates of consciousness: These are the parts of the brain that are active when a person is said to be conscious, but not active in an unconscious person. So the neural activity in these parts of the brain is correlated to the phenomenon of consciousness.

Needless to say, there is no one theory that has full acceptance yet among neuroscientists, let alone got full support from biological evidence. But several of these theories are based on the evidence of brain regions and have at least some data backing them up.

Neuroscience views of good mental health

There are several books that describe neuroscientific views, including “Your Brain at Work” by David Rock and “Buddha’s brain” by Rick Hanson. Below are some of the insights, taken from some of these books, on how to keep a good mental health using insights from neuroscience.

1. When we multitask, there is extra cognitive load on the brain. So always prioritize your tasks at the start of the day, remove distractions, set aside time for focused work and do not multitask.
2. Turn your most important daily tasks into habits by repeating them, so there is less cognitive load on the brain when planning and executing them.
3. Try to be in a state of flow when doing your daily tasks. It is a state which is pleasurable and we don't even notice when time passes. Top athletes are said to be in such a state of flow.
4. Instead of comparing your performance with others (which triggers the threat response), try and compete with your own self from the day before. This would work to lower the threat response and activate the reward circuits of the brain more easily.
5. Do not give feedback to others (which they may take as a threat and triggers the threat response), instead help them to get the insight to discover and correct their behavior on their own.
6. Always reappraise your past situations and emotions by rethinking them in the light of your present knowledge. That way, we can avoid focusing too much on the bad situations, which we tend to do.

Nutrition tips for good brain health

For a good mind it is necessary to take care of the body, particularly the brain. What we eat is an important aspect of our health. Following are some tips on what to eat in order to keep the brain healthy:

1. Eat good food, with enough protein and veggies. Try to eat vegetables in different colors, and your 5 a day. Fruits like berries are good for the brain. So are nuts like almonds and walnuts.
2. Take Omega 3 supplements, found in fish oils like cod liver oil
3. Minimize sugar in your food
4. Take vitamin supplements, especially vitamin B

Conclusion

In this article, we have discussed some views by scientists on what constitutes the mind and consciousness, and how to keep the brain healthy.