Bernard J. Baars William P. Banks James B. Newman
Consciousness is at the very core of the human condition. Yet only in recent decades has it become a major focus in the brain and behavioral sciences. Scientists now know that consciousness involves many levels of brain functioning, from brainstem to cortex. The almost seventy articles in this book reflect the breadth and depth of this burgeoning field. The many topics covered include consciousness in vision and inner speech, immediate memory and attention, waking, dreaming, coma, the effects of brain damage, fringe consciousness, hypnosis, and dissociation.
Underlying all the selections are the questions, What difference does consciousness make? What are its properties? What role does it play in the nervous system? How do conscious brain functions differ from unconscious ones? The focus of the book is on scientific evidence and theory. The editors have also chosen introductory articles by leading scientists to allow a wide variety of new readers to gain insight into the field.
Table of Contents
Preface
Sources
1 Introduction: Treating Consciousness as a Variable: The Fading Taboo
by Bernard J. Baars
I Overview
2 Consciousness: Respectable, Useful, and Probably Necessary
by George Mandler
3 Consciousness and Neuroscience
by Francis Crick and Christof Koch
II Consciousness in Vision
4 Feature Binding, Attention and Object Perception
by Anne Treisman
5 Effects of Sleep and Arousal on the Processing of Visual Information in the Cat
by Margaret S. Livingstone and David H. Hubel
6 The Role of Temporal Cortical Areas in Perceptual Organization
by D. L. Sheinberg and N. K. Logothetis
7 Investigating Neural Correlates of Conscious Perception by Frequency-Tagged Neuromagnetic Responses
by Guilio Tononi, Ramesh Srinivasan, D. Patrick Russell, and Gerald M. Edelman
8 Temporal Binding, Binocular Rivalry, and Consciousness
by Andreas K. Engel, Pascal Fries, Pieter R. Roelfsema, Peter König, Michael Brecht, and Wolf Singer
9 Disconnected Awareness for Detecting, Processing, and Remembering in Neurological Patients&nb