Elusive Consciousness

Author(s): Narendra Bhandari, Surendrasingh Pokharana, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: L D Indology Ahmedabad

Page 60

6. SCIENTIFIC DEVELOPMENTS REGARDING CONSCIOUSNESS
AND SOUL:
Scientific developments can be categorized in different ways as per the disciplines in which scientists are working. Thus in the field of brain sciences, discoveries of neurons and synapses and their interactions in cortex and thalamus regions have strongly indicated that consciousness (physiological in particular) has strong connections with the processes going on in these regions and flow of information through electrochemical impulses. It is now almost well established that the coherent waves of 40-80 Hz cycles per second known as Gamma waves and found in the EEG (Electroencephalogram) patterns of the brain are strongly correlated with consciousness. When awareness or consciousness is more say during yoga and meditation for example, then coherence is more in these waves. It is also found that hundreds of neurons combine through synapses and axons to form hyper neurons or Hebbian networks and these play extremely important role in the activities related with consciousness. (Hameroff 2011)
Several abstract approaches are also being developed in the field of artificial intelligence, computer science, neurophysiology, psychology, philosophy and robotics to understand consciousness. (See Appendix 4 for a summary of the recent work done towards consciousness which were presented in an international conference on consciousness organized by the Centre for study of consciousness at Arizona University in US and held in Arizona from April 21-26, 2014). It may be noted that western scholars use the term consciousness for soul also. Actually consciousness is equivalent to Chetna in Hindi whereas soul is equivalent to Aatman in Indian philosophy. Hence the meaning should be kept in mind while looking at the context.
6.1. Simple Models of consciousness and their limitations
memory another mater, shape ocate
All human beings have multiple options for taking any decision in any field and there are always choices available through what is known as free well. There is another property of the brain and it is memory which is holographic in nature that is, it is not localized but is non-local. There is another area, where non-locality can play an important role, it is binding of sense of colour, shape and motion of an object whose corresponding "regions" in the visual cortex are located in different regions and are also processed in different times. This is called a binding problem. It is worth mentioning some experimental observations by psychologists which clearly shows that conscious actions (responses) precede (in advance) the conscious perception of stimuli by 100-500 milliseconds (Hameroff 2011). Thus in