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Consciousness as an alternate interpretation of corollary discharges

Consciousness as an alternate interpretation of corollary discharges. M.Karthikeyan Y9277 Mentor: Prof.Amitabh Mukherjee. AIM. Understanding the nature of consciousness. Are corollary discharges (signals in the brain) what we call as consciousness?? How materialistic is consciousness??.

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Consciousness as an alternate interpretation of corollary discharges

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  1. Consciousness as an alternate interpretation of corollary discharges M.Karthikeyan Y9277 Mentor: Prof.Amitabh Mukherjee

  2. AIM • Understanding the nature of consciousness. • Are corollary discharges (signals in the brain) what we call as consciousness?? • How materialistic is consciousness??

  3. Concepts involved • Efference signal • Efference copy signal • Forward Internal Model • Corollary Discharge • Reafferent signal

  4. Experimental Procedure • Subjects – 9 Schizophrenic (corollary discharge pathway affected) patients from MahendruHospital,Kanpur. • Methodology: • Patients were shown a red circle , the stimulus to press a button. • Had to say yes when they sensed their intention to press the button. • Finally press the button. • I noted the time instant of ‘YES’ on a millisecond stopwatch. • Button press time instant was recorded by the software. • Active trial - subject himself pressed the button • Passive trial – I pushed the patients finger onto the button • Active trials – 2 sample and 5 subject trials • Passive trials – 2 sample and 5 subject trials

  5. Time in ms Active-Medium positive STD DEV 1 A-49.11ms P-425.3ms 2 A-189.3ms P-267.7ms Subject

  6. Time in ms Active-Negative 3 A-114.25 P-35.52 4 A-106 P-70.1 5 A-237 P-961.3 6 A-69.8 P-262.5 7 A-120.2 P-558.55 Subject

  7. Time in ms Active-Very high positive STD DEV 8 A-74.33 P-278.32 9 A-189.34 P-267.7 10 A-233.8 P-342.01 Subject

  8. Data Analysis • The first five results were as expected , resulting in late realization of action execution. • Time gap difference corresponded to the subject’s extent of schizophrenia (various levels of the condition) • Explanations for the very high positive time gaps ??

  9. Scope for improvement • Drawbacks: • Number of subjects available were low , larger number of trials performed per subject. • Time instant of ‘YES’ obtained by taking into account the experimenter’s error. • Highly accurate time estimates might be possible by using EEG(electroencephalography) i.e the exact time instant of conscious realization.

  10. References • 1.Sukhvinder S.Obhi , (Evidence for feedback dependent conscious awareness of action(Brain Research,2007 1161:88-94). • 2.Libet, B. (1985) Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of conscious will in voluntary action. Behavioural and Brain Sciences, 8: 529:566. • 3. Irwin Feinberg (Efference copy and corollary discharge: implications for thinking and its disorders . Schizophrenia bulletin 1978;4(4):636-40.)

  11. Thank You!

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