A group of Scientists have identified the areas of brain Activate when a person is aware of themselves and their thoughts. This mysterious process seems to be controlled by the hilly area, a central region of the brain that has been known for its function as a filter between sensory signals and cerebral cortex, the part of the brain dominates higher levels such as memory, thought and personality.
Conscious awareness is the ability of people to be aware of the stimuli received by their senses. It is a different state than simply alert, in which the sensations are processed automatically and without reaction. Instead, conscious awareness requires a detailed and voluntary analysis of external stimuli. For example, we can breathe automatically, but we can also be aware of its breathing and modifying the rhythm. Similarly, when we hear a song, we can pay attention and distinguish the instruments composing it.
Recently, neuroscientists have set out to find a part of the brain where the change in this perception occurs. Traditionally, researchers suspected that such a function must be controlled by the cerebral cortex, because it is the place where the advanced brain processing occurs. Thalamus has never been excluded from conscious awareness, but it is often assigned a small role as a filter to prepare sensory information for the cortex. A new study has been published recently in Science Retifting that view, the hill positioning is an active participant in conscious awareness.
Most of the consciousness studies related to the hill have faced skepticism, because they lack the main observation data of the hill at the workplace or, if they are proven by data, because the controversial way that data can be obtained. To see if a patient's brain area is active or not when paying attention to something, that is necessary for the patient to be aware of stimuli, which is consciousness, while at the same time, their brain is surveyed with invasive sensors.
But in this new study, a group from normal Beijing university in China has moved to a group of people who have thin electrodes that are put into their brain as part of the test headache, ignoring the moral question about whether this type of research has justified an invasive activity.
Researchers have conducted an intuitive cognitive test for these patients. A flashing object is displayed on the screen, which will hide itself in half of the test time. These features mean that patients must pay attention to the object and adjust their eyes and focus to continue watching it, instead of just watching the screen without analyzing it. Therefore, this facilitates conscious awareness, with electrodes that have been transplanted and then recorded the activity of the brain that comes with this.
The researchers said that this was one of the first simultaneous records of conscious awareness and information they recorded, they said, giving strong evidence to the theory that the hill area works a gateway to be aware of consciousness. The findings indicate that internal thalamic nuclei and intermediaries adjust conscious awareness. This conclusion shows a significant progress in our understanding of the network that creates the basis of human vision consciousness, the authors wrote.
This story initially appeared on Stringed in Spanish And was translated from Spanish.