A team of Scientists have identified the areas of the brain that become active when a person becomes aware of himself and their thoughts. This esoteric process is controlled by the thalamus, a central region of the brain is already known for its function as a filter between sensory signals and cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that controls high-level processes such as memory, thought and personality.
A conscious perception is the ability of humans to become aware of the stimuli obtained by their senses. It is only a separate state from being awakened, where sensations are processed automatically and irreversibly. Rather, a conscious perception requires a detailed and voluntary analysis of external stimuli. For example, we can breathe automatically, but we can also be aware of our breath and modify its rhythm. Similarly, when listening to a song, we can pay attention to attention -focus devices and separate it.
Recently, the neurologist has determined to find the part of the brain where this perception changes. Researchers traditionally suspected that such a function should be controlled by cerebral cortex, as it is where advanced brain processing occurs. The Thalamus has never been denied to join a conscious perception, although it is usually assigned a small role in the form of a filter that prepares sensory information to the cortex. A new study recently published Science Defines the scene again, which gives the thalamus as an active partner in a conscious perception.
Most studies of consciousness incorporating the thalamus have faced skepticism, either because they have a lack of major observation data of the thalamus at work or, if they are evidence with data, then due to the controversial method in which the data was likely to be received. To see if a patient’s brain area “illuminate” with activity when he pays vigilant attention to something, it is necessary for that patient to be aware of stimuli – ie, be conscious – while together your brain is surveyed with aggressive sensors.
But in this new research, a team from Beijing Normal University in China turned to a group of people who already had thin electrodes in their minds as part of an experimental headache therapy, bypassing the moral question whether such research justifies an aggressive operation.
Researchers tested a visual perception to these patients. A blinking object was displayed on a screen, which would hide itself for half of the testing time. These characteristics meant that patients had to focus on the object and adjust their eyes and focus on focusing to see it, rather than analyzed the screen without analyzing it. Thus it facilitates conscious perception, with the already transplanted electrodes record brain activity that was with it.
Researchers say that this is one of the first simultaneous recording of conscious perception, and the information they record, they say, provides strong evidence for hypothesis that the thalamus area acts as a type of entrance to conscious perception. “Conclusions suggest that intralaminer and average thalamic nucleus regulates conscious perception. This conclusion represents an important advance in our understanding of the network that forms the basis of visual consciousness in humans,” the author writes.
This story appeared originally Wire N aspanol And has been translated from Spanish.
