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by radarsat1 563 days ago
In addition to all that we don't know about synapses etc, I've often wondered if even mapping all the "hardware connections" so to speak would even be enough. You'd have everything in the right place, but what about the "signals" running on it? Does a certain amount of constant activity on these circuits constitute signs of a "living" brain vs a dead one? How much of our consciousness is really in the topology of the circuits, and how much of it is simply defined by the constant activity running around in them? I assume neural circuits form loops that consist of synapses that reinforce or surpress activity. If these signals going around and around ever "stop", can they ever be started again with the same "patterns"? What if these patterns, the living "software", are at least partially what define you?

Well anyway that's my airchair crackpot neuroscience theory for the world to consume ;). I'm sure there must already be a name for the idea though.

2 comments

This article [0] may help here:

Six of the sheep were given a single higher dose of ketamine, 24mg/kg. This is at the high end of the anesthetic range. Initially, the same response was seen as with a lower dose. But within two minutes of administering the drug, the brain activity of five of these six sheep stopped completely, one of them for several minutes – a phenomenon that has never been seen before.

“This wasn’t just reduced brain activity. After the high dose of ketamine the brains of these sheep completely stopped. We’ve never seen that before,” said Morton. Although the anesthetized sheep looked as though they were asleep, their brains had switched off. “A few minutes later their brains were functioning normally again – it was as though they had just been switched off and on.”

0: https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/sedated...

Just to add a current link to this conversation:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/consciousness-mig...

An article suggesting that consciousness is embodied in the active fields, not the synapses themselves.