Chapter 4

We are conscious of many things, but in particular, our environment and ourselves.The different degrees are the persistent vegetative state and the minimally conscious state.

A split brain is a brain that is separated at the corpus callosum so that the two halves are almost completely isolated. The brain gets responses from sight and things from both sides of the brain, when you take that away, you take away the brain's unified consciousness.

While one is asleep, the type of brain waves change. Frequency decreases while amplitude increases as the stage deepens.  We measure the wave change during sleep to determine brain activity.

Hypnosis is a social interaction in which a person responds to another person's suggestions and changes their memory, perception or voluntary action. The Stroop test was used to show that hypnotism is an altered state of consciousness.

Addiction is a body's dependence on a substance. Dopamine and insula play a strong role in addiction, because these areas involve how a brain evaluates pleasurable experiences.

The brain's functions are based off of electrical signals that control what kind of actions and thoughts go on. When a person is paralyzed, he or she is unable to get those electric signals to work correctly, for whatever reasons. However, due to Brain Computer Interfacing, if a person has a robotic limb or something with a computer that can interpret those signals then they should be able to perform some simple tasks they weren't able to prior to the use of BCI.


Blindsight, a condition in which a person, who most likely suffered damage to the visual system, is unable to see everything in their sight. Normally a person with blindsight will only lose a portion of their visual window. When a stimuli is present in the blind field, the patient can still respond to it, however its unconsciously, so the person is unaware of it. When a moving dot is in the blindspot and the person must identify which way its moving, though they cannot see it, they usually guess right when they are pressed to answer.

REM sleep is rapid eye movement sleep, when the eyes dart back and forth during sleep. Its also called paradoxical sleep. Chances are the person is dreaming when REM is active.