ULTIMATE COMPUTING - Quantum Consciousness Studies

Brain/Mind/Computer 39
lend itself to experimentation very readily and was a boon to the credibility of
scientists studying the mind. Behaviorist laboratories flourished in universities
throughout the world; rat mazes and conditioned responses became the operant
paradigms. Behaviorists were able to attract university positions, grant money,
and behaviorist laboratories dominated neuroscience for a significant period of
time. The failing of behaviorism is that it is a method rather than a theory and is
patently hypocritical in denying or ignoring consciousness. Behaviorism did,
however, purge psychology to place it squarely in the mainstream of academic
science.
2.2.8 Consciousness as Dynamic Activities of the Brain’s
Reticular Activating System
As technology accelerated, brain and mind theorists eventually turned back to
the brain-the three and a half pound lump of pinkish-gray “wonder tissue.”
Mathematician-philosopher Rene Descartes, who had defined the brain/mind
duality by his statement “cogito, ergo sum,” (I think, therefore I am) chose the
brain’s pineal gland as the site of consciousness. His choice was partly based on
the fact that the pineal gland is a midline, single structure. Thus, unlike nearly all
other brain regions it had no duplicate, and was therefore thought to be essential.
Descartes’ proposal was readily refuted by neurophysiologists but did start the
search for a single site of brain consciousness. Since many researchers viewed the
brain/mind as a hierarchical arrangement of information processing, the logical
conclusion was that at a certain site or region all information was recognized and
assimilated by the “Mind’s Eye,” the site of consciousness, the Grandfather
neuron, or some manifestation of a hierarchical apex. Recently, most of the brain
has been found to be involved with wide (“distributed”) parallel files of
information, memory, and cognition. Historically, however, many workers
focused on the reticular activating system (RAS) as the neural substrate of
consciousness.
Maintenance of consciousness depends to an important extent upon the RAS,
an organized tangle of tiny interconnecting neurons extending from the top of the
spinal cord up through the brain stem into the thalamus and hypothalamus. The
RAS integrates collaterals from sensory and motor nerves, has direct lines to half
a dozen major areas of the cortex and probably all of the nuclei of the brainstem,
and sends fibers down the spinal cord where it influences the peripheral sensory
and motor systems. Its function is to sensitize or awaken selective neurons and
nervous centers and desensitize others such that it can regulate the activity and
wakefulness of the entire brain. Anesthetic induction drugs such as sodium
thiopental are thought to exert their effects largely on the RAS. Destructive
lesions of this area also produce permanent sleep and coma, and stimulating the
RAS electrically can wake up a sleeping animal. It can also regulate the activity
of most other parts of the brain through its own internal electrical excitability and
neurochemistry.