Medical Moving consciousness inside the brain

[PIT2]

Is it possible to move ones own consciousness inside the brain?
For example is it possible to move it to the left or right a little bit, or to the back, or even down the brainstem?

 

[matthyaouw]

I don't quite know what you mean. Can you explain more clearly?

 

[PIT2]

Right now u have the feeling that u, ur consciousness, is inside ur head. U feel as if u are an observer watching from within the head through 2 eyes. And u don't feel that u are doing this from inside ur feet for example.

Is it possible to change the position of this consciousness, so that it seems to be somewhere else than where it normally is?

 

[matthyaouw]

If you believed that your heart was the organ that did the thinking, would you still feel as an observer inside a head? I don't share your feeling that conciousness has a location. I know that it is created by brain processes, but i don't percieve it as having a location within me. I think your own imagination is coming into play here.

 

[PIT2]

If you believed that your heart was the organ that did the thinking, would you still feel as an observer inside a head?

Thats what i want to know. I tried to do such a thing a few times by closing my eyes and imagining that my consciousness was inside my feet, but it didnt work and i couldn't convince myself. I wonder if its possible and also if such a state can be maintained for long periods.

 

[NeedBioInfo]

I think that if consciousness=awareness, it would be in more than one part of your brain at once at any given time (Although it may never have a precise location?)...because you're aware of a LOT of things at any given time right? That's just what I think...You could maybe try and convince yourself that you were conscious somewhere other than your brain...but I think that no matter where we believe consciousness exists it will usually exist, at least to some degree, in the brain and in only in the brain...but that's just my personal belief, I'm sure some people believe that consciousness could exist in places other than the brain...

Hypothetically, you could think anything (Eg that your consciousness is in your heart) and/or feel anything (Eg that you are not an observer inside your head) but thinking and feeling things won't necessarily change what reality is/make our perception of reality more accurate because we can have inaccurate feelings/thoughts about reality at any given time

Of course I think that somebody could make you feel like you weren't an observer inside your head through virtual reality or something

sorry if that got too off-topic
Most of that was just my opinion which I'm not saying is fact

I think in order to change the ACTUAL (Not just "believed") position of consciousness, you would need to change the location of the brain processes that (in my opinion) create consciousness. I believe that you could inaccurately believe/feel that consciousness exists anywhere at any given time through for example virtual reality etc

Anyways, sorry I'm not sure what parts of that was opinion and what parts of that was fact. Sorry if there were spelling mistakes etc in that I'm kind of in a hurry

Of course it may be possible that an infinite amount of consciousnesses/types of consciousnesses do/could exist...I mean a lot of things would depend on your definition of consciousness...again just my opinion...If we proved that there was more than one universe I'm sure that debates about consciousness could become far more complex as a result..

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

I think that the idea of consciousness being in your head derives mainly from the fact that this is where most of your sensing organs are located. It would only make sense that your conscious perspective would seem to be situated in that location.

It raises another interesting question though. Your sense organs are located so close to your brain because transfer of sensory information is better that way. What if our brains were in our chest though? Would the resulting lag in information transfer due to lack of proximity give us the sense that our minds/brains are located elsewhere? And would we have any sensation that may lead us to guess it's true location?

 

[loseyourname]

Frankly, I don't feel as if my consciousness has one location. My visual field feels like it is located in my head, but the tactile sensations that result from my typing feel like they are in my fingertips. Both are a part of my consciousness.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I seem to recall thinking it was weird to suppose thinking took place inside the head the first time some teacher told us this. Before that I probably located it in the general torso area, if I thought about it at all.

 

[TheStatutoryApe]

Interesting answers. Perhaps there is also a matter of prioritizing sensory information. Most people are more visually and/or audially oriented. Maybe some people that are more tactilely oriented will perceive their consciousness differantly. I've also heard of neural like activity in the heart but never have never found out just how true this claim is. Does anyone know anything about this?

 

[hypnagogue]

I think that the idea of consciousness being in your head derives mainly from the fact that this is where most of your sensing organs are located. It would only make sense that your conscious perspective would seem to be situated in that location.

This is a natural thing to think-- that (at least some) conscious experiences seem to be located in or around the head as a simple consequence of the fact that that's where many of our sensory organs are located-- but in fact I think it's more complex than that. It's important to bear in mind that pretty much everything about how we experience is dictated by various complex and interacting brain mechanisms.

If a clever neurosurgeon from the distant future were to rearrange someone's neural circuits in the appropriate way, I would not be surprised to find that one could experience something that seems absurd and even paradoxical, such as experiencing vision as if it were coming from the stomach rather than the eyes. Of course, the visual information would have to correspond to a perspective from the eyes rather than lower on the body. But the point here is that it's likely that our visual experience does not seem to be located behind the eyes just because that's where our eyes actually are-- the brain most probably needs to do certain things above and beyond computing the visual scene to give us the impression that this scene is being observed from behind the eyes, as opposed to some other location.

We could say similar things for other "located" experiences, such as the conscious experience one has of one's own body. We feel that the tactile/kinesthetic/etc. experience we have of our bodies are bounded just at the edge of the skin simply because that really is the natural boundary of our bodies, right? Or simply because that's where our sensory nerves end? Ideas like that are appealing to common sense but in all likelihood they are false. Experienced body image is actually relatively prone to various kinds of distortions-- one can feel as if one's limbs are suddenly larger or smaller, or distended rather than attached to the torso, or belong to someone else rather than to one's self, or one can even feel the boundary between body and environment dissolve altogether. One can also have out of body experiences where the body seems to be left behind altogether. So there's lots of room for fluidity here simply because the natural body images we take for granted everyday are not givens but are actually complex constructions.

Similar things could be said about vision in principle, although distortions in where vision seems to be located are probably rarer than body distortions. At least one well documented example is a certain class of out of body experience where it seems as if visual consciousness is not behind the eyes of one's body but rather is floating somewhere in space, usually above the body.

 

[hypnagogue]

Thats what i want to know. I tried to do such a thing a few times by closing my eyes and imagining that my consciousness was inside my feet, but it didnt work and i couldn't convince myself. I wonder if its possible and also if such a state can be maintained for long periods.

I think loseyourname's post is pertinent here. Do you ever really experience the totality of your consciousness in anyone place? Typically one reports the conscious experiences one regards as belonging to oneself as being spread out across the whole body. What would it mean exactly to move your consciousness into your feet? You can certainly focus your attention on your feet so that you are more vividly aware of sensations coming from that area, but I don't know if that's what you're getting at. I can't really say much more until you give a clearer account of what exactly you're trying to get at here.

 

[zoobyshoe]

But the point here is that it's likely that our visual experience does not seem to be located behind the eyes just because that's where our eyes actually are-- the brain most probably needs to do certain things above and beyond computing the visual scene to give us the impression that this scene is being observed from behind the eyes, as opposed to some other location.

I don't have the experience of seeing from "behind" the eyes at all. I definitely see "from" the eyes, or "with" the eyes.

The imagination of visual images seems to take place vaguely behind the eyes, though.

 

[hypnagogue]

I don't have the experience of seeing from "behind" the eyes at all. I definitely see "from" the eyes, or "with" the eyes.

Not sure how you're differentiating "behind" and "from." "From" is basically what I meant.

 

[Sandeep Chalia]

If at all it can move, why to confine it within your body? Try feeling that your conscious lies in space.

 

[somasimple]

Well,

but it will only a thought and a virtual reality.
Attention may be focused on quite all parts of body. It is not consciousness but awareness.

 

[Dayle Record]

There is a very interesting East Indian Neuroscientist that takes difficult cases, and I am truly sorry I don't remember his name. But I saw a demonstration of the "body map" that exists in an area of our brain somewhat across the top, and it is bilateral, there is a map for each side of the body.

This Doctor helps people deal with phantom pain from lost limbs by using a mirror box, that helps people re-establish conscious contact with lost limbs that feel pain. What happens (as I recall), is that the body map registers the loss and pain, and can't let go of it because the part is no longer there to communicate with. So the mirror box helps to establish contact with the body part in the map on the opposite side of the brain and the dialogue is established that erases the pain symptoms. This does work, at least in the case I watched.

As far as seeing from behind the eyes, we all see from behind the eyes, and we really do not "see", what we "see". Everything we see is strictly interpreted by the brain. For instance, we can't see straight lines, or tall buildings that conform to the ideation of symmetry and perspective. We see though bi-ocular fish eye lenses, and the world is really bowed in our true vision. We make up every rectilinear scenario. That is why the city is so stressing, and the country is relaxing. We don't have to work as hard to see nature, and it is in the relaxation of western standards of visual measurement, we find some relaxation. At least that is one of the components of leisure.

There have been all kinds of interesting experiments with human vision. One group put glasses on students for a week that made the world seem upside down. Within one week, the glasses didn't do that any more. When the glasses were removed then the world was upside down with natural vision, until the effect was reversed in a few days. Our perceptual skills are extremely varied, fluid, and individual.

 

[Huckleberry]

I've also herd some things about these mirror boxes. The patient with the missing limb, a forearm and hand in this case, complained of pain where there hand was when it was attached. They described the pain as a clenching sensation and an ache, as if they were unable to relase the pressure in their hand.

The mirror box had two sides. The arm was put into one side and the end of the limb was put on the other, as if it were an actual arm. The mirror box transposed the image of the actual arm to the other side of the box. The patient would open and close their physical hand and see both the physical and phantom hands opeining and closing. Seeing this relieved the clenching sensation and the phantom pain from the patient.

In this case the patient seems to have been experiencing sensations that originate from outside the body without any connection to sensory organs at all. Whatever body map was stored in his brain recalls that arm. I think it could be said that a part of his consciousness extends beyond his body, atleast while he experiences these phantom pains.

 

[Evo]

The pains aren't actually originating from outside the body, the person's mind is causing the pain, it's psychosomatic. When the person "saw" the missing hand become unclenched, his mind believed it and stopped the pain.

I saw this demonstrated on the tv documentary about it, it was interesting.

edit:I believe this is also what Huck was saying, we're just saying it differently. The person does think the pain is in the missing limb.

 

[Evo]

Going back to the topic, many ancient people thought that the heart was the organ for feeling and thought, they thought the brain was unimportant.

Think about it "heartsick" heartbroken", "you've ripped out my heart", "heartfelt", "heartwarming", "cold hearted", "dear to my heart", the heart was thought to be the seat of emotion.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Going back to the topic, many ancient people thought that the heart was the organ for feeling and thought, they thought the brain was unimportant.

When I went to the King Tut exhibit I noticed that each internal organ from a mummy was removed and encased in it's own little vessel for burial - the heart, the lungs, the liver, and I forget what else. Very elaborate little miniature coffins, covered with jewels and magic spells, each one with a special designated spirit servant assigned for it's protection. But they must not have thought much of the brain... because they just pulled that out the nose and threw it away!

 

[Evo]

When I went to the King Tut exhibit I noticed that each internal organ from a mummy was removed and encased in it's own little vessel for burial - the heart, the lungs, the liver, and I forget what else. Very elaborate little miniature coffins, covered with jewels and magic spells, each one with a special designated spirit servant assigned for it's protection. But they must not have thought much of the brain... because they just pulled that out the nose and threw it away!

Yes, the Egyptians held no value for the brain.

 

[matthyaouw]

In fairness, it's harder to get out in one piece.

 

[Dayle Record]

The Ancient Egyptians thought that the brain was chiefly responsible for producing mucous.

 

[somasimple]

Hi,

This famous neuroscientist is named RAMACHANDRAN.
See Herta FLOR, also.

http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=50
http://www.somasimple.com/forums/showthread.php?t=51

(our group is involved in pain managment, so phantom limbs, humunculi, mirror box are our daily meals).

 

[somasimple]

Evo,

it's psychosomatic

All pain is real and physically created by brain.

 

[PIT2]

I think loseyourname's post is pertinent here. Do you ever really experience the totality of your consciousness in anyone place? Typically one reports the conscious experiences one regards as belonging to oneself as being spread out across the whole body. What would it mean exactly to move your consciousness into your feet? You can certainly focus your attention on your feet so that you are more vividly aware of sensations coming from that area, but I don't know if that's what you're getting at. I can't really say much more until you give a clearer account of what exactly you're trying to get at here.

What i was trying to do was imagine that my head was where my feet were, and my feet were where my head was. Basicly i was trying to imagine that i was laying in a different position and convince myself that if i opened my eyes, i would see the room from a different perspective. At first i tried to imagine that i was floating near the ceiling, but this didnt work so i thought it must have been my 'rational' side that was preventing me from convincing myself i was floating, so then i tried the feet thing.

I guess u can compare it with closing ur eyes, turning in circles really fast till u become dizzy. Often when u open ur eyes u expect to face a certain direction, and that expectation turns out to be wrong.

At least one well documented example is a certain class of out of body experience where it seems as if visual consciousness is not behind the eyes of one's body but rather is floating somewhere in space, usually above the body.

Can u tell me some more about this example?

 

[nnnnnnnn]

Feynman did some experiments with this and talks about it in one of his 'curious character' books- I can't remember which one. Anyway, he smoked pot and got in a tank that was able to remove his senses by removing external stimuli (I think the tank was designed, not by Feynman, to try to mimic the womb but I may be making that up). Anyway, he says he was successful at moving his consciousness- even to the point that it was outside of him.

 

[Mk]

Can u tell me some more about this example?

Here's the Wikipedia article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience

 

[cotarded]

I'll nab all the pertinent links later, but while I was studying autoscopy induced by dissociative anesthetics, I remember reading that the retrosplenial cortex was believed responsible for interpreting visual input and sort of wrapping it around a viewpoint. This is deranged when someone takes ketamine, dxm, or inhales nitrous oxide, which allows them to believe they've moved a few feet behind their head (if they haven't undergone full dissociation as one is likely to under esp the first agent).
As far as sensing where different parts of your body (not just the vague entity of 'consciousness') are, that's priprioception, and you'd probably find a woman from Oliver Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat" very interesting. She became completely body blind after an allergic reaction to some treatment, and is absolutely unaware of her body position without relying on another sense, like by touching something (her tactile ability remains) or watching her own movements.

hope that helps some.

 

[ubiqer]

I'm new to physics forum but find it great that many sophisticated academics will indulge in the unquantifiable domain of locating consciousness, i am an uneducated foe that fell into the laser material processing world and it opened up my own angle of acceptance.

Tired and sleepless through many working day's my subconscious started to shut my body down.
I would then be witness to the gradual paraylisis of my nervous system, it feels so powerful & was quite scary at first but comes to a sudden halt where i can no longer feel my body.
My mind has been shifted somewhere,no dreams sometimes just lightless wakeful rest.It invariably leads to what "experts" call lucid dreaming and obe's which i prefer to call imd's Inner Mind Experiences.
It would be interesting to monitor this activity as i can force this action naturally when tired and if i could sum it up i would say it starts with an echoey compression of the frontal lobes and spreads all and throughout till i can no longer access the parts of my body that need rest.

my poem

Ploughing through the field of thought
What is this essence swimming in the synthetic fabric above
Me i wonder

 

[rezwar]

I assume the brain has full control on how one "feels" where his/her POV/consciousness is as all information is processed in the brain. For the many of us we have been taught that we are our brains, so perhaps this has some role on where we feel we are, BUT I also believe this is more accurate than all previous interpretations of the location of consciousness by thinking of this:

If you felt your consciousness was in side your chest all your life, and you went under radical surgery to become nothing but a Futurama-like bodyless head, for a brief time after such radical surgery (~not yet possible, I know~) you may still "feel" your phantom self and chest area and may still "feel" your consciousness there, but is it really?

 

[carlbgood]

*after I got going it was hard for me to stop ;)

I see this thread started a while back but I know my curiosity has no expiration, so I thought I would share my experience as I feel it relates to your question.

As a teenager I was particularly withdrawn and thoughtful, open with close friends but a little socially awkward in general. I had no real sense of place with regards to "consciousness" as I never had a an experience to relate a shifting consciousness to. But between my junior and senior years in high school I attended a special program in Georgia known as the Governor's Honors Program (GHP) and this experience would alter my steady state I had known all my life. It was an intense program with a total of 600 or so of the brightest kids throughout the state nominated by teachers in particular areas of study (math, lit., languages, art, music, science, etc) and hand picked after an interview process to foster an atmosphere of social openness and exploration. the program lasted six weeks over the summer and held on the Valdosta University campus. It was particularly strict with its rules and adherence to class times, curfew, and bedtimes or you would be sent home. In addition despite many of legal age a strict ban on smoking as well as the obvious prohibition of alcohol; and on top of all this you had to keep your room orderly: bed made and trash regularly taken out. We met with our majors (mine was math) 4 hours a day 6 days a week, and our minors (science in my case) 3 hours a day 5 days a week. It was a boot camp of sorts, but if you didn't want to adhere to the rules you were free to leave--noone, I mean no one wanted to leave. It was the most incredible experience of our lives, to be surrounded by unique teachers, unique students and without tests mind you, pushed mentally on a minute to minute basis to keep up with the discussions, which ranged from extremely difficult logic classes to discussions on the nature of infinity, to guest lectures explaining the theory of relativity. Everyone was extremely intelligent and you pushed yourself to maintain as a competent member of the group, this was not your local high school breeze. I exlpain all of this in such detail to give you an idea of the structure and intellectual environment and the social interactions which transpired daily--it was truly phenomenal, and after about 4 weeks of this brain training, my mind pulsed and finally sitting in one of the fuzzy logic courses working out a problem and ruminating over the impossibility of trisecting angles something popped... and it was if my mind broke through the barrier of my known consciousness into the anecdotal 11% of our unused minds. It was an experience that would forever alter my personality and understood limits of human capability.

I became "funny" somehow and could see through life like it was a thin veil that after so much time of day to day existence becomes our full reality. That was what this program, this "brain camp" of sorts, had allowed us to do. They handled all of the day to day issues for us... our whole days were scheduled for us save 4-10pm where there were free extra-curricular classes on dancing and art offered if we so chose, our meals were planned and our shelter was provided. We had bed times, and wake up times and our minds were free to do nothing but think and learn and interact (probably the most important of all) with other amazing minds.

From this point, this 6 week training session I returned home with newly discovered talents and social capabilities. I transformed from the quiet, yet respected intellectual into for lack of a real term the respected-intellectual-but-funny-som-*****.. with regards to your thread post, this transformation didn't happen by magic, I had what I would describe as a consciousness shift within my brain. I had inadvertantly discovered a methodology of moving my consciousness around in effect to different lobes of brain.. It was a "physical" shift that I was in complete control over, yet understood the difficulty of explaining it in order for someone else to achieve it. It wasn't just a matter of sticking your tongue out twice and rolling your eyes to the left three times, there wasn't any secret code to enact this it occurred to me after weeks of deep mental stimulation in addition to already being a rather mentally engaged sort of person. But once it occurred, there was no denying it.. everyone around me knew something special had happened as I had writing skills and creative skills and math vision that was hard to explain from the blue. I then had the capacity to move my consciousness from lobe to lobe on demand. If I was in a creative writing scenario I would move into my frontal lobe and "look through the veil of reality" and the most interesting of thoughts would just flow out by removing the "filter" that we inevitably must walk around with to some degree. If I needed to understand analytical word problems or conceptually comprehend the function of a mathematical expression I would move my "consciousness" to the top of my skull (whether it was purely the parietal lobe operating, I do not know, but as long as I sat up right, and shifted my consciousness to this position these things were easy for me to comprehend). This is also where I would go to memorize large sets of information, whether I be soaking in a history lesson or memorizing 15 digit phone numbers with extensions--no problem. Understand, I am no genius and before this event would have had no idea what I am talking about now, nor have any way to relate to it. I feel it is important to share though, because If I can do it, then there are many many people out there with the potential and it is life changing.

There is no specific formula I could recommend, but there are several ingredients in my particular story I could share that I know were important. But I must also note there were several "negative" side effects to these new abilities. For one, despite being able to shift my consciousness, I couldn't turn it off. This was not a huge problem, except that it actually severely inhibited my ability to play sports. I had played soccer since I was five, was a starter for the varsity soccer team as a freshmen in addition to being the place kicker for the football team. I had a scoring records in both sports, but after returning from GHP could no longer "remember" how to kick a damn ball. This abundance of mental alertness and awareness which brought so many intellectual gains ruined my sports career as a senior. As the technical mechanics of kicking a ball are anything but intellectual, they are 99% muscle memory and released while the brain is in a beta-wave state allowing your body to take over after the 1% of intellectual engagement, I could no longer get my brain to enter this beta-steady state. It was just too hyper active. I had coaches slapping me on the back, saying just kick the damn ball and stop thinking so much, but I literally couldn't let my body take over as I had for 12 years in the case of soccer. It was frustrating to tears but eventually accepted as a small loss relative to the tremendous intellectual gains. I muddled through both seasons, feeling a tremendous amount of disappointment as there were many people depending on me and expecting much more than I was capable of giving--wrenchingly frustrating. The technical loss in music was similar, as scales I had known for years were banged out note for intellectual note, rather than just released from my subconscious as I had done for years. I had sat first chair in the state on tenor saxophone my 8th, 10th grade years as eldest of the 2 year classes 7-8, 9-10, and 11-12. I had sat 3rd 7th and 11th grades. As I was primed for first again as a senior I had lost the ability to release and managed to eek out a 3rd chair seating. This was still considered to be excellent but internally I knew I had just eeked it out... I just couldn't find my beta-state of mind. Honestly, it may have been there somewhere, but when your mind is whirring 10,000rpms all day you almost don't care to not shut it off... it's just so much fun and continually exciting.

So as far as I am concerned in addressing your question, yes, emphatically, I believe you can shift your consciousness and experience thoughts and visions and clarity that you may have never known. I have seen much by the way of masters of meditation who claim altered consciousness and out of body states of being... and after my experiences, have no reason to doubt the experiences claimed by a sincere speaker on the matter. I have never practiced meditation daily but wouldn't be surprised that it fosters an environment conducive to intellectual expansion as my environment in valdosta. Without a doubt, I would suggest a regular schedule, a balanced diet, daily exercise and refraining from any alcohol or physically harmful drugs in order to reach your full potential--in addition, of course, to a voracious appetite for learning and sharing. The lure of drugs and alcohol is absolutely worn away once the conditioning process gets into full swing... and I would challenge anyone on the planet to six-weeks sobriety with daily exercise to absolutely find a new wonderful you that you won't want to ever lose.
I certainly hope this was on target with your question. If anyone has any questions, please feel free, I am always happy to share.
carl