What is Consciousness – Where is Consciousness Located in the Brain – Consciousness Explained

Engineering Made Easy

This exciting video discusses, What is consciousness. Where is Consciousness Located in the Brain and What is the level of consciousness of non living things and different forms of life on earth. We will also discuss, can we make a computer conscious just by running the simulation of a human brain on a computer (Artificial Consciousness).
So Let’s understand the mystery of consciousness from a different point of view.
So let’s first start with… What is the Consciousness?
Definition of Consciousness – The consciousness in simplest words we can say, it is the Awareness of internal or external existence. So it is the consciousness that makes us feel, understand and respond to our surroundings and our inner self. It is because of the consciousness that we can understand that one day we were born and someday we will die.
So we can say that a tree is more conscious than a stone. Because a tree can respond to its environment in many ways like they can adapt to their environment, make their own food and lots of other things but a stone cannot do anything like that.
In the same way, an insect is more conscious than a tree. Most animals are more conscious than insects and similarly human is more conscious than all the animals because humans can respond to their environment and surroundings in much more intelligent ways in comparison to other forms of life. We are conscious about our existence that we are living. We can remember and feel the past memories and experiences. we can feel the present moment and also can predict the future on the basis of our past memories and intelligence.
You can easily understand, how a person cannot respond to its surroundings when he or she is unconscious or in other words unaware. Here it is a very important to note that consciousness and intelligence are two different things. A super intelligent robot or a supercomputer can be more intelligent in terms of analytical skills, memory, ability to predict on the basis of large amounts of data provided to it and in many other ways but is not at all conscious about its own existence. Even a tree or insect is far more conscious than the most advanced supercomputer that we have.
According to researchers, even a sophisticated simulation of human brain running on a digital computer cannot be conscious. We can never create a conscious computer just by programming the computer for consciousness. it would just be simply a computer doing a task for which it has been programmed, but completely unaware of its own existence.
It is similar to the fact that just by simulating the immense gravitational pull of a black hole on a computer does not actually deform the space time fabric around the computer.
But Harvard scientists think that they might be very close to pinpoint the location of consciousness in our brain.
According to researcher Michael Fox from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre at Harvard Medical School- “For the first time, we have found a connection between the brainstem region involved in arousal and regions involved in awareness, two prerequisites for consciousness”. So arousal and awareness are two critical components of consciousness.
Researchers have shown that arousal is likely regulated by brainstem which is the portion of the brain that links up with spinal cord. They have found two cortex regions in the brain that seems to work together to form consciousness.
Although scientists are working hard but still a lot needs to done in this area to uncover all the mysteries of consciousness. Hope one day we will know all about consciousness that gives us the feeling of our own existence as a living being.
Stay conscious!!!

Source