Consciousness and the Brain Consciousness – our awareness of ourselves and our environment –States of consciousness: sleeping, waking, and altered states daydreaming, meditating, drug induced hallucinating

We have the answers! Except we have none at all… crap. Cognitive Neuroscience – study of brain activity linked with mental processes (called cognition) Two schools of thought –Conscious experience based on specific neural circuits firing in a specified manner –Conscious experiences produced by synchronization of entire brain

Dual Processing – we know more than we know we know… ya know? On vs. off staging Conscious left brain vs. intuitive right brain Concept that we process information simultaneously on separate conscious and unconscious tracks

The Two-Track Mind - Vision Dual processing system –Visual perception track: unconscious creating that allows us to think about the world –Visual action track: conscious guide for our moment to moment actions The Hollow Face Illusion – &feature=relatedhttp:// &feature=related Dual processing system –Visual perception track: unconscious creating that allows us to think about the world –Visual action track: conscious guide for our moment to moment actions The Hollow Face Illusion – feature=relatedhttp:// feature=related

So what does this show us? Much of our everyday thinking happens outside of our conscious awareness Parallel unconscious tracks – imagine driving a car or walking home (automatic pilot)

Serial Conscious Processing Slower than parallel processing Allows us to solve new problems which require focus Volunteers?

Selective Attention Relate back to bias –Class experience: awareness of your nose, fingers, hands, feet, smells, sounds, sights – or are you just taking notes? Selective Attention: focusing conscious awareness on PARTICULAR stimulus

Selective Inattention vo

Selective Inattention Inattentional Blindness: failing to see visible objects when our attention is directed elsewhere Change Blindness: failing to notice changes in the environment R2c

Other types of blindness Choice-blindness: people seldom notice deception and will in fact readily explain a wrong preference –Johansson experiment (2005) Choice-blindness blindness: people tend believe they have the ability to perceive deception when it occurs