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Awareness Weeks
In philosophy and psychology, awareness is the perception or knowledge of something. The concept is often synonymous with consciousness. However, one can be aware of something without being explicitly conscious of it, such as in the case of blindsight. The states of awareness are also associated with the states of experience so that the structure represented in awareness is mirrored in the structure of experience. Concept Awareness is a relative concept. It may refer to an internal state, such as a visceral feeling, or on external events by way of sensory perception. It is analogous to sensing something, a process distinguished from observing and perceiving (which involves a basic process of acquainting with the items we perceive). Awareness can be described as something that occurs when the brain is activated in certain ways, such as when the color red is seen once the retina is stimulated by light waves. This conceptualization is posited due to the difficulty in developing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions. Historically, many of the individual sciences, such as physics and psychology, formed part of philosophy. However, they are considered separate academic disciplines in the modern sense of the term. Influential traditions in the history of philosophy include Western philosophy, Western, Islamic philosophy, Arabic–Persian, Indian philosophy, Indian, and Chinese philosophy. Western philosophy originated in Ancient Greece and covers a wide area of philosophical subfields. A central topic in Arabic–Persian philosophy is the relation between reason and revelation. Indian philosophy combines the Spirituality, spiritual problem of how to reach Enlightenment in Buddhism, enlighten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brain
The brain is an organ (biology), organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head (cephalization), usually near organs for special senses such as visual perception, vision, hearing, and olfaction. Being the most specialized organ, it is responsible for receiving information from the sensory nervous system, processing that information (thought, cognition, and intelligence) and the coordination of motor control (muscle activity and endocrine system). While invertebrate brains arise from paired segmental ganglia (each of which is only responsible for the respective segmentation (biology), body segment) of the ventral nerve cord, vertebrate brains develop axially from the midline dorsal nerve cord as a brain vesicle, vesicular enlargement at the rostral (anatomical term), rostral end of the neural tube, with centralized control over all body segments. All vertebr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vertebrates
Vertebrates () are animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine), and a cranium, or skull. The vertebral column surrounds and protects the spinal cord, while the cranium protects the brain. The vertebrates make up the subphylum Vertebrata with some 65,000 species, by far the largest ranked grouping in the phylum Chordata. The vertebrates include mammals, birds, amphibians, and various classes of fish and reptiles. The fish include the jawless Agnatha, and the jawed Gnathostomata. The jawed fish include both the Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous fish and the Osteichthyes, bony fish. Bony fish include the Sarcopterygii, lobe-finned fish, which gave rise to the tetrapods, the animals with four limbs. Despite their success, vertebrates still only make up less than five percent of all described animal species. The first vertebrates appeared in the Cambrian explosion some 518 million years ago. Jawed vertebrates evolved in the Ordovician, followed by bony fishes in the Devonian. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Self-awareness
In philosophy of self, philosophy, self-awareness is the awareness and reflection of one's own personality or individuality, including traits, feelings, and behaviors. It is not to be confused with consciousness in the sense of qualia. While consciousness is being aware of one's body and environment, self-awareness is the Metacognition, recognition of that consciousness. Self-awareness is how an individual experiences and understands their own Character structure, character, feelings, Motivation, motives, and desires. Biology Mirror neurons Researchers are investigating which part of the brain allows people to be self-aware and how people are biologically programmed to be self-aware. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, V.S. Ramachandran speculates that mirror neurons may provide the neurological basis of human self-awareness. In an essay written for Edge.org in 2009, Ramachandran gave the following explanation of his theory: "[T]hese neurons can not only help simulate other people's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydranencephaly
Hydranencephaly is a condition in which the brain's cerebral hemispheres are absent to a great degree and the remaining cranial cavity is filled with cerebrospinal fluid. Hydranencephaly is a type of cephalic disorder. These disorders are congenital conditions that derive from damage to, or abnormal development of, the fetal nervous system in the earliest stages of development in utero. These conditions do not have any definitive identifiable cause factor. Instead, they are generally attributed to a variety of hereditary or genetic conditions, but also by environmental factors such as maternal infection, pharmaceutical intake, or even exposure to high levels of radiation. Hydranencephaly should not be confused with hydrocephalus, which is an accumulation of excess cerebrospinal fluid in the ventricles of the brain. In hemihydranencephaly, only half of the cranial cavity is affected. Signs and symptoms An infant with hydranencephaly may appear normal at birth or may have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bjorn Merker
Bjorn Merker (also: Björn Merker), Swedish citizen born May 15, 1943, in Tetschen (now Czech Republic), is a neuroscientist and an independent interdisciplinary scholar educated in the USA, now living in southern Sweden. Merker studied psychology and brain science in the U.S., receiving a B.A. in psychology at Queens College of the City University of New York (1975), and a PhD in psychology and brain science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1980 for work on midbrain orienting mechanisms. He then worked on oculomotor physiology in cats at UCLA and on the primary visual cortex of macaques at New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational .... An interest in comparative behavioral biology led him to study song development and mirror self-recognition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brain Stem
The brainstem (or brain stem) is the posterior stalk-like part of the brain that connects the cerebrum with the spinal cord. In the human brain the brainstem is composed of the midbrain, the pons, and the medulla oblongata. The midbrain is continuous with the thalamus of the diencephalon through the tentorial notch, and sometimes the diencephalon is included in the brainstem. The brainstem is very small, making up around only 2.6 percent of the brain's total weight. It has the critical roles of regulating heart and respiratory function, helping to control heart rate and breathing rate. It also provides the main motor and sensory nerve supply to the face and neck via the cranial nerves. Ten pairs of cranial nerves come from the brainstem. Other roles include the regulation of the central nervous system and the body's sleep cycle. It is also of prime importance in the conveyance of motor and sensory pathways from the rest of the brain to the body, and from the body back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extended Consciousness
Developed in his (1999) book, "The Feeling of What Happens", Antonio Damasio's theory of consciousness proposes that consciousness arises from the interactions between the brain, the body, and the environment. According to this theory, consciousness is not a unitary experience, but rather emerges from the dynamic interplay between different brain regions and their corresponding bodily states. Damasio argues that our conscious experiences are influenced by the emotional responses that are generated by our body's interactions with the environment, and that these emotional responses play a crucial role in shaping our conscious experience. This theory emphasizes the importance of the body and its physiological processes in the emergence of consciousness. Damasio's three layered theory is based on a hierarchy of stages, with each stage building upon the last. The most basic representation of the organism is referred to as the Protoself, Core Consciousness, and Extended Consciousness. D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mind
The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances, and unconscious processes, which can influence an individual without intention or awareness. The mind plays a central role in most aspects of human life, but its exact nature is disputed. Some characterizations focus on internal aspects, saying that the mind transforms information and is not directly accessible to outside observers. Others stress its relation to outward conduct, understanding mental phenomena as dispositions to engage in observable behavior. The mind–body problem is the challenge of explaining the relation between matter and mind. Traditionally, mind and matter were often thought of as distinct substances that could exist independently from one another. The dominant philosophical position since the 20th century has ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognition
Cognition is the "mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, imagination, intelligence, the formation of knowledge, memory and working memory, judgment and evaluation, reasoning and computation, problem-solving and decision-making, comprehension and production of language. Cognitive processes use existing knowledge to discover new knowledge. Cognitive processes are analyzed from very different perspectives within different contexts, notably in the fields of linguistics, musicology, anesthesia, neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology, education, philosophy, anthropology, biology, systemics, logic, and computer science. These and other approaches to the analysis of cognition (such as embodied cognition) are synthesized in the developing field of cognitive science, a progressively autonomou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peripheral Nervous System
The peripheral nervous system (PNS) is one of two components that make up the nervous system of Bilateria, bilateral animals, with the other part being the central nervous system (CNS). The PNS consists of nerves and ganglia, which lie outside the brain and the spinal cord. The main function of the PNS is to connect the CNS to the Limb (anatomy), limbs and Organ (anatomy), organs, essentially serving as a relay between the brain and spinal cord and the rest of the body. Unlike the CNS, the PNS is not protected by the vertebral column and skull, or by the blood–brain barrier, which leaves it exposed to toxins. The peripheral nervous system can be divided into a somatic nervous system, somatic division and an autonomic nervous system, autonomic division. Each of these can further be differentiated into a sensory and a motor sector. In the somatic nervous system, the cranial nerves are part of the PNS with the exceptions of the olfactory nerve and epithelia and the optic nerve (c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central Nervous System
The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting primarily of the brain, spinal cord and retina. The CNS is so named because the brain integrates the received information and coordinates and influences the activity of all parts of the bodies of bilateria, bilaterally symmetric and triploblastic animals—that is, all multicellular animals except sponges and Coelenterata, diploblasts. It is a structure composed of nervous tissue positioned along the Anatomical_terms_of_location#Rostral,_cranial,_and_caudal, rostral (nose end) to caudal (tail end) axis of the body and may have an enlarged section at the rostral end which is a brain. Only arthropods, cephalopods and vertebrates have a true brain, though precursor structures exist in onychophorans, gastropods and lancelets. The rest of this article exclusively discusses the vertebrate central nervous system, which is radically distinct from all other animals. Overview In vertebrates, the brain and spinal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
