Type: Essay
An essay I had to write for my cognition class and thought I might post itEver since it has been determined that the brain is our central control structure, scientists have set out to discovered its secrets. Eventually, an intriguing phenomenon emerged: the brain itself is receiving commands from what we"™ve decided to name "the consciousness". As of now, gaining a concrete idea of what the basis of our consciousness may be seems practically impossible. This dilemma hints at an inquiry echoing from as far back as the 18th century when Immanuel Kant wondered whether the object doing the sensing could sense itself. Is our consciousness equipped with the tools to examine itself? It is relatively easy for scientists to study the workings of a single neuron. With the help of electrodes, scientists could examine the response patterns of a visual neuron by presenting different types of visual stimuli to the area of the field of view monitored by that brain cell. Certain visual neurons have "preferences" for different types of stimuli (Hubel & Wiesel, 1959). For example, one neuron could respond strongly to the colour red, and another to the colour blue. The process behind this selective response can be physiologically explained from the moment the light reaches the eye, to the response itself. Interestingly, neurons can respond with different intensities to a "preferred" stimulus depending on whether the stimulus is consciously attended to or not (Moran & Desim