We are conscious of our surroundings and the things happening in them. The different degrees of consciousness include wakefulness, sleep, and coma.
Split brain is a condition where the corpus callosum is surgically cut and the 2 hemispheres of the braindo not recieve information directly from each other. Evidence that shows that splitting the brain also splits the mind and consciousness is that when a split brain patient is asked what he/she sees on a board with to items on the right and left, his/her left hemisphere sees an item on the right and they can verbalize that. The right hemisphere sees the item on the left and cannot verbalize that but can reach for the item with his/her left hand. When a patient is tested by 2 pictures being displayed horizontally and 8 pictures below that, and the patient is asked to pick the 2 items out of the 8 that most go with the 2 pictures on the board. The picture on the left is a house in the snow, the one on the rigt is a chicken's claw. The patients left hemisphere points the right hand at a picture of a chicken head. The left hemisphere says that the chicken claw goes with the chicken head. The right hemisphere points the left hand at a picture of a snow shovel after seeing the snowy house. The left hemisphere decides that the shovel is used to clean up after chickens. (It does not see the house.)
As a person falls asleep they start off in stage one characterized by theta waves. Stage one is light sleep. In stage 2 breathing becomes more regular and you become less sensitive to external stimulation. You are now really asleep. Steps 3 and 4 are marked by large regular brain patterns called delta waves. This is your deep sleep and often referred to as slow-wave sleep. People in deep sleep are often very hard to wake up. After about 90 minutes of sleep the cycle starts over. We measure these changes in brain activity by using an electroencephalogram or EEG machine.
Addiction is a physiological state in which failing to ingest a substance leads to symptoms of withdrawal, a state characterized by anxiety, tension, or craving. The brain process plays an important role in addiction because, dopamine activity in the limbic system underlies the rewarding properties of taking drugs and is central to addiction.
The study of brain activity in consciousness is helping special needs people. We are doing this by advancing our technology in the field. Scientist have came up with mechanical limbs that act off of brain waves helping those with inabilities have an easier and more fulfilling life.
Blindsight is a condition where a person is unable to see everything in their sight. Seeing black spots instead of what is right in front of them.
REM is the rapid eye movement sleep stage. In this stage of sleep the eyes dart back and forth. We are lead to believe that a person is dreaming during REM sleep.
