Sleep: A Window on Consciousness
How does consciousness come about, and how can the brain create a world even when it is disconnected from the environment? Consciousness never fades when we are awake. However, when awakened from sleep, we sometimes recall dreams and sometimes recall no experiences. Traditionally, dreaming has been identified with rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, characterized by wake-like, globally ‘activated’, high-frequency EEG activity. However, dreaming also occurs in non-REM (NREM) sleep, characterized by prominent low-frequency activity. Recent work using no-task, within-state paradigms has identified a ‘posterior hot zone’ where the EEG must be activated for subjects to experience dreams. Localized, content-specific activations occur depending on whether one dreams of faces, places, movement, and speech. These findings highlight the likely neural substrate of our own experiences and suggest some of the necessary and sufficient conditions for consciousness.
Date:
11 December 2018, 12:00 (Tuesday, 10th week, Michaelmas 2018)
Venue:
Oxford Martin School, 34 Broad Street OX1 3BD
Venue Details:
Oxford Martin School, 34 Broad Street
Speaker:
Prof Giulio Tononi (University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA))
Organising department:
Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics (DPAG)
Organiser:
Fiona Woods (University of Oxford, Department of Physiology Anatomy and Genetics, Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour)
Organiser contact email address:
fiona.woods@cncb.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
CNCB Seminar Series
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Members of the University only
Editor:
Fiona Woods
