DrmDoc

It's my understanding that the proximity of Proxima b to its sun and it's sun type, a red dwarf, makes the possibility of life improbable by Earth standards. Proxima orbits its sun every 11 days, which suggests it may be tidal locked with one side in perpetual darkness and the other baking in perpetual sunlight. Proxima's closeness to its red dwarf sun also, as I understand, may have stripped away its atmosphere due to the planet's exposure to strong sun flares with radiation much higher than we experience here on Earth.

I began this thought exercise thinking it might clarify questions regarding our brain's precise role in the origin and production of consciousness. I believed, as many do, that consciousness was a quality innate to brain function and that it emerges independent of any other contributing factor. This discuss has convinced me otherwise. As I now understand and believe, our brain does not and cannot generate consciousness without a sensory apparatus and sensory input. This perspective positions the brain as merely a machine that refines consciousness with sensory input and experience as its raw materials. I agree that every normal brain has a consciousness producing potential; however, that potential is empirically reliant on contributing factors external to brain function.

How would a sensory deprived brain from inception seek or perceive changes in its condition without a sensory system or apparatus? As you may know, even a embodied brain doesn't have that capability; therefore, why would a disembodied, sensory deprived brain seek to change what it doesn't and cannot perceive? That suggests a preprogrammed imperative that requires feedback to function properly. This functional imperative would require a capacity to sense distinctions in its nature, which the brain doesn't have independent of bodily sensory. Of course not; however, to experience consciousness, life would at the very least have to possess a capacity to perceive or distinguish experience. Can life perceive experience without a sensory apparatus? I agree, terminology isn't necessary for consciousness; however, a capacity to interpret or distinguish experience from a state opposite of experience is essential. If this perspective holds true, then consciousness is likely not an exclusively innate quality.

SJ is right; if you can't be help by the therapist with whom you privately consult in-person, how can we help through mere words on a page? You've conceded that nothing we've provided has or will assuage your concerns. Your attempts to ease your mind through these discussions is akin to a patient trying to perform brain surgery on himself, which is something even a neurosurgeon wouldn't attempt. You have to understand that the anxiety you're suffering you cannot treat yourself because your mental state obscures all paths to the resolution you seek; however, you will find resolution if you trust your therapist. Your therapist will help you get to the root of your anxiety, which probably has very little to do with negative NDEs. No doubt, the more you independently pursue this topic without therapeutic guidance, the more inflamed your anxiety could become; however, you've already made considerable progress by enlisting a therapist.

According to this MSN article, MIT researchers have found a way to edit a CRISPR gene to record histories in human DNA. Though not necessarily for storing our medical history, the article suggests this technique could have uses in cancer related studies. The article also has a link to the MIT announcement. Enjoy!

I've reviewed some of Prof. Laureys work and I believe him to be a very well intentioned researcher; however, his study has a significant flaw, in my opinion. Prof. Laureys views of NDE are largely based on a qualitative memory study of NDE content involving study participants who experienced NDEs within various states of adverse or distressed brain function. He also compared the memory quality of NDE reports to study participants dream recollections and found dissimilarities. He declares NDEs and dreams are dissimilar because study participants have more detailed and vivid memory of NDEs over dream experiences. Prof. Laureys research is flawed by his failure to include or reference lucid dream memories and lucid dreamers as a part of his study efforts. If he had, he would have essentially found no distinction between the detail memories of NDEs and lucid dream experiences, as they are equally vivid and memorable. Not all dreams involve the same sensory quality that promote detailed memory of them as does lucid dreaming. Prof. Laureys work essentially affirms the dream equivalent nature of NDEs.

A person could have mixed feelings about a blissful experience after it concludes but not likely while it's ongoing. If a person experiences an negative NDE at the conclusion of a blissful NDE experience, then that person is essentially having a nightmare likely due to the trauma arising from his current life and death circumstance. If a negative NDE occurs after a blissful NDE, this indicates that the brain is beginning to function properly and is no longer in distress. You are clearly fearful of a potential mental experience that you likely will not suffer. It should be exceedingly clear by now that nothing we discuss here will alleviate your fear unless alleviation isn't what you are seeking. It is likely that the therapy you are already receiving will provide you with all the answers you seek and require. I strongly suggest that you adhere to the regimen your therapist suggests rather than rely on any peripheral perspective you receive from Internet sources.

My last post was indeed a restatement of an opinion I expressed midway through this discussion. If I understand correctly, your opinion is that a sensory deprived brain, as a living machine, is potentially conscious with a preprogrammed nature to seek patterns in its neuron discharges. As you may know, a surgically exposed brain doesn't experience sensory directly and surgical patients are only able to distinguish surgical effects through physical (bodily) sensory feedback and tests as reference. Pattern recognition would have to indicate that our experimental brain is aware of its experience, which is implausible without a sensory apparatus to distinguish that experience and sensory references to define that experience. In previous comments, I conceded that even a sensory deprived brain will become active by virtue of its metabolic imperatives, which isn't necessarily indicative of consciousness as I have explained. I think even a living machine, as you described, is without consciousness without the input it requires to define itself and its experiences.

Unless a brain is dreaming, it doesn't produce consciousness or engage activity suggestive of consciousness in sleep. Only when a brain dreams is it capable of experiencing it's own operation because dream synthesis relies on a brain's store of sensory references to make distinctions about its experiences. A sensory deprived brain from inception would not have the sensory references to perceive and distinguish the nature of its own operation and random neuron firings--it would simply be unaware.

NDEs are considered fringe science, so you won't find any irrefutable studies on this topic. You'd fair better with source exploring the effects and treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Whether or not you believe negative NDEs are essentially nightmares, you will find that PTSD studies and research addresses concerns like yours. PTSD, as you may know, involves the continual, iterative psychological effects of traumatic and stressful experiences. You appear to have extreme anxiety and fear regarding a traumatic experience you have never had, which may have roots in prior trauma. It's clear from your responses that no amount of legitimate research contrary to your fears and concerns will alleviate those issues. I agree, as you have previously conceded, these issues should remain in the hands of your therapist.

After a little more consideration, I think I have an answer for that last question. A metabolically active, sensory deprived brain doesn't, in my opinion, produce consciousness. My reasoning is that awareness would require our test brain to differentiate or make distinctions from moment to moment. Our test brain would be incapable of making those distinction because it wouldn't have a store of references for comparison. A brain relies on a sensory apparatus or system to experience its environment and perceive distinctions by which it is able to accumulate sensory references. Without sensory capabilities, a brain cannot perceive and store the sensory references essential to distinctions about itself and it's environment; therefore, such a brain would be incapable of producing consciousness. This perspective appears to suggest that consciousness is merely a quality our brain refines rather than spontaneously generates, which could be a very significant distinction. Essentially, I think this suggests that consciousness doesn't exist in our brain without input--nothing is in there until we put something in. What are your thoughts?

I agree it's a difficult question to answer without some knowledge of the intricacies of brain function and yes, amid REM sleep we are essentially experiencing consciousness within an unconscious state of brain function. Consuming more energy (about 20%) than any single bodily organ, our brain is active amid the sleep process as a result of its significant metabolic requirements. Those requirements, I think, gives us a credible clue as to whether a sensory deprive brain produces consciousness. On a cellular level, our brain has to become activity to uptake the oxygen and nutrients it requires to remain functional. Maintaining our test brain would necessitate it's continuous uptake of oxygen and nutrients, as well as, a process for eliminating cellular waste. Therefore, without a doubt in my mind, a sensory deprived brain will become active in the absence of sensory input by virtue of its metabolic needs. However, this posits the question of whether this metabolism inspired activity is true consciousness. Does the metabolic activations of our sensory deprived test brain suggests that it is aware or engaged in thought?

Perhaps a further criteria to refine our view of this sensory deprived brain. What if we suspend this brain in an oxygen and nutrient enriched fluid, how might that influence your perspective?

Initially, that was my assessment as well but there are other factors to consider, which I'd like to cover later after a few more responses. For this question, we are considering the human brain only. As our most basic definition, let's consider consciousness as being evidence of thought and awareness. If we believe some thought processes might actually occur in the type of sensory deprived brain I posit, wouldn't this necessitate some motive for thought? In other words, what would provide the drive or stimulate thought within this brain without the sources of sensory stimulation as it might receive through a normal sensory apparatus or system?

As an initiate, thought and cognition require a sensory or stimuli focal; therefore, how might these qualities arise without the stimulation sensory input provides?

Essentially, for this question, I conceive a brain that has never experience afferent stimuli of any sort from inception. In my view, this posits the questions of whether such a brain is capable of spontaneous consciousness in the absence of stimuli essential to brain activity. The question here isn't one of sanity but of whether such a brain, without stimuli, could attain consciousness. If we determine stimuli as essential to true consciousness, then we may be forced to reconsider the precise role of brain function in the production of consciousness.

Indeed, I might be insane for positing the question; however, this is a brain that has never had a perceptual experience in its entire existence due to the abscence of sensory stimuli. We know that sensory perception stimulates brain function, so there could be a question of whether that brain would be active in the absence of stimuli.

I'm trying to withhold my opinion before others have a chance to reply but I think a brain as I described wouldn't know sanity from insanity if it indeed achieve consciousness. Morality issues aside, do you think such a brain produces consciousness?

Perhaps, but would it necessarily have a reference for insanity?

Here's a question for you, does a brain without perceptual experience produce consciousness? I was thinking about the nature of brain function relative to the production of consciousness and whether a brain grown in sensory isolation and deprived of sensory input is capable of consciousness. In considering sci-forum views expressed here and elsewhere regarding the brain as not the source of consciousness, I believed this small thought experiment might cogently resolve this issue. So, if you're interested, give it some thought and tell me what you think.

I think our ideas of what subconscious is or isn't should have some basis in what we clearly understand or know about the nature of brain function. When discussing or describing instinct, ​we're describing a type of behavioral response that our brain function produces or engages. Therefore, if subconscious equals instinct, then subconscious should also equal behavioral response. At this point, we have to ask ourselves does subconscious truly describe a behavioral response? Instinctive behaviors are indeed preprogrammed responses to stimuli that we engage without conscious awareness or intent, which is clearly opposite of behaviors we engage with conscious direction and intent. If instinct describes behaviors opposite of conscious direction, unconscious ​is the most precise description of those behaviors because it is indeed opposite of consciousness. Unconscious isn't necessarily an ineffectual state of being or brain function as many misinterpret. Unconscious is an active state of brain function that produces active behaviors we engage unconsciously or without conscious awareness. Subconscious isn't a functional state our brain produces; however, subconscious is a term that can describe how our brain perceives and exerts influence. Subconscious most suitably describes a way in which our brain receives and delivers influence rather than a separate part or aspect of our psychology or brain function. In, perhaps, more visual terms, subconscious could be viewed as a package and unconscious as the recipient or dispatcher of that package. From this precise perspective, unconscious is the entity and subconscious isn't.

I think what dimreepr is saying is that bad dreams do not cause PTSD; however, PTSD can cause bad dreams. Therefore, you should not expect to suffer any adverse mental effects as a result of a negative NDE because those experiences are merely symptoms rather than causes of some traumatic mental disorder.

I have not met nor ever encountered a neuroscientist or evidence in neuroscience who or that definitively suggests NDEs are more than nightmares or that the near-death state of brain function is a wakeful, conscious state. As a point of fact, I have found no neuroscientist who attributes negative NDEs to a brain amid the dying process because of the neurochemical secretions known to occur as the brain becomes oxygen and energy deprived. Also, I have reviewed or encountered no evidence that a dying brain produces a state equivalent to our wakeful state amid conscious reality. As I said, a hyperactive brain amid the dying process isn't evidence of hyperconsciousness amid the death process and, as evidence, our brain routinely engages levels of activity that exceed our conscious state whenever we dream.

What a person says is entirely different from real physical evidence. You may either choose to believe anecdotal reports or the physical science and evidence you can research for yourself. If in your research you find that a dying brain consistently secrete neurochemicals that produces a euphoric state, then it would be entirely irrational to continue to believe that a negative experience could emerge from such a blissful state. Your only alternative then would be to recognized negative NDEs as not the product of a near-death brain. Once you realized that negative NDEs are not products of a dying brain, your only recourse is to then consider negative NDEs as mental phenomena produced by other types of neurochemical influences on brain function. At that point, you would have to research the neurochemistry known to produce experiences that approximate negative NDEs within a state that approximate the NDE state. This will lead you to nightmares, which is where you should then dismiss concerns or other ideas that negative NDEs are anything more than just bad dreams. If you're going to rely on any information you receive about this topic, that information should be rooted in the science of brain function rather than anecdotal horror stories. Research the science.

If what you describe is true, then these were most likely dream-like experiences rather than those of a dying brain in distress. These individuals likely received such continuous medical attention throughout their cardiac events that their brain never became bereft of blood flow, which continued to carry life sustain support to their brain function. What they most likely experienced were the unconscious residual neurological effects of the stress preceding or precipitating their cardiac events. Their negative near-death experiences were most likely the effects of stress, which associates their NDEs with nightmares. As a type of lucid dream experience, you should be no more concern with negative NDEs than you would be with a bad dream. You should be able to endure and recover from a negative NDE as you might have done with nightmares you have likely experienced before. True NDEs involve a brain suffused with stress relieving neurochemicals that produce good vibes or euphoria. Negative NDEs are merely bad dreams likely caused by mental stress rather than physiological distress. One positive, a negative NDE would be a certain indication that your brain is not in distress and you would most likely survive the experience. If you're unafraid of bad dreams, you should be unafraid of negative NDEs.