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Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

nautil.us

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Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#41

Post by bheadmaster »

I think that consciousness (or rather the feeling of consciousness) is very related to continuous long-term memory storing.

When you're blackout drunk, or under anesthesia, your brain can still infer connections between sequential stimuli (e.g. you can understand words), but none of those memories stay in your brain long-term. I'd say that we were actually conscious during that period, but in the present moment we have no recollection because our memory (for some chemical reason related to alcohol/anesthesia) wasn't stored properly for long-term use.

I imagine the same would happen if we somehow managed to "remove" memories from our minds. After the removal, our current self would not have any recollection of those memories removed - as if we weren't conscious during that period whatsoever.

In conclusion: the feeling of consciousness is deeply related to continuous storage of our life-long memories.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#42

Post by FartyMcFarter »

avh02 wrote: post #29
porker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I found it incredibly disorientating, even after the event because time has passed and I have no awareness of it.

I had my first full anesthesia experience as an adult - emergency but minor surgery, so not an extremely scary ordeal. I was very distinctly trying to pay attention to the process of going under, as in: do i feel it fade? etc. I remember doing the countdown thing and also trying to see if i could notice it at all like going to sleep. but, just like an off switch, no state change, just a full stop (but without somethi…

When I was a kid this once happened to me by just sleeping. I closed my eyes at night, opened them seemingly immediately and it was morning, feeling absolutely rested.

It was pretty weird and amazing, and never happened again. I haven't heard anyone reporting something like this, but I'm almost sure it must have happened to other people too.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#43

Post by overlisted »

simonh wrote: post #8

How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s…

I'm a materialist myself, but I can think of one very fun theory that solves this. What if neurons are special antennas that can "connect" to your consciousness, and when you're, say, drunk, those antennas start receiving and transmitting wrong signals. Your consciousness is just fine in its world, but your body can't talk to it properly anymore.

Obviously I'm just making stuff up, and I don't actually believe any of this.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#45

Post by colordrops »

avh02 wrote: post #29
porker wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I found it incredibly disorientating, even after the event because time has passed and I have no awareness of it.

I had my first full anesthesia experience as an adult - emergency but minor surgery, so not an extremely scary ordeal. I was very distinctly trying to pay attention to the process of going under, as in: do i feel it fade? etc. I remember doing the countdown thing and also trying to see if i could notice it at all like going to sleep. but, just like an off switch, no state change, just a full stop (but without somethi…

If reality has always existed and will continue to exist for eternity, cyclical or not, it is probably inevitable that the configuration of phenomena called "you" will come back together after your death. It's forever afterall.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#46

Post by kahnclusions »

As far as we can tell consciousness is an emergent phenomenon of the physical processes of the brain, and when you interrupt those processes, you don’t form new memories, and when you wake up it’s as if you time travelled to that point.

Any other explanation involves a lot of hand-waving and vast unfounded assumptions that contradict the known laws of physics. My question for those cases is: how does it work? For example, if there really is a “soul” that is able to influence (and be influenced by) my brain, then what is the physical mechanism for that interaction? Can we describe it in a rigorous mathematical framework that makes testable predictions? In what way is our current description of physics incomplete or incompatible, and how do we alter them to fit this new stuff in? What observations can we make to confirm this?

If someone can answer those questions for the soul, then there’s a Nobel prize waiting for you for completely upending and rewriting our laws of physics.

Re: Under anesthesia, where do our minds go?

#50

Post by zelphirkalt »

simonh wrote: post #8

How to approach loss of consciousness is one of the problems I have with non-materialist theories of consciousness like dualism and panpsychism. If consciousness is not generated by my physical brain, how come physical chemicals can manipulate my conscious state? If the brain is a receiver for consciousness, surely my consciousness should exist independently of my brain? Interfering with a radio doesn’t change what’s…

How do we know there is a "loss" of consciousness?

I had some dreams when I was anesthesized once. I do no longer clearly remember them, but I do remember telling the medical people there, that I did dream something. How could I dream without consciousness?

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