Ambiguities of Consciousness

            Although scientific advances have allowed us to travel to the moon and back, there is yet no concrete understanding of consciousness. Consciousness is what seemingly drives our everyday actions and yet we have no idea how it is created in the brain or what it is exactly. This imperfect understanding of consciousness and in turn unconsciousness therefore, limits success in several sectors of the healthcare system.

          

            One such sector that is limited by the ambiguity of consciousness is that of anesthesia. The article titled What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness by Maggie Koerth-Baker claims that .13 percent of the time the effects of anesthesia go awry. Even though the rates of success in anesthesia are high, the one or two failures in a group of a 1,000 people force us to inquire as to why that is the case. Since the field of anesthetics is centered on using specific drugs to control the consciousness of a patient, it becomes essential for us to have a complete understanding of consciousness in order to perform successful anesthesia.

            The article states that because there is not a way to measure consciousness directly, neuroscientists are looking to study neural correlates of consciousness – the changes in brain function when a person shifts from being conscious to unconscious. They performed a study that stimulated patients’ brains at different levels of consciousness and compared their brain activity. They discovered that when the patient was awake and conscious, the electrical signal travelled all around the brain. When the patient was unconscious, the signal remained localized and eventually faded away. This discovery supports a theory of consciousness that states that sensory networks in the brains of an unconscious person are locally functional but the communication between different parts of the brain is compromised. The analogy described in the article that clarified this concept was imagining that the lights are on in the neighborhood, but "the Internet and phone lines have been cut". It's fascinating to imagine consciousness to be so simple and yet so complex. Increasing support for this theory allows some neuroscientists to conclude that the synthesis and integration of information between the different parts of the brain provides the best measure of consciousness.  

            Additional research and significant results in correspondence with this theory can substantially decrease the uncertainties involved with diagnosing a patient’s state of consciousness. As Daniel Bor describes in The Ravenous Brain, a patient that is entirely unconscious with his eyes always closed is in coma. If there are signs of awareness, such as the opening and closing of eyes, the patient is in a vegetative state. When a patient shows slight awareness and responds to stimuli, he is in a minimally conscious state. Although many patients can make a recovery from a vegetative state, about half of them do not. The longer a patient remains in the vegetative state, the lower his chances of recovering from that state. Additionally, it is extremely difficult to ascertain the difference between a patient in a vegetative state and one in a minimally conscious state. Methods that distinguish between the states of consciousness of a patient similar to the one described by the article can have a substantial effect in helping healthcare professionals classify the conscious level of a minimally responsive patient. Even though classifying a patient’s state of consciousness is only half of the battle that doctors and family members have to struggle through, it can allow them to determine the best course of action for the patient with less ambiguity. Therefore, I believe that more research should be done in order to develop an appropriate method of measuring consciousness. This will not only assist in developing a more successful method of anesthetization, but will also give doctors a better understanding of the conscious state of a patient that will allow them to better approach his condition. 

Bor, Daniel. The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic, 2012. Print.

Koerth-Baker, Maggie. “What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 10 Dec. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/what-anesthesia-can-teach-us-about-consciousness.html?pagewanted=all>.