How Can We Measure The Unconscious

The unconscious mind is not well understood by science yet. Trying to measure the unconscious has been an issue unsolved by science.  In Daniel Bor's book, The Ravenous Brain, he proposes a method of measuring consciousness using a TMS machine.  The TMS machine would be able to send a pulse across cortical neurons that would spread over the brain if the subject was awake.  If the subject was asleep the signal would remain close to the stimulated site. Bor says that “…this is evidence that our ability to combine information throughout much of the cortex is high when we’re awake, but low when asleep” (Bor 215).  This observation can be looked at as that one can learn something when conscious and the brain will still have the capability to store and combine information while unconscious.  Bor uses this example in his book as well as using an example of how the unconscious brain may combine information.  Bor mentions that if an unconscious patient is repeatedly told the word ‘ashtray’ and then asked to complete a word that begins with ‘ash’ after they regain consciousness, they would be more likely to say ‘ashtray’ instead of other words that begin with ash.

             Anesthesia provides a method to help understand and study unconscious minds since it simulates the same environment as being unconscious.  In fact, in Megan Koerth Baker’s article What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness she writes that “Successful anesthetization requires complete unconsciousness, and consciousness isn’t something we can measure” (Baker).  Baker writes about how a study from University of Sao Paulo and University of Wisconsin, Madison discovered that an unconscious person has functional sensory networks, however they are locally functional and do not communicate with the rest of the brain.  This finding supports the findings that Bor writes about in his book with the TMS study as it shows that the unconscious mind is more centralized.  In Baker’s article she mentions that “synthesis and integration of information among many different parts of the brain is the best measure of consciousness” (Baker).  While Bor proved that there is still a small amount of processing that occurs in an unconscious brain it is significantly less than that of a conscious brain, which leads Baker to believe that a good way to measure consciousness would be to measure how electric signals travel around the brain.  If the signals stay near a central location, then the patient would most likely be considered unconscious, which would allow for more scientists to do more studies on the unconscious.

            Both Bor and Baker write about how it is currently difficult to measure if a person is conscious or not.  Both come to a conclusion that if there’s a way to measure how signals travel across the brain, that information can be used to help determine consciousness. By coming closer to a method of measuring consciousness, the world is moving closer to a day when there is no longer .13% of people who are still conscious after being under anesthesia because there will one day be a way to measure if they are unconscious.

Bor, D. (2012). The Ravenous Brain: How The New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning. New York: Basic Books.

Koerth-Baker, M. (2013, December 10). What Anesthesia Can Teach Us About Consciousness. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/magazine/what-anesthesia-can-teach-us-about-consciousness.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0