Claustrum? Consciousness?

The claustrum is being associated with conscious-"ness".

A decade ago, Christof Koch and Francis Crick (before he died) wondered, What is the function of the claustrum? (pdf).

Here is a new news story about this part of the brain: What the Claustrum Does—How One Makes Up One’s Mind

Excerpt:

The claustrum consists of a thin yet broad sheet of neurons buried in the depths of the brain. Until recently its function has been obscure. Because it is directly connected to nearly every other region of the brain – especially the cortex – Francis Crick and Christof Koch suggested a decade ago that it might have something to do with consciousness...perhaps the claustrum gets it all together and acts, as Crick and Koch suggested, as the conductor of the brain’s orchestra... Recently, my colleagues (Smythies and Ramachandran) and I have suggested that the claustrum operates by strengthening the synchronized gamma frequency oscillations in the cortex that play a key role in coordinating the brain’s input and output. For example, two different sensory inputs will activate and set-up synchronized oscillations in two particular zones within the claustrum. These will be subject to further modulation by saliency mechanisms that signal the importance (i.e., significance and reward value) of what is going on. These two groups of cortico-claustro-cortical oscillations then compete on a “winner-takes-all” basis. The winner gets to activate the motor cortex (in essence, to “make it so!”) and a particular behavior results.

We should probably not get too excited though. As Robert Burton points out in BrainSciencePodcast 96, and in his book, "A Skeptic's Guide to the Mind: What Neuroscience Can and Cannot Tell Us About Ourselves", using the mind to study the brain is one thing, but using the mind to try to study the mind is an exercise in futile circularity, and there is simply no way out of the trap. 
Not that people aren't going to keep on trying. 
And telling stories.

Also, meanwhile, there are other bits involved that surely have something to do with something, e.g. the dorsal medial habenula (a part that is likely somewhat dysfunctional in me), that manages mood, motivation, desire to exercise.

Maybe everything influences everything.
Maybe, as soon as one wakes up in the morning, everything is a repeatable/repetitive neurotag.
Maybe everything is a verb, not a noun.

Thoughts on zombie states

Deric Bownds always has interesting bits blogged at his site, Mindblog (see link to the right). Today, he offered up this: Some Rambling on Selves and Purposes.

I won't recreate the links in his post. Just go to his post and click on them yourself. Especially, read the quote from the Blakeslees' book.

Ginger Campbell recently interviewed Christof Koch (neuroscientist) (see her show notes page for podcast #22) who has many insights into what he calls "zombie" behavior. Zombie behaviors are those which have grown so automatic that no one really has to really be "home" for them to be enacted. Much ordinary social exchange could go into this category - conventional behavior, smiling, etc. I think much PT practice can easily become zombie-like as well. This is a little-recognized and glossed-over possibility. If I am in pain, and am taking my body in to see if I can get some help for it, I don't want a zombie PT treating me. I want someone who will come alive to the pain output my nervous system is broadcasting throughout my body, and I want that individual to care about it and for it. I want her or him, to demonstrate this care, by handling me gently.

I will need this consideration from them, for no matter how together I may seem on the outside, inside I will feel thoroughly discombobulated. My nervous system will be completely sensitized to any hint of any lack of attentive care, especially while being touched - my nervous system will be reading theirs like mad. It will be like I have no boundaries, and I will rely on my caretaker to have ones that are adequate, both with respect to my physicality AND inside themselves, a simple ability to attend, to stay focused, to not permit interruption from outside the treatment room during this process, and to set up the treatment crucible with an optimum length of time in which our two nervous systems can be connected through manual contact.

I will most definitely need to be reassured in the midst of my decompensation, wittingly or unwittingly, and will need a helper who is NOT enacting behaviours from some disconnected state of awareness or attention. I want nothing less from a care giver of mine than I offer to others as their chosen Human Primate Social Groomer.

The only way to not become a zombie, insofar as I can gather, is to practice attending to things (with whatever illusion we can scrape together as an "I" construct), simple, physiological things like breath, like one's own movement/motor output, finding something fresh and new in it every single day, until the day comes when finally we no longer need to think about constructing any more "days" - our personal arrow of time will have hit its mark.