“Studies show that, especially for young children, if you prematurely wake them up and deprive them of that much needed sleep, it becomes detrimental to their proper cognitive development further down in life. I just wonder about the amount of damage we’re doing to kids with 7:20 AM school start times.“
– Ilian Daskalov, senior undergraduate student at University of California, Irvine
This episode of the podcast riffs on the discussion with Bernard Baars in Episode 18 on sleep, waking, connectivity, and global workspace functions. Alea Skwara, PhD, UC Davis, and Ilian Daskalov, a cognitive neuroscience upper division student from UC Irvine, pull at the threads of conscious and unconscious states in this thought-provoking discussion to unravel the topics of consciousness and sleep.
What differentiates conscious and non-conscious states? Alea explains that depending on the context of the conversation and various definitions, when talking about sleep, consciousness can be described as the ability to integrate information in a unitary and cohesive way. Ilian and Alea talk about how limitations in our vocabulary may restrict our understanding of consciousness.
Their dialogue evolves into the topic of sleep. Alea shares a personal lucid dreaming experience, where different levels of conscious awareness made her realize that she was actually in a dream state.
Ilian explores his interest in the practical side of having a good night’s sleep, and shares details about the book by neuroscientist Matthew Walker, titled “Why We Sleep.” He shares Walkers’ disappointment at how society has glorified the sacrifice of sleep for various other activities, and some inherent consequences to this.
In the final moments of the conversation, Ilian discusses some of the tools that he uses to optimize his sleep routine, emphasizing how the regularity of our sleep schedule is as important as the length of the sleep itself. Surprisingly, viewing early morning light is crucial to maintaining a regular circadian rhythm, which, in turn, is essential for one’s overall well-being and longevity.
Enjoy a short excerpt from the episode:
Ilian Daskalov:
When we talk about conscious and nonconscious states, I feel like for simplicity’s sake, what we’re talking about when we say that one is conscious, that basically means being able to integrate and process the information that’s coming from the outside world. Is that correct? So sort of like when you say, oh we’re sleeping ergo we’re unconscious. That means even though we still sense information from the outside world, such as the temperature of the room or how dark it is in the room, we are not necessarily able to integrate the information as well. So, therefore we’re unconscious. Is that how our viewers and I should look at things when we talk about conscious and unconscious states?
Alea Skwara:
I think that’s a really good question. And there’s debate about what consciousness is and what qualifies as a conscious state, but in Global Workspace Theory, it is, yeah. This idea of conscious awareness that all of these different pieces of information that your brain is processing do get integrated into this experiential state that we subjectively experience as consciousness or awareness. So if you remember some of the studies we talked about during waking states, there’s information or studies of conscious awareness or awareness of information versus unconscious information process. So even when you’re awake you can do an experiment where you flash something in front of someone’s eyes so quickly that they don’t consciously register it, in that they could not report on it. They’re not aware of it, but that information could actually still impact their processing and influence how they answer the next question or how they behave.
So the definition of what is consciousness kind of depends on what level we’re talking about here, but I think when we’re talking about dreaming, sleeping, shifting between waking and dream states, what we mean is this integration of this information into a unitary, cohesive, conscious experience. I think it’s really interesting that Bernie mentioned dreaming as actually a conscious state. And I would like to talk with him more about his understanding of that, because in a dream state you’re actually kind of in this internal awareness, but it’s somewhat separate or devoid from the external stimuli. You’re in a dark room, you’re not getting a ton of sensory stimuli but you’re having this rich, internal, potentially conscious experience that is disconnected from the external sensory information you’re getting.
Ilian Daskalov:
Do you think we’re limited by our vocabulary when we talk about consciousness at all?
Alea Skwara:
That’s a good question. What makes you ask that?
Ilian Daskalov:
Well I feel like with any new scientific field that emerges, we just don’t have good enough definitions for some of things or we don’t have any definitions at all. There are many examples of words that exist in certain languages for certain types of feelings such as the, what was the German one, schadenfreude. So there’s such words that just exist in some languages and don’t in others. And I feel like with the study of consciousness being such a relatively young in terms of a modern science, the way of looking at things, I feel like we are limited because for example, what is the difference between between subconscious and unconscious levels of processing? And I feel like there’s just more vocabulary gaps out there.
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Talking Points:
- 0:00 – Intro
- 2:12 – How do we differentiate between conscious and unconscious states?
- 4:59 – The limitations of our vocabulary
- 8:11 – The sleeping brain
- 12:12 – Sleep in modern-day society
- 17:49 – How to improve sleep quality
Cited Books
“Why We Sleep” by Matthew Walker – https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/author
Bios
Bernard J. Baars: a former Senior Fellow in Theoretical Neurobiology at The Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, CA, Bernie is best known as the originator of the global workspace theory and global workspace dynamics, a theory of human cognitive architecture, the cortex and consciousness. Bernie’s many acclaimed books include A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness; The Cognitive Revolution in Psychology; In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind; Fundamentals of Cognitive Neuroscience. Winner of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by the International Neural Network Society, which recognizes work in perception proven to be paradigm changing and long-lasting.
Alea Skwara is now a postdoctoral scholar at the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain and Global Migration Center. Her research explores the neurocognitive bases of compassion and adaptive responses to suffering, and how we can bridge basic research and urgent real-world issues to create a more just society for all.
Ilian Daskalov is a senior undergraduate student at University of California, Irvine where he studies Cognitive Science. His research interests include sleep, psychedelics, and artificial intelligence and he is passionate about communicating science and promoting critical thinking.
Global Workspace Theory (GWT) began with this question: “How does a serial, integrated and very limited stream of consciousness emerge from a nervous system that is mostly unconscious, distributed, parallel and of enormous capacity?”
GWT is a widely used framework for the role of conscious and unconscious experiences in the functioning of the brain, as Baars first suggested in 1983.
A set of explicit assumptions that can be tested, as many of them have been. These updated works by Bernie Baars, the recipient of the 2019 Hermann von Helmholtz Life Contribution Award by International Neural Network Society form a coherent effort to organize a large and growing body of scientific evidence about conscious brains.
