Consciousness

• seCtIon sIx: seLF AnD otHeR
  The logical next step is to go beyond self-reflexive correlation to investigate
  causation through controlled feedback loops. This is already happening in studies
  that allow participants to change their own brain activity using visual feedback
  from real-time fMRI. In a nice example of how effective this can be, one study
  showed that by controlling activation levels in rostral anterior cingulate cortex,
  participants could change the intensity of pain caused by a noxious heat stimulus
  (deCharms et al., 2005). The pain did not change without the fMRI feedback, nor
  using different parts of the brain, nor with trick feedback from someone else’s
  brain. So in this experiment we have ‘almost direct observation of an association
  between brain activity and a specific type of experience by the same observer’
  (Price and Barrell, 2012, p. 29). Much more complex forms of neural interaction
  could be explored using this method, thus eliminating ‘not human experience
  but the perceived necessity of eliminating human experience from science’ (p. 29).
  Real-time feedback loops in brain imaging are rapidly improving in precision.
  For example, the iGBM method outlined earlier can give feedback with much
  enhanced temporal resolution, letting us explore phenomena like mental imag-
  ery in greater depth (Petitmengin and Lachaux, 2013). More comprehensively
  reflexive experiments might even extend the feedback between brain and expe-
  rience to cases where the gap between self and other is reduced or eliminated.

One example is the ‘body swap illusion’ (Petkova and Ehrsson, 2008). In this dra-

matic extension of the rubber-hand illusion (Chapter  4), the participant has a

head-mounted display in which they see the input from a camera mounted on

the experimenter’s head. The two sit face-to-face, each holding a paintbrush in

their right hand and using it to brush each other’s left hand. This generates the

illusion that the participant is brushing their own hand. You can also vary the

procedure so the participant watches the experimenter’s hand from the exper-

imenter’s perspective, or watches just their own hand (without the rest of the

body) from the experimenter’s perspective, or their own body (with or without

the face visible) from the experimenter’s perspective. What if we took this another

step and gave the experimenter a camera, too? What if both participants could

see their own and/or the other person’s brain activity at the same time? What

if both were highly trained neurophenomenologists? The prospects are exciting

for reflexively integrating multiple perspectives into the neuroscientific study of

consciousness and self.

These rules, the sign language and grammar of the Game,

constitute a kind of highly evolved secret language composed of

several sciences and arts, but especially mathematics and music

(and/or musicology), and capable of expressing and establishing

interrelationships between the contents and findings of nearly

all disciplines. The Glass Bead Game is thus a play with the entire

contents and values of our culture; it plays with them as, say, in the

heyday of the arts a painter might have played with the colours on

his palette. [. . .] Even if it ever happened that two players by chance

should choose precisely the same small assortment of themes for

the content of their Game, these two Games could, depending on

‘almost direct

observation of an

association between

brain activity and

a specific type of

experience by the same

observer’

(Price and Barrell, 2012, p. 29)