conscious

=Conscious=

toc This article defines a word and clarifies its application and usefulness in scale studies.

=Definition=

I adopt Dahaene’s clarification (Dahaene 2006): > The term ‘consciousness’ has multiple meanings, one of them intransitive (e.g. ‘the patient regained consciousness’), and the other transitive (e.g. ‘consciousness of color’). To avoid further confusion, we abandon the term and use ‘states of vigilance’ to refer to the non-transitive meaning, i.e. a continuum of states which encompasses wakefulness, sleep, coma, anesthesia, etc.... the second, transitive meaning of consciousness [we] term ‘access to conscious report’.

=Access To Report= Quote: The Corollary Discharge Extension model (the crucial basis of CODAM) is as follows. A copy of the feedback attention movement control signal is used to generate speed-up in the access of content to report by earlier entry to the relevant buffer working memory (so gain reportability). This copy is employed to reduce effects from distracters, and to improve attention control by preventing errors in speeded response (as has been suggested to occur by use of the corollary discharge in motor control, Desmurget & Grafton, 2000). There are thus a set of further modules that are introduced into the minimal ballistic attention control model, as shown in the figure, as follows: (d) A buffer working memory site for access to report, acting as a repository of an attention tag to lower level activity, and proposed as identical to the slave sites of the distributed working memory model of Baddeley and Hitch (Baddeley, 1986). This buffer working memory activity can be considered as the attention control estimate of the attended stimulus. There is coupling of the buffer site activity to lower level attended activity, such as through amplification or by synchronisation; (e) A corollary discharge buffer, to allow the corollary discharge signal to be used to give an early prime to the working memory site (as used in a recent model of the attentional blink in Fragopanagos et al, 2005) and to activate any error signal if the goal set up earlier is not realised. The corollary discharge signal thus acts as a crucial component in prediction of forthcoming input to the buffer working memory site, so acts as a forward model; (f) An error monitor to be used to generate an early error signal from the corollary discharge signal, in comparison to the goal, so as to cause attention to be amplified to achieve its purpose, as well as to inhibit distracters from accessing the slave working memory site before reportability of the attended stimulus.