Assessing and responding to sudden deterioration in the adult
Nicola Neale, Joanne Sale in Developing Practical Nursing Skills, 2022
Our awake state is known as consciousness, while unconsciousness is defined as when an individual’s awareness no longer exists. Normal reflexes protecting conscious individuals are lost and so healthcare professionals must maintain their safety and provide all care needed. For initial assessment of an unconscious person, look back to Chapter 4 for an overview of how to carry out a neurological assessment – ACVPU and the GCS – and ensure that you can conduct these assessments before continuing with this section as they are necessary for anyone with altered conscious level. There are many causes of unconsciousness including abnormal temperature, oxygen or blood glucose levels, infection (e.g. encephalitis, meningitis), drug intoxication, seizures, focal head injury (trauma), hypoxia, hypercarbia (high levels of carbon dioxide in the circulating blood) or vascular events (shock, stroke). Investigations will be conducted to determine the underlying cause. In this section, general care of an unconscious person is considered, followed by a review of blood glucose monitoring, which will be carried out for a person with altered consciousness and also management of seizures.
Theory of psychodynamic psychotherapy
Patricia Hughes, Daniel Riordan in Dynamic Psychotherapy Explained, 2017
To give meaning to mental events (feelings, symptoms and behaviours), Freud postulated the existence of thoughts in the patient’s mind which are unconscious but which can affect his conscious mind and behaviour. It may be preferable to think in terms of different levels of consciousness and to use the word ‘unconscious’ as an adjective rather than a noun. We can identify three kinds of unconscious thoughts. Something may be unconscious because it is not thought about at a particular moment in time – for example, what you had for lunch last Sunday.It may be unconscious because it is a painful memory, which has been consciously suppressed rather than remembered – for example, the exam viva that went badly. Freud used the word ‘preconscious’ to describe these levels of unconscious thought, which are available to the conscious mind if we choose to look at them.It may be unconscious because it has been unconsciously repressed and therefore cannot be recalled at will. Freud suggested that an idea or a memory may be extremely painful to us, or may conflict with our view of ourselves in such a way that it would cause acute anxiety or guilt if it were acknowledged. From his experience as a doctor, Freud observed that repressed feelings could cause physical as well as psychological symptoms.
Hypnosis and guided imagery
Hilary McClafferty in Mind–Body Medicine in Clinical Practice, 2018
One of the great controversies in hypnosis is whether it can be considered an altered state of consciousness. Some studies suggest that hypnosis is associated with decreased default mode network activity, with high hypnotizability correlating with increased functional connectivity between the executive control network and the salience network, regions of the brain that determine which stimuli are most relevant. A 2016 study by Jiang et al. used functional MRI (fMRI) imaging to examine brain activity and functional connectivity between brain regions in 57 individuals tested and grouped based on high versus low hypnotizability using the Harvard Group Scale for Hypnotic Susceptibility. Participants underwent scanning in four states: resting, memory retrieval, and two different hypnotic experiences (Jiang et al. 2016).
Effects of Moderate-to-Vigorous Acute Exercise on Conscious Perception and Visual Awareness
Published in Journal of Motor Behavior, 2023
Binn Zhang, Xiaoxu Meng, Yanglan Yu, Yaogang Han, Ying Liu
The effect of acute exercise on cognition covers almost all stages of information processing, such as sensation, perception, motor, attention, and higher-order domains (inhibition, decision-making, and working memory) (Bullock et al., 2015; Cao & Händel, 2019; Nenna et al., 2021; Chen et al., 2022; Busse et al., 2017). However, few of these studies touch on consciousness/awareness. In current study, consciousness and awareness are used interchangeably, without differentiation. The subjectivity of consciousness makes it one of the most attractive topics in psychology. Therefore, in current research, combinations of awareness and perception indicators are adopted to verify if acute exercise affects visual consciousness. The identification and understanding of motion information in the environment is critical. Motion-related features were therefore manipulated in current study. In addition, methodologically, under the framework of signal detection theory (Yanglan et al., 2019), two main parameters (d’, a measure of sensitivity taking hit rate and false alarm rate into account, d’=ZHit-ZFalse Alarm; β, reflects the subject’s response strategy, β = OHit/OFalse Alarm) can help us to explore the source of changes in awareness, due to changes in discrimination or subjective criteria, or both.
Optogenetic Memory Modification and the Many Facets of Authenticity
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2021
Alexandre Erler
It is hard to dispute that autonomy is a very important ethical consideration, and one that is often associated, if not equated with the concept of authenticity. Nevertheless, I believe we should recognize that considerations of autonomy do not exhaust legitimate concerns about authenticity, including in the present context. The key reason for this, I contend, is that authenticity is an ambiguous, or multifaceted concept: there is more than one legitimate, plausible conception of it. As an analogy, consider the concept of consciousness, described by Ned Block as a “mongrel concept” (Block 1995). Arguably, “consciousness” can refer to different, though related, entities (phenomenal consciousness, access consciousness, etc.), so that it would be misguided to ask which of these reflects the “correct” understanding of consciousness.
Of worms and men
Published in Journal of Neurogenetics, 2020
John White
It may be instructive to consider whether some of the central topics in the studies of the human brain have relevance in the context of C. elegans. One prominent issue is the nature of consciousness. There are numerous definitions of what consciousness means but they are generally of the form: the state of being aware of one’s surroundings and self. The responses of C. elegans to external stimuli have been extensively studied and have been shown to elicit responses that are appropriate to the stimulus (Bargmann, 2006). So, in this sense a C. elegans is certainly conscious. Indeed, I would argue that an autonomously driven car is also conscious. Rather like the concept of vitalism, which has fallen into disuse because of current knowledge of cell physiology, consciousness may not be a useful concept for understanding the function of the nervous system of C. elegans. A concept derived from studies of higher nervous systems that is better defined is neural plasticity. At a gross level this is commonly seen as the ability of victims to eventually recover lost faculties following a stroke that kills off areas of the brain; however, it is likely that neural plasticity is a manifestation of the basic process of learning (Sweatt, 2016). There are well defined instances of neuronal plasticity during the development of the C. elegans nervous system and the detailed mechanisms are beginning to be understood at the molecular level (Jin & Qi, 2018), suggesting that this organism may have much to offer in the search for an understanding of this basic mechanism of cognition.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Awareness
- Cognition
- Introspection
- Perception
- Volition
- Metacognition
- Mind
- Thought
- Imagination
- Experience