Posner Michael I
Department of Psychology, University of Oregon Eugene, OR, USA.
Front Psychol. 2012 Mar 12;3:64. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00064. eCollection 2012.
The term consciousness is an important one in the vernacular of the western literature in many fields. It is no wonder that scientists have assumed that consciousness will be found as a component of the human brain and that we will come to understand its neural basis. However, there is rather little in common between consciousness as the neurologist would use it to diagnose the vegetative state, how the feminist would use it to support raising male consciousness of the economic plight of women and as the philosopher would use it when defining the really hard question of the subjective state of awareness induced by sensory qualities. When faced with this kind of problem it is usual to subdivide the term into more manageable perhaps partly operational definitions. Three meanings that capture aspects of consciousness are: (1) the neurology of the state of mind allowing coherent orientation to time and place (2) the selection of sensory or memorial information for awareness and (3) the voluntary control over overt responses. In each of these cases the mechanisms of consciousness overlap with one or more of the attentional networks that have been studied with the methods of cognitive neuroscience. In this paper we explore the overlap and discuss how to exploit the growing knowledge of attentional networks to constrain ideas of consciousness.
“意识”一词在西方诸多领域的文献中都是一个重要概念。难怪科学家们认为意识会被发现是人类大脑的一个组成部分，而且我们终将理解其神经基础。然而，神经学家用于诊断植物人状态的意识、女权主义者用于支持提高男性对女性经济困境意识的意识，以及哲学家在定义由感官特质引发的主观意识这一真正难题时所使用的意识，这三者之间几乎没有什么共同之处。面对这类问题时，通常会将该术语细分为更易于处理、或许部分是操作性的定义。体现意识几个方面的三种含义是：（1）思维状态的神经学，它使人们能够连贯地确定时间和地点；（2）对进入意识的感觉或记忆信息的选择；（3）对公开反应的自愿控制。在上述每种情况下，意识机制都与通过认知神经科学方法研究的一个或多个注意力网络重叠。在本文中，我们将探讨这种重叠，并讨论如何利用对注意力网络日益增长的认识来限制有关意识的观点。
