Hey Max! Thanks for your feedback and for your vital contribution to this project. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you before –I had taken a few days off.
The example you provide fits well in what I classified as “sophisticated information processing functions that can be performed unconsciously”. Of course we can come up with creative ideas after a period of conscious thought, but it doesn’t necessarily happen that way. As you describe, unconscious processes play an important role in achieving creative insights, during what is called “the incubation period”. Neuroimaging studies suggest that the association cortices are the primary areas that are active during this state and that the brain is spontaneously reorganizing itself. Recent research also supports the idea that it is not merely the absence of conscious thought that drives creativity incubation effects, but that during an incubation period unconscious processes contribute to creative thinking.
It’s still not clear which are the functional advantages of conscious over non-conscious thinking. In general, which kind of stimuli or tasks are more efficiently processed using unconscious mechanisms is an issue that remains to be elucidated. We also need a more refined distinction between neural correlates of unconsciousness (the absence of any conscious contents) vs. neural correlates of disconnectedness (the absence of perception of the environment) in different altered levels of consciousness.
How these findings can be applied to research on consciousness in invertebrates? I’m unsure. Perhaps we can assess if equivalent structures of their CNS are activated when performing tasks that challenge them to “make associations” –and this may shed some light on how likely they are to show flexible (“creative”) responses. Currently, in my opinion, it is clearer how these findings can contribute to improving our thinking: for instance, we are likely to benefit more from an incubation period when we get stuck, or when we are dealing with a problem where the conventional approach is wrong. For specific tasks, a break of 3 min can be enough to promote unconscious thought. Understanding and facilitating creativity can have a direct application in the EA community since creativity plays a vital role in research and designing innovative solutions.
Daniela Waldhorn
Thanks for your enriching comment, Gavin. Just wanted to add to Jason’s response that, unfortunately, there is no consensus on whether various features potentially indicative of consciousness would be adaptive for any conscious individual, regardless of a species’ evolutionary history and its adaptive needs.
Complicating things even further, we do not even have such thing as a ‘universal’ intelligence measuring instrument for humans–cultural differences in intelligence determine results country by country. The above points out that we need more research that tells us both criteria for understanding which features might be more robust for detecting consciousness, and forms of measurement that are sensitive to relevant differences between different groups of individuals.
Thanks again for your valuable comments and suggestions, Gavin! I’ll definitely dig deeper into those aspects you point out.
Hi MichaelStJules! We’ll consider that paper for a clarificatory commentary on this. Thanks again for your suggestions!
Hi MichaelStJules. Thanks again for your valuable suggestions! We will publicly share our plans to update /expand this database. Additionally, in upcoming posts we aim to outline the current state of improving invertebrate welfare as a cause area and suggest possible next steps in this regard.
Hi, gavintaylor. Thanks for your comment. Research in patients with vegetative or minimally consciousness states –different from dementia or delirium, which should be better described as acute disturbances in consciousness– would probably shed some light on this matter. However, this area of research might be challenging by itself.
Disorders of consciousness are heterogeneous, and judging the level of actual awareness has proved a complicated process. Traditional tests and observations have been criticized since they require some level of subjective interpretation –such as deciding whether a patient’s movements are purposeful or not. In fact, recent research has revealed that about 40% of vegetative state diagnoses is incorrect.
We know, for instance, that some vegetative patients and other individuals in a minimally conscious state are capable of simple learning (i.e., classical conditioning). In a study, it was observed that the amount of learning correlated with the degree of cortical damage and was a good indicator of future recovery. But none of these effects were found in control subjects under the effect of anesthesia.
Furthermore, integrative brain processing, a proposed prerequisite of awareness, has been observed in minimally conscious state patients as well. Previous neuroimaging work has shown that some vegetative patients, when asked to imagine performing physical tasks such as playing tennis, still had activity in premotor areas. In other patients, verbal cues sparked language sectors.
Hence, these results have two interpretations. First, individuals with disorders of consciousness may have partially preserved conscious processing, which cannot be exhibited clearly via voluntary movement or verbal responses. Or, a second interpretation is that conditioning, for example, can indeed be acquired in the absence of consciousness.
Given that (i) individuals in a pharmacologically controlled unconscious state were incapable of displaying signs of learning, and (ii) learning was a good predictor of recovery, researchers consider that the first interpretation is more likely. However, this comparison must be made cautiously and complementary evidence about these processes–including neuroimaging studies–should also be taken into account.
As you suggest, more research in this field may pave the way for more definitive and accurate assessments of consciousness in humans, and probably, in non-human individuals as well.
Hi JoshYou. Thanks for your very pertinent comment.
We are aware of the possibility of hidden qualia. It is a valuable hypothesis. Nevertheless, we found no empirical evidence to support it, at least in the literature on invertebrate sentience. If you will, you can view our project as a compilation and analysis of the existing evidence about the sentience of individual invertebrate organisms, as opposed to subroutines within those systems. Under this reading, what we call ‘unconscious processes’ would be understood as processes which are inaccessible to the organisms’s first-person perspective.
We are also aware that, on some accounts, one really does not need empirical evidence to determine whether a process (or subroutine or algorithm) is conscious. All of them are. On such an account, the relevant distinction is between processes that matter morally and those who don’t. Someone who endorsed this view should interpret our position as agnostic about (but compatible with) the thesis that there are hidden qualia.
Hi MichaelStJules!
For now, (1) the table is not downloadable. Regarding (3), in various cases, we use the taxon or the species name to highlight that existing evidence only applies to that specific species. Thus, generalizing from a single species to the rest of the taxon or higher taxonomic ranks is potentially problematic –primarily when an invertebrate category comprises a large group of species, as is the case with ants.
Thank you for your suggestions. We will take them into account to improve our work.
We were aware of that study, thanks for sharing it!
However, that paper is published by a potentially predatory journal, and no further evidence on this matter was found. Hence, we maintain our current response (‘unknown’), but will introduce a clarificatory commentary mentioning this study and its reliability limitations.
You’re right! Thanks for your feedback, Max Daniel! We’ll correct that shortly.