Is the brain necessary for consciousness?

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Michael 345 said:
Still playing chess with Riverious Pigeonolite?


What is the meaning behind this pet name?

There is no chess M345 , you just think there is

Simply an insult to me river , it never ends .

Of course some people , as I have learned , can never understand . Because they simply are not capable of understanding this OP . Oh well
 
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virtually no brain
In other words, the man has virtually no brain
virtually brainless

Of course, this goes against anything that neuroscience tell us

So reality goes against what we think????

terminal lucidity ......... unexplainable.

Probably because non existent except as 'tall tales'

Consciousness will make use of the brain, or even won’t use a brain in case of its virtual absence, but will then express itself through other pathways.

But no mention of which other pathways

In the first 3 replace "virtually" with small problem in the thread question

Is the brain necessary for consciousness?

vanishes

At the same time show me a conscious person with no brain and again question answered

It would also answer

Consciousness will make use of the brain, or even won’t use a brain in case of its virtual absence, but will then express itself through other pathways

I await

:)
 
Of course some people , as I have learned , can never understand .
True, some seem determined not to.

Speaking of which, you never answered the question. Did you learn what DHMO is, that evil stuff that you've demanded to be removed from vaccines? Do you now understand it better?
 
Consciousness is probably just biological electricity and biochemistry.

I think that neuropeptides probably have some role in consciousness.

Without biological electricity and biochemistry there is no life.

I think that consciousness is probably just electricity and probably along with neuropeptide chemistry as well.

There also some theories about electromagnetism playing a role in consciousness in case if someone is interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_theories_of_consciousness
 
Found this interesting blog post. It raises some intriguing albeit all too ignored questions:

[color="99000"]"Not many people have heard of an article that appeared in a 1980 issue of Science, one of the most reputable Science Journals in the world, and which article was quite provocatively titled: “Is Your Brain Really Necessary?” (Science, Volume 210, December 12, 1980). Yes, provocative, because, as neurologist John Lorber explains, it is only because of this that he could get the attention he wanted. The final article appeared in 1983 in a German medical journal, and it all boiled down to an extremely strange phenomenon: There are people in this world who have virtually no brain, yet are healthy, have normal to high intelligence and normal social behavior. Lorber investigated 600 people who are affected by hydrocephalus, that is, having water on the brain, or rather only have water where there should be brain. Normally these people are, not surprisingly, complete imbeciles, hence with almost total absence of intelligence. Yet, amongst those 600 there were 30 whose IQ was equel to 100 or even more. Lorber cited the story of a student of mathematics at Cambridge who has a global IQ of 126, and his verbal IQ even reaching 143. Yet, this student’s cranium (skull) was/is for 95% filled with “water”, or more specifically “cerebrospinal fluid”. What is left of the brain is a layer, 1-2 millimeters thick on the inside of the cranium. In other words, the man has virtually no brain...

Calculations resulted in brain tissue somewhere between 100 and 150 grams, whereas a normal brain weighs 1500 grams! Of course, this goes against anything that neuroscience tell us. And as no one knew and knows how to handle such a grand anomaly, it was and is completely ignored. At the end of his life (1994) Lorber complained that nobody had ever taken up these findings. Even, in a very recent book, issued in my home country, with as title “We are our brains”, authored by a highly respected neurobiologist, this issue of practically brainless, but nonetheless intelligent people is totally ignored. Just as if it does not exist. [But it does: at the beginning of this year, after I had delivered a lecture on NDE’s, a man came to me and said: “I am a retired neurologist, and one of my patients also appeared to have virtually no brain, yet he is highly intelligent, and happily married with four children”. I asked him whether he had an explanation. He said: “no, I cannot explain this”.]

Now, that is one anomaly which makes us think! But another one is this:

Ever heard of “Terminal Lucidity”? This a very rare phenomenon which happens with people who are either in a highly progressed condition of dementia (such as Alzheimer), or are suffering from mental diseases in a similar condition. It all boils down to an inexplicable lucidity during the last days or even hours before their death, although, in the case of total dementia, their brains are irreparably damaged. Al of a sudden they are completely normal again, have their full memory and cognitive qualities back, they can talk to their relatives and make arrangements with them for their funeral and division of their heritage, and so on. After that they die peacefully. The same applies with people who suffer from irreparable mental diseases. Two examples, as these were published in Journal of Near-Death Studies, Volume 28, No 2, Winter 2008, article “Michael Nahm, Ph.D.: Terminal Lucidity in People with Mental Disease and Other Mental Disability”.

Example 1 (page 92): “A mad and very violent ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, who also suffered from severe memory loss to the extent he did not even remember his first name. On the day before his death, he became rational and asked for a clergyman. With him, the patient conversed attentively and expressed his hope that God would have mercy on his soul. An autopsy revealed that his cranium was filled with a straw-coloured water to a degree that it widened parts of the brain, whereas the brain matter itself and the origin of the nerves were uncommonly firm, the olfactory nerves displaying an almost fibrose appearance.”

In other words, his brain was irreparably damaged. Yet, at the end of his life, he was completely lucid.

Case 2 (page 95): “G.W. Surya (1921) recounted an account handed to him by a friend of his. This friend had a brother living in asylum for many years because of serious mental derangement. ‘One day, Surya’s friend received a telegram from the director of the asylum saying that his brother wanted to speak to him. He immediately visited his brother and was astonished to find him in a perfectly normal state. On leaving again, the director of the asylum decently informed the visitor that his brother’s mental clarity is an almost certain sign of his approaching death. Indeed, the patient died within a short time. Subsequently, an autopsy of the brain was performed, to which Surya’s friend was allowed to attend. It revealed that the brain was entirely suppurated [i.e. consisting of pus] and that this condition must have been present for a long time. Suraya asks: With what, then, did this brainsick person think intelligently during the last days of his life?’”

Indeed: no brain, because what was left of that was a heap of pus, nothing else; yet, during his final hours, completely lucid....

That we do no hear much of terminal lucidity may be because it is deliberatey ignored by doctors and/or nursing staff, as it is unexplainable.

Now, echoing William James’s famous quote: “it takes one white raven to show that not all ravens are black”, we can with some confidence say that the above “anecdotes”, and given these factual reports (which cannot be denied ) as well as the fact that some virtually brainless people can be highly intelligent and social, will lead to an almost unavoidable conclusion, namely that consciousness is not a product of the brain. Consciousness will make use of the brain, or even won’t use a brain in case of its virtual absence, but will then express itself through other pathways.

Parnia talks about an illusion. Yes, there is an illusion, i.e. that it is the brain that produces OBE’s and NDE’s. Rather, it seems far more likely that consciousness acts separately from the brain, and that NDE’s and OBE’s are manifestations of that separately acting consciousness.

Oh, I forgot: Michael Nahm, together with the nestor of NDE-research Bruce Greyson, also published an article: Terminal Lucidity in Patients with Chronic Schizophrenia and Dementia: a Survey of the Literature, in The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 197, 12, 942-944, 2009.

The above conclusions are not theirs, but mine... - of course, they must be far more prudent in this than I may be - but I think that quite logically there cannot be another conclusion, unless someone discovers that in the absence of a brain within the skull, brain matter is spread out all over the body, which seems unlikely to me..."---[/color]http://forum.mind-energy.net/skeptiko-podcast/1743-lucid-before-death-evidence-seperate-mind.html

digital-consciousnesss.jpg

This all seems to fit with:

The Trigger of Extreme Gravity:
Dr. James Winnery's Near-Death Experience Research

james_whinnery.jpg

The scientific method requires a phenomenon to be able to be reproducible under laboratory conditions for it to be declared a "real" phenomenon. In the early days, near-death experiences were thought by some to be just "phantom" visions and nothing more than imagination. But then Dr. James E. Whinnery, a chemistry professor with West Texas A&M, became involved with research involving fighter pilots being subjected to extreme gravitational forces in a giant centrifuge to simulate the extreme conditions that can occur during aerial combat maneuvering. Strangely enough, it turns out that under extreme g-forces, fighter pilots lose consciousness and have a near-death experience. Whinnery wrote a technical report for the National Institute for Discovery Science about the phenomenon and in doing so proved the near-death experience to be a real phenomenon. The following is a summary of his technical report of how NDEs are triggered by severe gravitational forces.
 
Sorry, but I cannot believe ONE word of this!
Could it be possible that this might be because you are SCARED of the implications the opening post?

Please think about this another way......
please compare the functions of one cell in .... just for example your liver?

How much "intelligence" or computing power may that one cell have within itself somehow to perform some of the complex functions of the liver?
 


Wow!!!!!

No Brainer.
For decades now, I have been haunted by the grainy, black-and-white x-ray of a human skull.

It is alive but empty, with a cavernous fluid-filled space where the brain should be. A thin layer of brain tissue lines that cavity like an amniotic sac. The image hails from a 1980 review article in Science: Roger Lewin, the author, reports that the patient in question had “virtually no brain”. But that’s not what scared me; hydrocephalus is nothing new, and it takes more to creep out this ex-biologist than a picture of Ventricles Gone Wild.


The stuff of nightmares. (From Oliveira et al 2012)

What scared me was the fact that this virtually brain-free patient had an IQ of 126.

He had a first-class honors degree in mathematics. He presented normally along all social and cognitive axes. He didn’t even realize there was anything wrong with him until he went to the doctor for some unrelated malady, only to be referred to a specialist because his head seemed a bit too large.
 
Could it be possible that this might be because you are SCARED of the implications the opening post?
You can't be serious.....:eek:
Please think about this another way......
please compare the functions of one cell in .... just for example your liver?
How much "intelligence" or computing power may that one cell have within itself somehow to perform some of the complex functions of the liver?
Actually quite a bit.

Note that each cell in your body has the ability for making a copies of itself.

(You may want to have look at my thread about microtubules)

I suggest you watch this video of a lecture by an anesthesiologist, a scientist who has actually studied brain function and is responsible for temporarily removing consciousness during surgery. He explains brain function and the organelles responsible for EM data processing, including mitosis and accurate copying of DNA in cell division.

 
Could it be possible that this might be because you are SCARED of the implications the opening post?

Please think about this another way......
please compare the functions of one cell in .... just for example your liver?

How much "intelligence" or computing power may that one cell have within itself somehow to perform some of the complex functions of the liver?
You are replying to a post made seven years ago, by a poster who last posted in that same year.:rolleyes:
 
Could it be possible that this might be because you are SCARED of the implications the opening post?

Please think about this another way......
please compare the functions of one cell in .... just for example your liver?

How much "intelligence" or computing power may that one cell have within itself somehow to perform some of the complex functions of the liver?

Highlighted

Little
 
Spill the beans why were you scared?

On one level..... I was really scared of the idea of perhaps having been a woman in a past life!!!!?????

http://www.allaboutchristian.com/spirituality/
I saw that I had been both wealthy and poor, man and woman, sick and well, royalty and common personand even victor or villain Yet, I fully understood that each life was vital and going on for a much needed purpose.

Every lifetime, I learned, is orchestrated by our guides and the Elders to flow perfectly with one anotherteaching us something important about life, the Self, the Self of others, our Creator and the potential that exists within the Super Universe that surrounds us all. For the first time I had a comforting sense of trust that no matter what happened to a person in life, only good could ultimately come from it, as down the road God eternally works all things to a good end. " (Christian Andreason, chapter five)

What he reported after his brush with death sure reminded me of the Dr. Ian Stevenson research?!



3. Birthmarks and Birth Defects Corresponding to Wounds on Deceased Persons
SOURCE: Dr. Ian Stevenson, Department of Psychiatric Medicine, University of Virginia, School of Medicine, Charlottesville, Virginia 22908
ABSTRACT: Almost nothing is known about why pigmented birthmarks (moles or nevi) occur in particular locations of the skin. The causes of most birth defects are also unknown. About 35% of children who claim to remember previous lives have birthmarks and/or birth defects that they (or adult informants) attribute to wounds on a person whose life the child remembers. The cases of 210 such children have been investigated. The birthmarks were usually areas of hairless, puckered skin; some were areas of little or no pigmentation (hypopigmented macules); others were areas of increased pigmentation (hyperpigmented nevi). The birth defects were nearly always of rare types. In cases in which a deceased person was identified the details of whose life unmistakably matched the child's statements, a close correspondence was nearly always found between the birthmarks and/or birth defects on the child and the wounds on the deceased person. In 43 of 49 cases in which a medical document (usually a postmortem report) was obtained, it confirmed the correspondence between wounds and birthmarks (or birth defects). There is little evidence that parents and other informants imposed a false identity on the child in order to explain the child's birthmark or birth defect. Some paranormal process seems required to account for at least some of the details of these cases, including the birthmarks and birth defects.
 
I'd choose to be a brain eating amoeba so I could savor what it's like to eat away at a persons soul.

But I'd do it sexily.


I plead guilty to rather hoping that some of the people that I meet on these forums might just get as obsessed with the paranormal and with near death experience accounts as I've became?

My diabolical goal might be a tiny bit like your aspirations?
 
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