.Link to article HERE

Scientists Accidentally Discover “Off Switch” To Human Consciousness

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Throughout history, accidents have led us to a number of amazing discoveries. Ultimately, this is the process that led to the latest find from scientists at George Washington University. Neuroscientist Mohamad Koubeissi and his team were attempting to uncover the source of a woman’s seizures. To do this, they were using deep brain electrodes to record signals from different regions of her brain. They placed one electrode next to a part of the brain that is known as the “claustrum,” and they got amazing results.

The claustrum is located in an area that is believed to be responsible for communication between the two hemispheres of the brain; it is thought that it impacts the mechanisms that control attention. Specifically, it is thought that it synchronizes the timescale between various brain parts, which creates the seamless quality that we all know as “the conscious experience.”

It is also a region of the brain that had never been stimulated before.

As they were placing one electrode, they accidentally stimulated this area of her brain, which caused the woman to lose awareness. This may seem simple, but it is an amazing find, as the mechanisms that are responsible for consciousness are not very well understood. We don’t know what creates consciousness, much less how it could be turned off. As such, this discovery could help shed light on the very nature of human consciousness itself, leading to a plethora of new discoveries involving the human mind and how it functions. It could also lead to a number of new treatments and medications (perhaps for coma patients?). However, all of that is a long ways off, and more research (a lot more) will be needed in order to determine the full significance of this find. Moreover, it must be acknowledged that the woman in question was missing part of her hippocampus (it was removed to treat her epilepsy). As such, this study will need to be repeated in other individuals to ensure that this is the way that the claustrum ordinarily responds and functions.

In order to verify their suspicions (that they were turning off her consciousness), the team asked the women to repeat specific words as the stimulation started. Rather than immediately stopping, which would happen if she simply lost the ability to move or speak, the woman  gradually spoke more and more quietly as she drifted into unconsciousness.

In the study, the team writes, “We describe a region in the human brain where electrical stimulation reproducibly disrupted consciousness.” They report that, when they hit the area with high frequency electrical impulses, the woman lost consciousness—she stared into space and failed to respond to auditory or visual commands. Notably, once the scientists stopped stimulating this portion of the brain, the woman immediately regained consciousness; however, she had absolutely no memory of the event.

Koubeissi believes that these facts indicate that the claustrum does indeed play a vital role in the conscious experience. He asserts, “I would liken it to a car. A car on the road has many parts that facilitate its movement – the gas, the transmission, the engine – but there’s only one spot where you turn the key, and it all switches on and works together. So while consciousness is a complicated process created via many structures and networks – we may have found the key.”

Kind of old news if one considers the original Pokemon epileptic seizure episodes. In a way. They changed the visual triggers to them, and the problem went away, too.

There are many people that I work with that have this challenge.  

How do they know that region of the brain has never been stimulated?

The Other Off Switches

Small Circle Jujitsu : Pressure Point KO from a punch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8i3rYkiJLA

The Religious Off Switch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opw_8lvysvg

Mindhunt can tell us about the hypnosis off switch?

I think Carlin posted the Benny Hinn : Let the bodies hit the floor - Mass Off Switch!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a54iqEr1flQ

How do they know that region of the brain has never been stimulated?

Well, usually the way science works is, they will publish their findings once they feel they have enough data to come to a conclusion.  So if anyone has done it before, with deep brain electrodes, they evidently kept it to themselves.  They're not saying that they haven't gotten different effects from different stimulations of different parts of the brain, but this particular stimulation, in this particular part of the brain, produced a result that hadn't been seen before.  Pretty simple.

GSDTravels, please find a better article. 

"As they were placing one electrode, they accidentally stimulated this area of her brain, which caused the woman to lose awareness. This may seem simple, but it is an amazing find, as the mechanisms that are responsible for consciousness are not very well understood."

The above quote I find so not amazing, but disturbing. These were scientists?

It sounds like a bunch of kids poking electrified wires in some live person's brain. Why is it any surprise that a mistake durring such a process might cause the unfortunate person to loose conciousness?

Most people can think of a number of ways to make or for a person to be unconcious. Drugs, sleep, injury, preassure points, trauma, ilness and so on.

It's the kind of science that gives science a bad name :(

and I like science.... Off to look for something cheerful.

Sorry you didn't like the article GSDLineage, but I still found it interesting.  And these are not the kind of scientists that give science a bad name, they are the kind that make discoveries that turn into understanding something that's been hidden.   They were attempting to help her and if they had any idea that the electrode would cause her to lose consciousness, resulting in a harmful effect, they wouldn't have done it.  But then, that's the whole point. You do know who penecillin and x-rays were discovered, don't you?

I would have to look up x-rays and the antibiotic I'm not sure of, but I think someone observed it killed bacteria. I hope nobody or their brain was sacrificed.

Because of Aaron Swartz, (who I did not know about) I looked into early detection of pancreatic cancer testing and listened to a lecture by Andraka, the minor that suposedly came up with this new test and thanked Aaron for his work with open libraries. (He said he read 200 scientific papers that cost up to $35 USD each to come up with his test that will change the cost of testing for pancreatic cancer from $800 USD to only 3 cents per test). Andraka says the reason doctors don't order the current test as often as they should for their patients is the price.

StrayPixels wrote a long while back about medicinal marijuana and a program about it that was on television at that time. They talked about an endangered strain of the plant that is unpopular for recreational use as it has little hallucigenotic effects, but that helps greatly reduce siezures. I have seen a few people have a siezure in front of me, in those cases it was like an "Off Switch" and they fell and seemed to loose conciosness, but I know that many types of siezures exist. Later one of them told me how upset it made them to have to live with epilepsy, so I hope the woman that Koubeissi and his "team" probed in the wrong place by accident got some relief from the siezures. She has obviously already suffered greatly as she had another brain part removed in an attempt to stop these siezures. I'm really surprized they did not use advanced imaging equipment to precisely pinpoint the source of her siezures before they decided to cut part of her hippocampus out if they thought that was the source.

The Brain is interesting and fascinating. I have been told it can shut down like that for several reasons, but most of all to protect itself from lack of oxygen or damage. Maybe this is more like a lead and less of an actual scientific discovery. I bet a "Turn Off" pressure point in the brain would help anesthetise those few alergic or unresponsive to anesthesia durring a major surgery? Maybe help when anesthetic is not available. What is funny is how they want to discover a "treatment" or "medications"... Nobody want's to cure epilepsy or some forms of it?

A friend's son has seizures constantly, that's why this article piqued my interest.  It's debilitating and the older he gets, the more frequent they become.  His life is no picnic, he struggles in most things, yet maintains an awesome sense of humor and a confidence hidden beneath the quiet exterior.  He's quite an extraordinary young man.  So yes, I know all about epilepsy and it's devastating effects, some so bad that suicide is the option that too often "cures" them.  Those with such severe cases know the risks of procedures that are untested or rare, they go into it knowing they may not come back or that they may come back with more disability.  Like I said, to them, it's worth the risk to stop the seizures.  Many of man's greatest achievements have been made due to "mistakes", proving the old saying that we learn more from mistakes than successes.  Sometimes, people are harmed, sometimes people are helped.  Sometimes one person is harmed and a procession of successes follow.  That's precisely how science works, nobody ever said it was perfect, but it always works toward progressive understanding so that those mistakes will not be wasted.

there is certainly a huge scope for applications and future research possibilities. previously in this area of science was largely inaccessible.

lineage those  stupid pressure point things are so fake, they have been proved BS so many times IRL to great embarrassment by the practioners. i did not watch that particular clip or was that what it was showing, the scam of it??