Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies

2 downloads 0 Views 263KB Size Report
Edelman and Tononi (1998) examined the diverse and rich repertoire of ... (Tononi, Edelman, and Sporns 1998). ..... Machamer, Peter, and Sytsma, Justin. 2007.
VOLUME 7 ISSUE 4

The International Journal of

Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies __________________________________________________________________________

Neurosociological Perspectives on Consciousness within and beyond Sociology: A Case Study of the Selectivity of Consciousness YULIA S. SHKURKO

thesocialsciences.com

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL STUDIES thesocialsciences.com First published in 2013 in Champaign, Illinois, USA by Common Ground Publishing LLC www.commongroundpublishing.com ISSN: 2327-008X © 2014 (individual papers), the author(s) © 2014 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the applicable copyright legislation, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. For permissions and other inquiries, please contact [email protected]. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies is peer-reviewed, supported by rigorous processes of criterionreferenced article ranking and qualitative commentary, ensuring that only intellectual work of the greatest substance and highest significance is published.

Neurosociological Perspectives on Consciousness within and beyond Sociology: A Case Study of the Selectivity of Consciousness Yulia S. Shkurko, Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics, Russia Abstract: This article on the selectivity of consciousness (an example of a neuroscientific idea) considers the issue of the alliance of the sociological and neuroscientific approaches to consciousness. The sociological potential of the concept of the selection of specific neural activity patterns underlying specific conscious experiences and a profound reduction of other potential activity patterns is discussed. Stimuli, spontaneous brain activity, and a set of neural activity patterns selected through evolution and over the course of an individual life contribute to the current selectivity of consciousness. Acknowledging that neural mechanisms play a significant role in the selectivity of consciousness supports the idea that brain activity has an effect on social activities. The binding of regularities of stimuli and neural activity patterns, connected with certain consciousness experiences, restricts the diapason of human subjectivity and hampers the development of human individuality. Moreover, our ability to consciously process only one cognitive task at a time contributes to the serial character of human activities. Based on current research, I discuss the perspectives of neurosociological research concerning consciousness that can be extended to research on other phenomena. I consider the evaluation of the heuristics of neuroscientific concepts within a traditional sociological framework, obligatory for contemporary sociological studies of cognition. Next, the limitations and obstacles of an interdisciplinary approach integrating existing sociological and neuroscientific concepts are considered. The most promising path is connected with overcoming traditional disciplinary limits and the development a new approach—a neurosociology of consciousness that would unite the social and neurocognitive dimensions without a rigid connection with neuroscience and sociology. Keywords: Consciousness, Selectivity of Consciousness, Neural Correlates of Consciousness, Neurosociology

Introduction

C

onsciousness is one of a few phenomena that attracts the attention of researchers in the humanities and the sciences. The most significant breakthroughs in consciousness research in the last few decades have been made using the neuroscientific approach. This approach focuses primarily on brain activity correlated with different conscious processes such as conscious thought, awareness, reflectivity, and conscious perception (see Tononi and Koch 2008 for a review of recent findings). Consciousness is ordinarily considered to be the subjective experience of certain external (e.g., visual images, interactions with others) or internal (e.g., memories, thoughts, feelings, and dreams) events and/or objects. In both cases, “[c]onsciousness consists of inner, qualitative, subjective states and processes of sentience or awareness.” (Searle 2000, 88) Neuroscientific findings are presently taken into account by all consciousness-related disciplines. Sociology has also reviewed recent neuroscientific findings on cognition, including consciousness (e.g., Franks 2010; Franks and Turner 2013). The sociological considerations of neuroscientific findings included the appeal to the changes in sociology; regrettably, they do not change the situation in sociological theory because, in particular, interdisciplinary experimental research uniting neuroscientific and sociological resources has not been conducted. Not surprisingly, Von Scheve (2011) criticized recent sociological efforts to incorporate neuroscientific findings into sociology. He noted that, in contrast to the other social sciences and humanities such as philosophy, law, and economics, sociology has not kept pace (or has done to a lesser extent than other disciplines) with the modern trend of integrating neuroscience findings. Moreover, von Scheve (2011), in reference to the research of Freese (2003), argued that most of the attempts by sociologists to make a connection with neurocognitive concepts have largely failed. He explained this by the nonreflexive use of neurocognitive findings in sociology.

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies Volume 7, 2014, www.thesocialsciences.com, ISSN 2327-008X © Common Ground, Yulia S. Shkurko, All Rights Reserved Permissions: [email protected]

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL STUDIES

Undeveloped sociological conceptions of cognition, in accordance with recent findings, also contributed negatively to this tendency (Turner 2007). Consequently, neuroscientists are not very interested in sociological concepts. However, this does not mean that the issues at the intersection of sociology and neuroscience do not have inherent research potential; some of them (e.g., norms, hierarchies, and cooperation) are a part of the new scientific approach of social cognitive neuroscience (Ochsner and Lieberman 2001). Nevertheless, in sociology, the main directions for the development of an interdisciplinary approach have now been identified (Franks and Turner 2013) and await detailed investigation. The problem of consciousness is considered a promising direction in neurosociological research. Franks (2010) identified several topics of potential interest to sociologists (e.g., the meaning of consciousness, connection between consciousness and subjectivity, binding problem, selectivity of consciousness, and intentionality of consciousness) in philosophical and neuroscientific studies. The first section of this article includes a description of my research on the suggested case of the neurocognitive selectivity of consciousness as an important topic for sociology. I focused on the sociological applicability of this idea. In the final section, I discuss the obstacles to the integration of the two disciplines and proposed pathways for linking neuroscientific and sociological findings.

Sociological Applicability: The Concept of the Neurocognitive Selectivity of Consciousness The selectivity of consciousness is ordinarily viewed as the rapid neural selection of a certain conscious scene from the repertoire of the potentially possible (e.g., Tononi, Edelman, and Sporns 1998). Researchers connect this feature of consciousness to the impossibility of simultaneous conscious processing of multiple cognitive tasks. In real-life situations, this is expressed in particular in the impossibility of performing two actions at once. According to one explanation of this phenomenon, time plays a significant role in the activation of conscious processing. It is now widely accepted that approximately 500 ms is needed for the conscious perception of stimuli (e.g., Libet et al. 1991), and that the duration between presented stimuli must be longer than 20–50 ms to consciously perceive them as separate events (e.g., VanRullen and Koch 2003). Dehaene and coauthors suggested that “the neurons that are temporarily mobilized inhibit other surrounding workspace neurons, which thus become unavailable for processing other stimuli” (Dehaene et al. 2003, 8520). Such observations suggest that the physical makeup of the brain forces humans to make conscious decisions non-simultaneously and contributes to the timing of routine social interactions and activities. For example, such brain architecture makes impossible to simultaneously conscious experience of the confronted person from different points of view and is probably a cause of interpersonal conflicts (not only differences in social interests of conflicting parties as it is supposed in sociology). Interestingly, the relative sluggishness of conscious information processing is exploited by advertisers. Consciousness does not have enough time to process all the rapidly presented and often paradoxically composed images during television commercials, for example. Next, the perception of the commercials is passed through unconscious neural pathways; thus, it has an influence on the recipient beyond conscious will. In the process of neurocognitive selection, the activation of certain neural activity patterns is correlated with the activation of certain conscious experiences; this assertion is also supported by the widespread neuroscience concept that specific functions are localized to specific brain areas. Thus, the mechanisms of the selectivity of consciousness coincide (partly or completely) with the mechanisms of the occurrence of conscious processing. In neuroscience, most of the research devoted to the neural correlates of consciousness concern such mechanisms. In this research domain, I have found two ideas related to the mechanisms of conscious processes; these can be termed neural and environmental mechanisms.

42

SHKURKO: NEUROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN AND BEYOND SOCIOLOGY

Neural mechanisms uncover the features of neural activity correlated with conscious processes. They can be connected to the activation of specific brain areas and specific dynamic aspects of neural functioning (e.g., Gaillard et al. 2003; Crick and Koch 1990; Tononi, Edelman, and Sporns 1998). For example, Crick and Koch (1990) demonstrated that the synchronization of neural oscillations in the gamma frequency is a mechanism of conscious perception. Edelman and Tononi (1998) examined the diverse and rich repertoire of neural activity patterns associated with the functioning of consciousness. According to these investigators, conscious perception occurs in the processes of re-entrant interactions among functionally specialized cortical areas (Tononi, Edelman, and Sporns 1998). Gaillard and colleagues (2003) demonstrated that sustained voltage changes, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, are characteristic of the conscious processing of unmasked words. This list of proposed neural mechanisms of conscious processing can be continued. As I have mentioned, this problem is central to neuroscientific studies on consciousness; a detailed comparison of neural mechanisms could be the theme of special research. Herein, the widespread recognition that the activation of certain conscious processes is predominantly neural in nature is itself significant for sociological development. However, this concept is complex. Despite the common tendency in neuroscience to concentrate more on neural mechanisms than environmental factors, stimuli are considered an important component in initiating brain activity. There are numerous research studies (e.g., Georgescu et al. 2012; Smit et al. 2004; Thiffault and Bergeron 2003) in which different characteristics of stimuli (e.g., novelty, speed of presentation, monotonicity) are correlated with conscious processing differences. Their analysis has contributed to my view that the same strong connections between neural activity patterns and stimuli are identical for many people. In an extreme variant, the neural communality of conscious experience can be developed in light of the fact that, compared to environmental factors, the brain exerts greater control over subjective and inter-subjective human experiences. Moreover, in this case, the conscious experiences are deprived of subjectivity (and individuality), as they are common for all people. Further, this prediction calls into question the very notion of subjectivity. Nevertheless, the subjectivity of consciousness is seemingly maintained by another neuroscientific concept regarding spontaneous brain activity. Tononi and others demonstrated that spontaneous activity “leads to intrinsic patterns of correlations that are far from random” (Tononi et al. 1998, 480). For instance, “neighboring neurons of similar orientation preference tend to fire synchronously more often than neurons belonging to functionally unrelated groups” (Tononi et al. 1998, 478). The intrinsic neural patterns active at any given moment can differ from person to person; this leads to individual differences in evoked responses to stimuli. In other words, the background neural activity during the perception of the same object can initiate differences in conscious experience. For example, our own everyday experiences (and experimental neuroscientific research, as well) confirm that positive and negative moods (connected with different neural activity) can exert a strong influence on changes in conscious experience. In neuroscience, this phenomenon is explained by the connection between consciousness and emotion at the structural level in the human brain (e.g., Adolphs 1999; Tsychiya and Adolphs 2007). The variability in subjective aspects of consciousness indicates that, at any moment, people can have different conscious experiences of identical stimuli. For instance, individuals could potentially have a different conscious experience of identically smelling roses, identically tasting wines, or identically appearing traffic lights. In sociology, the neural variability underling conscious experiences can be considered a result of the differences in the socialization process, when people’s differing social behavior patterns and socially acceptable reactions are incorporated. Berger and Luckmann’s (1989) prominent sociological research on everyday human activity, “The Social Construction of Reality,” notes that, in primary socialization, children incorporate in their consciousness only a few of the many possible cultural worlds. This

43

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL STUDIES

widely accepted sociological concept can be reinterpreted in the aforementioned neuroscience terms. Thus, it can be said that every culture contains a specific neurocognitive repertoire of conscious experiences concerning certain stimuli. People learn “high-order awareness” in the early stages of childhood. Learning consists of remembering, at the neural level, how to react to ecological regularities. In other words, in the process of socialization, the binding between neural activity patterns and different conscious experiences are activated many times and fixed in the human brain. In further social interactions, only the definite repertoire of socially formulated sets of couplings of neural activity patterns and stimuli are active. Thus, the active repertoire of neural activity patterns underlying the repertoire of the conscious scene limits the current variants of human behavior and contributes to social differences and inequality.

Neurosociological Pathways Within and Beyond Sociology Present and previous research (Shkurko 2013) has demonstrated that the incorporation of recent neuroscientific findings on consciousness into sociology, though difficult, is nevertheless promising way in which sociology can develop. The specific aim of this perspective, based on the advancement and enhancement of traditional sociological concepts, is to search for sociological heuristics in non-sociological ideas of consciousness. As discussed in the introduction, recent attempts in sociology to develop a neurosociological perspective represent a step in this direction. Nevertheless, this approach is not yet at the forefront of sociology. The idea of the importance of considering and, at least, evaluating relevant neuroscientific findings on cognition is not rooted in sociology, and is not viewed as important for accurate sociological research. The situation in sociology in the area of consciousness studies has not changed in recent decades. The approach presented in the research article entitled “The Social Construction of Consciousness” by Burns and Engdahl (1998) is still remaining widespread; the authors state that their social approach “provides a scientific alternative to those who argue that most consciousness phenomena can be explained on the basis of biological, neuro-physiological or cognitive factors – reductionistic and sometimes mechanistic approaches” (Burns and Engdahl 1998, 183). This statement is not supported by an examination of the biological concepts. Their paper includes only a few sentences about biological processes, and they do not provide a direct connection with consciousness. The authors neither provide clear arguments to explain why biological concepts are not relevant to the sociological approach toward the study of consciousness nor explain why they are not justified from the authors’ social standpoint. Interestingly, one of the authors of this sociological approach is a chemist (Erik Endahl); this points to the complexity of the consciousness issue and the problem of the unpopularity of cognition as a subject of investigation among sociologists. The issue of the appropriateness and necessity of such a strategy is deserving of further sociological discussion. Benton’s (1991) call for a re-conceptualizing the relationship between social and life sciences is still relevant, and in light of recent findings, even more urgently required than it was two decades ago. This realignment proposes a new consideration of the role of different forms of upward and downward reductionism in sociology. The starting point for such research could be an overhaul of critics’ views concerning biologists’ reductions as considered in the works of Wiley (1994), who proposed an integrated conception of the self, merged at different levels of the human being (Iyou-me). The second neurosociological strategy is interdisciplinary research that potentially unites the resources of neuroscience and sociology. The specific aims of this approach are to maintain the traditional disciplinary framework and search for theoretical and methodological opportunities for the combination of neuroscientific and sociological findings. Although sociological and neuroscientific researchers declared their intention to follow this path (but in neuroscience without specifically addressing the sociological domain), they rarely (if ever) follow through on

44

SHKURKO: NEUROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN AND BEYOND SOCIOLOGY

these intentions. One problem associated with the study of ecological social activity in neuroscience and the new social neuroscience approach is that experimental situations need to be highly similar to real life situations (i.e., ecological validity). For instance, Guionnet and coauthors (2012) point out this problem when studying inter-brain synchronization in social interaction. They note in particular that with few exceptions, “explorations of social cognition have been conducted in the absence of an interactive context,” and that this “paucity of research may be related to the methodological and technical difficulties involved in creating a natural social interaction within an Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) environment. Indeed, social interaction is autonomous” (Guionnet et al. 2012, 971). A similar problem has been discussed in the sociological domain in recent decades (e.g., McCall 1984; Couch 1995; Fehr and Gintis 2007). Nearly 20 years ago, Couch (1995) discussed the need to elaborate on sociology methods, as with those applied in science. These new methods must allow one to conduct laboratory experiments and find “generic principles” analogous to the principles in the sciences, such as Gregor Mendel’s principle on the transmission of genetic information. Couch demonstrated that the widespread application of sociological methods, particularly interviewing and observation, provide point-in-time information about society and do not allow for the study of the social interactions and processes thereby produced. He criticizes these methods, asking sociologists to reflect on them and develop new laboratory methods that would allow for the creation of conditions to support spontaneous social interaction. Couch was not alone in his concern for the future of sociology. For instance, McCall (1984) addressed the use of systematic natural observation in human behavior studies and expressed regret concerning the lack of development of this method in sociology as compared to applied psychology. Recently, there is even more concern about methods in the light of the emergence of novel areas of potential sociological interest. Progress in cognitive neuroscience on the study of the neural activity underling different cognitive processes and social activity reveals domains of mutual neuroscientific and sociological interest. The domain of mutual interest is not only the research into the involvement of cognitive processes in social processes, but the development of methods that allow us to study this topic. Interestingly, neuroscience and sociology have, to some extent, antipodal aspirations: neuroscience seeks ecological applicability, while sociology seeks increased experimental validity. Nevertheless, the problem for both approaches is studying humans during their interactions. Couch noted that the only instances in which participants in laboratory experiments produce social processes are when they spontaneously interact (Couch 1995, 4). One potential point of interaction between the two disciplines is the need to approximate real-life situations. This problem is seemingly fixed by Von Scheve (2011), who viewed laboratory experiments and active cooperation with neuroscience in an in-situ context as the most natural and promising path for neurosociological development. Research (Shkurko 2013) has identified obstacles to the realization of a combined strategy such as the absence of a unitary understanding of the concepts of conscious processes in both disciplines, the underdeveloped theoretical concepts integrating the social, cognitive, and neural levels of the functioning of consciousness, and the need to develop appropriate methods for interdisciplinary experimental research. Human factors also play a role. The objective difficulties of learning neuroscientific concepts made these interdisciplinary studies unpopular among sociologists. At the same time, scientists’ widespread disregard for the social sciences and humanities as a whole does not promote this perspective. The absence of institutional conditions for interactions between researchers from different disciplines is another problem. Finally, the simple combination of the existing sociological and neuroscientific ideas concerning consciousness results in eclectic propositions. However, we can neither ignore such propositions nor consider them to be inadequate sociological ideas until the relevant research has been conducted.

45

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL STUDIES

The third perspective for neurosociological research is a synergy of the two disciplines to conduct research that exists beyond the traditional disciplinary frameworks of cognitive neuroscience and sociology. Such a perspective maintains a general orientation toward the inclusion of social and neurocognitive factors in research, but they are not strongly connected to their traditional themes and do not aim to directly validate or extend the existing concepts. One way in which the neurosociological perspective differs from that of the new social neuroscience perspective is in its orientation on the connection of certain types of social activities and broad social processes such as institutionalization, social changes, and social stratification, among others. For example, we can examine the neurocognitive differences between conscious processes that correspond to different types of human social activity and formulated hypotheses concerning the neurocognitive differences corresponding to social role behaviors and different functions of social institutions. This approach develops a new view of consciousness that unites the social (the social activity of a concrete person plus social processes), neural (the neural correlates of consciousness), and cognitive (the diapason of cognitive tasks needed for success in human activity) levels of the functioning of consciousness. With regard to recent attempts to incorporate neurocognitive findings into the humanities, Machamer and Sytsma (2007) expressed the common view that we need to overcome our fear of neuroscience, and that a consideration of only neural activity or the social/cultural level of cognitive processes is limited. Nevertheless, the aforementioned authors did not comment further on the usefulness of neuroscience in psychology and had not developed a clear strategy for such integration; this is also true for analogous recent research. Thus, a multilevel integrative approach for the study of human behavior is needed (Cacioppo et al. 2000). My insights concerning neurosociological research of the selectivity of consciousness focus on this direction. Interestingly, the neuroscientists Cacioppo and colleagues (2000) illuminated social factors in traditional neuroscience biological processes, such as illnesses and mental health, that are, to some extent, antipodal to the recent neurosociological approach that views neural factors as primary elements in social activity. This mutual interest is again focused on the need to unite the efforts of different disciplines for the successful and balanced development of the new approach of the neurosociology of consciousness and similar phenomena.

Conclusion The selectivity of consciousness is considered in neuroscience as a “choice” of the neural activity pattern to adequately comprehend stimuli, correlated with the corresponding consciousness experience. In turn, the consciousness experience has access to social life and, to some extent, influences it. For instance, at least the partial correspondence of the conscious perception of stimuli by different people makes possible social processes, which are proposed social interactions, and mutual understanding. That is, the neural mechanisms of the selectivity of consciousness unite the regularities of stimuli with neural activity patterns and make possible social interactions. Further, the commonality of the neural mechanisms for many people provide control over diversity and the variability of human subjective experiences and contribute to social predictability. Three perspectives for the realignment the relationship between sociology and neuroscience were considered in the final section of this article. Any research from this perspective must evaluate the mutual potential of findings concerning relevant cognitive processes that propose interdisciplinary cooperation. With regard to consciousness, I consider synergy between neuroscience and sociology beyond the traditional disciplinary frameworks to be the most promising for future consciousness studies. This approach does not propose a rigid orientation toward the sociological concepts of consciousness that already exist. I believe that this new approach to consciousness will simultaneously influence traditional sociological research and theory and contribute to the experimental study of neuroscience.

46

SHKURKO: NEUROSOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON CONSCIOUSNESS WITHIN AND BEYOND SOCIOLOGY

REFERENCES Adolphs, Ralph. 1999. “The Human Amygdala and Emotion.” Neuroscientist 5:125 -137 Benton, Ted. 1991. “Biology and Social Science: Why the Return of the Repressed should be given a (Cautious) Welcome.” Sociology 25:1-29. Berger, Peter. L., and Luckmann, Thomas. 1989. The Social Construction of Reality. N. Y.: Doubleday. Anchor Books. Burns, Tom R., and Engdahl, Erik. 1998. “The social construction of consciousness, Part 2: Individual Selves, Self-Awareness, and Reflectivity.”Journal of Consciousness Studies 5, 2:166-184. Cacioppo, John T., Berntson, Gary G. and Sheridan, John F., McClintock, Martha K. 2000. “Multilevel Integrative Analyses of Human Behavior: Social Neuroscience and the Complementing Nature of Social and Biological Approaches.” Psychological Bulletin 126, 6:829-843. Couch, Carl J. 1995. “Let us rekindle the passion by constructing a robust science of the social.” The Sociological Quarterly 36(1):1-14. Crick, Francis, and Koch, Christof. 1990. “Toward a neurobiological theory of consciousness.” Seminars in Neuroscience 2:263-75 . Dehaene, Stanislas, Sergent, Claire, and Changeux, Jean-Pierre. 2003. “A neuronal network model linking subjective reports and objective physiological data during conscious perception.” PNAS 100, 14:8520–8525. Edelman, Gerald M. 2003. “Naturalizing consciousness: A theoretical framework.” PNAS 29, 100, 9:5520-5524. Fehr, Ernst, and Gintis, Herbert. 2007. “Human Motivation and Social Cooperation: Experimental and Analytical Foundations.” Annual Review of Sociology 33:43-64 Franks, David D., and Turner, Jonathan H., eds. 2013. Handbook of Neurosociology. Springer Science+Business Media B.V. Franks, David. D. 2010. Neurosociology. The Nexus Between Neuroscience and Social Psychology. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. Freese, Jeremy, Li, Jui-Chung Allen and Wade, Lisa D. 2003. “The potential relevances of biology to social inquiry.” Annual Review of Sociology 29: 233-256. Gaillard, Raphaël, Dehaene, Stanislas, Adam, Claude, Clémenceau, Stéphane, Hasboun, Dominique, et al. 2009. “Converging intracranial markers of conscious access.” PLoS Biology 7, 3: e1000061. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000061. Georgescu, Marius, Georgescu, Daniel, Iancau, Maria, Gadidov, Anda. 2012. “Effects of Monotonous Auditory Stimulation on the Human EEG.” Neuroscience & Medicine 3:337343. doi:10.4236/nm.2012.34040. Guionnet, Sophie, Nadel, Jacqueline, Bertasi, Eric, Sperduti, Marco, Delaveau. Pauline, and Fossati, Philippe. 2012. “Reciprocal Imitation: Toward a Neural Basis of Social Interaction.” Cerebral Cortex 22:971-978. doi:10.1093/cercor/bhr177. Libet, Benjamin, Pearl, Dennis K., Morledge, David E., Gleason, Curtis A., Hosobuchi, Yoshio, and Barbaro, Nicholas M. 1991. “Control of the transition from sensory detection to sensory awareness in man by the duration of a thalamic stimulus: the cerebral ‘time-on’ factor.” Brain 114:1731–1757. doi:10.1007/978-1-4612-0355-1_21. Machamer, Peter, and Sytsma, Justin. 2007. “Neuroscience and Theoretical Psychology: What's to Worry About?” Theory Psychology 17, 2: 199–216. McCall, George J. 1984. “Systematic Field Observation.” Annual Review of Sociology 10: 263282.

47

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY CULTURAL STUDIES

Melloni, Lucia, Molina, Carlos, Pena, Marcela, Torres, David, Singer, Wolf, and Rodriguez Eugenio. 2007. “Synchronization of Neural Activity across Cortical Areas Correlates with Conscious Perception.” The Journal of Neuroscience 14, 27, 11: 2858-2865. Ochsner Kevin N., and Lieberman, Matthew D. 2001. “The emergence of social cognitive neuroscience.” American Psychologist 56(9):717-734. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.56.9.717 Searle, John R. 2000. “Consciousness.” Intellectica 2, 31:85-110. Shkurko, Yulia S. 2013. “A Compatibility Issue of Sociological and Cognitive Neuroscientific Ideas on Consciousness: Is Neurosociology of Consciousness Possible?” Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science 47, 1:123-141. doi:123-141 10.1007/s12124-0129224-9. Smit, Annika S., Eling, Paul A.T.M., Coenen, Anton M.L. 2004. “Mental effort causes vigilance decrease due to resource depletion.” Acta Psychologica 115:35–42. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2003.11.001. Thiffault, Pierre, and Bergeron, Jacques. 2003. “Monotony of road environment and driver fatigue: a simulator study.” Accident Analysis and Prevention 35:381–391. Tononi, Gioulio, and Koch, Christof. 2008. “The neural correlates of consciousness: An update”. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1124:239-261. doi:10.1196/annals.1440.004. Tononi, Giulio, Edelman, Gerald M. and Sporns, Olaf. 1998. “Complexity and coherency: integrating information in the brain.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2, 12:474-484. Tsychiya, Naotsugu, Adolphs, Ralph. 2007. “Emotions and Consciousness”. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 11, 4: 158-167. VanRullen, Rufin, and Koch, Christof. 2003. “Is perception discrete or continuous?” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, 5: 207-213. doi:10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00095-0. von Scheve, Christian. 2011. Sociology of Neuroscience or Neurosociology? In Sociological Reflections on the Neurosciences (Advances in Medical Sociology, 13), edited by Pickersgill, Martyn, van Keulen, Ira. Emerald Group Publishing Limited. Wiley, Norbert. 1994. The Semiotic Self. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Yulia S. Shkurko is a docent at the Nizhny Novgorod Branch of Moscow State University of Economics, Statistics, and Informatics, and a candidate of sociological sciences (equivalent to a PhD in sociology). Her current research focuses on issues of uniting the social and neurocognitive levels of consciousness, neurocognitive mechanisms underlying different types of social activities, and connections between neurocognitive processes and the processes of social change.

48

The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies is one of eight thematically focused journals in the collection of journals that support the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences knowledge community—its journals, book series, conference and online community. The journal explores and exemplifies disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices in the study of human cultures and cultural interactions. As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this journal invites case studies that take the form of presentations of practice—including documentation of socially-engaged practices and exegeses analyzing the effects of those practices. The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal.

ISSN 2327-008X