Artikel,
Neuronal dynamics and conscious experience- An example of reciprocal causation before epileptic seizures
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, (2002)
Zusammenfassung
Neurophenomenology (Varela 1996) is not only philosophical but also
empirical and experimental. Our purpose in this article is to illustrate
concretely the efficiency of this approach in the field of neuroscience
and, more precisely here, in epileptology. A number of recent observations
have indicated that epileptic seizures do not arise suddenly simply
as the effect of random fluctuations of brain activity, but require
a process of pre-seizure changes that start long before. This has
been reported at two different levels of description: on the one
hand, the epileptic patient often experiences some warning symptoms
that precede seizures from several minutes to hours in the form of
very specific lived events. On the other hand, the analyses of brain
electrical activities have provided strong evidence that it is possible
to detect a pre-seizure state in the neuronal dynamics several minutes
before the electro-clinical onset of a seizure. We review here some
of the ongoing work of our research group concerning seizure anticipation.
In particular, we discuss experimental evidence of upward (local-to-global)
formation of conscious experience and its neural substrate, but also
of the downward (global-to-local) determination of local neuronal
activity by situated conscious activity and its substrate large-scale
neural assemblies. This causal role of conscious experience may lead
to new kinds of therapy for epileptic patients.
