All Processing Beneath Conscious Awareness Is Carried Out by Sub-Cortical Structures - Essay Example

The cerebral cortex is said to play a key role in thought processes including consciousness. In this paper, we examine the statement that all processing beneath conscious awareness is carried out by subcortical structures.

Consciousnesses in human beings include awareness of the past, the present, and by extension the prediction into the future.  The subcortical structures are divided into sections that deal with different sensory experiences that constitute conscious processes. For example, the sense of light, sound, warmth, or sweetness sends a stimulus at our sense organs that give rise to physiological activities in subcortical structures. This flow of sensation gives rise to familiar experiences like warmth, the color blue, or pain in the skin.  Since we are not aware of some processing in our brains, even though they happen within the shortest time than we can perceive, this route surpasses the cortex and thus subcortical structures could be responsible.

It is also hypothesized that conscious awareness of some phenomena requires numerous processing. For instance, we perceive a unified world from different processes of our senses. Suppose you come across an accident where people have lost lives. In this case, the feeling of sorrow or empathy, the sight of red liquid, which is immediately perceived as blood, and the identification of the two cars involved in the accident are separately processed in various sections of subcortical structures or nervous systems. There is no evidence that there is a specific place in the brain where all this information is gathered to generate a conscious awareness of the event.  There are some scientific research and cases which prove the hypothesis such as prosopagnosia, backward masking, and masked priming using words.  However, these cases do not apply to all situations and; therefore, they are subjectively founded.

On the other hand, it is not probable that all processes beneath consciousness are carried out by subcortical structures. There are some processes that we are not conscious of and are not carried out by subcortical structures. They include involuntary processes that happen without our conscious awareness like; heartbeats, intestinal peristalsis et cetera, but their process path passes through the cortex.  Moreover, people are often not aware of processes that happen in their brain before a thought.  When we voluntarily will for action, the action is initiated prior to our awareness of the decision to make the movements.

In addition, some subcortical structures of the brain may be damaged yet we are conscious of some senses we may not interpret. An example is the damage of the anterior and posterior temporal lobe of the brain that causes prosopagnosia disorder.  People affected can perceive when they see an object, but they have no consciousness of the familiarity of the object.  Moreover, our conscious awareness can be misled by illusions, hallucinations, and other false sensations.  

The other reason that makes the statement subjective lies in the processing that happens in the fear system. For instance, in the fear system, the subcortical pathway is the shortest path of consciousness that surpasses the cortical.  There is a second possibility where this processing of fear awareness passes through the cortex. The shorter subcortical path carries less information that misleads our consciousness. That is why one can “jump at the shadow” only to realize that it was harmless.  To add to that, there are some unconscious processing that can be carried out by cortical structures like our growth, temperature balance, homeostasis et cetera, and although we are not aware of these processes, they are caused by cortical structures.

In conclusion, it can not be singled out that all processing beneath conscious awareness is carried out by subcortical structures. This position is ruled out in the cases of fear processing that can be subcortical or cortical. The processes, which we may not be aware of, are carried out in the cortical. Finally, this position is disputed by the presence of illusions that mislead our conscious awareness in our daily experiences.