Consciousness; Don’t blow the switches on my head, huh!
The main character of the story, the main boy; Although claustrum was used as a word meaning for closed areas in medieval Europe, it represents a small layer of neurons located just below the cortex in the mammalian brain and is thought to derive from the cortex during the development of the brain.
The cortex is the part that covers the upper part of the brain and is responsible for higher brain functions such as speech, advanced planning, and sensation, and the claustrum is connected to many cortical parts such as vision and hearing.
Claustrum’s location in the brain (in blue)
The function of claustrum was revealed as a result of a study by Koubeissi et al. When a 54-year-old epilepsy patient underwent electrical stimulus mapping and deep electrode placement surgery, the stimulus to the clastrum next to the insula was disrupted by the help of the electrode, and it was seen that he lost consciousness at this very moment. When the procedure was terminated, the patient regained consciousness. As a result of these findings, it was seen that the claustrum region of the brain was a kind of on-off switch of consciousness.
Another interesting aspect of the matter is Salvia divinorum, a plant whose leaves the Mexican natives chewed to communicate with the god. This psychedelic herb acts on kappa-opioid receptors, and the region where these receptors are most concentrated is clastrum, as you can imagine. While the idea of recording volunteers’ hallucinations and altered perceptions using such a herb makes sense, it is unethical for now, as the herb’s degree of addiction and effects are unknown.
Color, shape, sound, posture and social connections. How can they all be linked to a single experience of consciousness, even though they are in different parts of the cortex? Wouldn’t it be helpful to have a region that controls the cortical parts, if not wholly, but partially? All these questions and the idea that claustrum can be the “master of consciousness” are waiting to be tested and it is believed that the unknowns of consciousness can be enlightened this time.
