Neuroscientists have accidentally discovered an area of brain that, when stimulated, temporarily shuts off a person's consciousness.
The discovery was made when the team was performing a deep brain surgery on a woman suffering from epilepsy. When the neuroscientists stimulated a part of her brain, the woman temporarily lost awareness.
The study on the discovery was published by Mohamad Koubeissi, detailing how he and his colleagues switched off the woman's consciousness by stimulating the part of the brain named the claustrum, which is an area of the brain that has never been stimulated in the past.
In the surgery, Koubeissi and his team were trying to figure out where the seizures of the woman were originating in her brain. They were using deep brain electrodes to be able to record signals sent by different regions in the woman's brain.
When the team went to zap one of the electrodes located near the claustrum with a high-frequency electrical impulse, the woman unexpectedly lost consciousness. The woman began to stare blankly into space, and was not responding to any visual or auditory instructions. In addition, her breathing slowed down. However, when the stimulation of the electrode was cut off, the woman instantly regained awareness, and was not able to recall what happened.
The team carried out research on the event over two days of experimentation, each time producing the same results. So that they can make sure that it was the consciousness of the woman that was being shut down and not just her ability to move or speak, the woman was asked to keep snapping her fingers or saying the word "house" before the stimulation of the electrode began. When the stimulation started, the woman gradually moved less and spoke softer before losing consciousness, revealing that it was not her moving or speaking ability that was being affected.
Koubeissi believes that the results indicate the vital role of the claustrum in human consciousness, likening the phenomenon to how a car works.
"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," he said.
It should be noted that the woman on whom Koubeissi's team carried out the experiments had a part of her hippocampus removed for epilepsy treatment, so it wasn't a brain like all of ours. However, the team's findings are still very important to finally understanding human consciousness.
