AWARENESS

Awareness/Consciousness - a mental state in which an individual is aware of internal phenomena, such as their own thought processes, and phenomena occurring in the external environment and is able to react to them (somatically or autonomously).

The term "consciousness" can be understood as many states - from being aware of the existence of the environment, and the existence of oneself, to the awareness of the existence of one's own mental life.

In the first case, some animals are conscious, while humans and most likely chimpanzees are self-aware. It is unclear whether only Homo sapiens have self-awareness.

Awareness of the environment (or alertness) can be a kind of mapping of the features of the environment in the mind.

Self-awareness is a kind of representation of one's organism against the background of the representation of the environment. This awareness was found in chimpanzees after observing the fact that these monkeys when a stain was marked on their face, tried to wipe it off when they saw their reflection in a mirror.

A similar ability is shown by human infants around the age of two. Self-awareness, in turn, is the knowledge of the processes that occur between mappings, or mental representations.

Psychological schools

Consciousness is a common area of philosophy and psychology, in this domain, we can see the beginnings of psychology as a science.

Cognitive science also deals with the study of consciousness.

The first school of psychology was Wundt's "classical" psychology of consciousness. The psychology of consciousness in its functionalist version evolved from the considerations of Franz Brentana and William James. After the period of dominance of behaviorism, which removed the issues of mental life from psychology, the problem of consciousness returned again with the development of cognitive science. Inquiry into the nature of consciousness is now supported by empirical data from research using brain imaging techniques.

Disturbances of consciousness

Quantitative disorders of consciousness

• haziness
• pathological sleepiness (somnolentia)
• half-coma (sopor)
• coma (coma)
• Qualitative disorders of consciousness
• delirium syndrome (delirium)
• obscure syndrome (obnubilatio)
• twilight-delirium syndrome
• light dusky syndrome (obnubilatio lucida)
• entanglement syndrome
• oneiroid syndrome

Haze - a person in a state of haze behaves similarly to a person trying to move in a dense fog.

  Communication is difficult - words addressed to the patient reach with difficulty, require repetition, and sometimes the answer cannot be obtained.

The patient's behavior, movements, and speech are slowed down, reactions are delayed, and may be inaccurate or not occur at all.

Comprehension of the situation is delayed and difficult - simple stimuli are perceived faster and easier than complex ones.

Orientation in time and place is usually disturbed, in a deeper haze also as to one's own person.

After hazing, oblivion remains, usually fragmentary

Somnolence (or somnolentia) - a form of mild quantitative disorders of consciousness.

Symptoms

• drowsiness, unrelated to the circadian rhythm
• difficult contact with the patient

Causes

• toxic agents
• infectious agents
• organic brain damage

Sopor, half-coma ("pre-coma", "stupor") - a state of quantitative disturbance of consciousness.

A patient in a sopora remains in a pathologically deep sleep, reacts only to pain and auditory stimuli (he can sometimes say, for example, his name), he is unable to perform more complex activities.

Sopor appears in cases of poisoning, head injuries, and severe systemic diseases.

Coma, coma (from the Greek κῶμα koma, meaning deep sleep, Latin coma) - a deep disturbance of consciousness.

  It is often the result of damage to the central reticular formation. It can be primary or secondary damage, caused indirectly as a result of, for example, an expansive process or damage of vascular origin.

Coma can also be the result of disorders causing diffuse damage to the nervous system, e.g. in the course of poisoning, regardless of the cause.

The most common causes of comas

• infectious diseases
• African sleeping sickness
• metabolic disorders
•   diabetic coma
•   uremic coma
• hepatic encephalopathy
• diffuse brain damage
• drug poisoning
• encephalitis, subarachnoid hemorrhage
• stroke
• a brain tumor
• brain abscess
• trunk stroke
• bleeding into the bridge
• cerebellar bleeding
• mental disorders
• conversion disorder
• catatonia
• depression

To assess the degree of coma, we use the procedure proposed by Teasdal and Jennet (1974). It consists in evaluating the opening of the eyes, the best verbal response and the best motor response to a given stimulus. These parameters should be considered together with pupillary reflexes, doll head reflexes, blood pressure, respiration, pulse, body temperature

Delirium (delirium syndrome, delirium, acute cerebral syndrome) - a group of disorders of consciousness accompanied by illusions, visual, auditory, tactile and other hallucinations as well as anxiety and psychomotor agitation, sleep disorders, with these symptoms often intensifying in the evening and at night.

Hallucinations can form very vivid visions resembling a movie, accompanied by delusions of "happening" (ie the patient has a sense of participation in the events taking place before his eyes).

The auto-psychic orientation is usually preserved, while the allopsychic orientation is usually disturbed.

After the delirium has passed, partial or complete amnesia is usually found.

  Delirium is found in many somatic diseases: e.g. severe infections with high fever, poisoning, uremia, liver failure, injuries, and dehydration (especially in the elderly).

Delirium syndromes may also complicate alcohol withdrawal syndromes (delirium tremens - tremor delirium) and benzodiazepine withdrawal syndromes.

Bright twilight state (organic dissociative disorders, clear twilight, light twilight) - apparent motor coherence occurring with a qualitative disorder of consciousness. May appear as part of a blackout team. It is often associated with epilepsy.

Oneiroid syndrome - belongs to qualitative disorders of consciousness. The name comes from the Greek oneiric - sleep.

  It is a dream-like syndrome characterized by the occurrence of changing and dream-like hallucinations, pseudo-hallucinations and delusions, forming an action, often having a specific plot.

Orientation is disturbed and amnesia is only partial - the patient can remember many experiences from the period of the oneiroid syndrome.

Occurs in schizophrenia, and may accompany poisoning, infectious diseases, and epilepsy.