Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
6
Safety Awareness
The Conscious Guide to Safety
CHAPTER
6.1 AWARENESS AND ALERTNESS
6.1.1 Too Much Focus: Inattentional Blindness
6.2 THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN FREQUENCY, STRESS,
AND ALERTNESS
6.2.1 High Stress and Safety Behavior
6.2.2 Regulating Alertness
6.2.3 Dedicating Our Alertness to a Task
6.3 WHERE IN THE BRAIN AND THE BODY?
6.4 SUMMARY
TIPS FOR TRANSFER
If we have to define the essence of human beings, we probably will start
with our consciousness. We can live and at the same time reflect on this
living. We can enjoy every moment, because we have a sense of time. We
can learn because we know that there is more to know. But we can also
be depressed because we haven
t reached what we want. Consciousness is
for us like water for a fish. It belongs to life and it is hard to define.
Without consciousness, life has no meaning. But it
'
s hard to understand
how we can become conscious or when this happens. One of the problems
is that, unlike pain or anxiety, we don
'
thaveanareainthebrainthat
causes consciousness. We know that several areas together need to inte-
grate their activities to create consciousness, although none of the individ-
ual areas can be held responsible for it. Consciousness can be seen as an
emerging system that arises when those areas work together. Emerging
systems are known in biology, physics, and mathematics. The special
quality of an emerging system is that neither of the separate elements,
which together create a special attribute, possesses this attribute (in this
case, consciousness). For instance, color can be seen as an emerging qual-
ity. Single atoms don
'
t possess color, but a combination of atoms into a
molecule creates a total that bends the light and creates color. None of
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