WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS IMPORTANCE OF CONSCIOUS ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION IN PHARMACOLOGY PARAMETERS & INDICATORS OF CONSCIOUSNESS PRECAUTIONS TO BE TAKEN IN ANIMAL BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENTS REQUIREMENTS OF ANIMAL BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENTS

1. CONSCIOUS ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION
UNIT- 5 EXPERIMENTAL PHARMACOLOGY (PC- 530)
Made by- PRIYANSHA SINGH (PC2021- 14/226)

2. WHATIS ANIMAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
Animal consciousness is the quality or state of self-awareness
within a non-human animal, or of being aware of an external
object or something within itself.
Some levels of consciousness in animals have already been
acknowledged, notably by considering sleep/awareness as a
modulator of the level of consciousness.
There are however strong scientific arguments in favor of
extending such statement to the contents of consciousness,
including perceptual, emotional, cognitive, and metacognitive
capacities.
Animal behavior is a reflection of conscious state of animal.

4. WHYANIMALCONSCIOUSNESSISIMPORTANTPHARMACOLOGICALLY
To understand the influence of drug on the behavior
and conscious state of the animal (behavior
pharmacology)
To understand the behavioral toxicity (behavioral
abnormality caused due to pharmaceuticals and
chemicals (natural and synthetic) that are found in
the environment or place of work. Just as some
substances cause adverse structural effects to the
organ systems, others may affect the function of
organ systems. Substances can adversely affect the
normal function of the central nervous system, and
this sometimes results in the development of
behavioral changes.
For neuropharmacological studies.
For understanding the effects of anxiolytics,
antipsychotics, etc.
To understand the antinociception effects of
analgesics.
To understand the influence of genetics, drugs and
environment on animal consciousness and
behaviour.

5. TO PREVENT BIASNESS while testing for a drug action unconscious state can lead to false results of
the expected drug action which could have been appropriately elucidated while in conscious state.
For e.g.- General anesthetics interfering with the action of sympathomimetic drug
TO UNDERSTAND ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR DESIGN EXPERIMENTS TO UNDERSTAND THE
PHYSIOLOGICAL, GENETIC & ENVIRONMENTAL ASPECT OF BEHAVIOUR
Pharmacological interventions in non-human animals with compounds known to affect conscious
behavior in humans can lead to similar perturbations in behavior in non-human animals. In humans,
there is evidence to suggest that awareness is correlated with cortical activity, which does not
exclude possible contributions by subcortical or early cortical processing, as in visual awareness.
Evidence that human and non-human animal emotional feelings arise from homologous subcortical
brain networks provide compelling evidence for evolutionarily shared primal affective qualia.
IMPORTANCEOF CONSCIOUS STATEIN
PHARMACOLOGICALEXPERIMENTS

6. IMPORTANCE OF CONSCIOUS ANIMAL
EXPERIMENTATION
A promising path in monkey research is offered by the combination of
pharmacological techniques with electrophysiological and functional imaging
methods. For example, by reversibly perturbing neuronal activity by the local injection
of various pharmacological agents while monitoring neuronal activity, it has become
possible to evaluate the flow of information between contributing brain areas and to
elucidate the causal contribution of a given area to conscious perception.
Non-human animal consciousness research has also witnessed substantial advances
on the specific role of cortical areas and higher order thalamus for consciousness,
thanks to important technological enhancements.

8. REQUIREMENTSOFCONSCIOUS
ANIMALEXPERIMENTATION
1. REDUCING BIASNESS MEANS TO REDUCE ERRORS IN
ANIMAL BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENTATION.
2. MINIMIZATION OF HUMAN INTERVENTION BECAUSE
INTERFERENCE OF HUMAN ACTIVITIES INFLUENCES ANIMAL
BEHAVIOR
3. AUTOMATIC VIDEO TRACKING SYSTEMS ENABLES IN
RECORDING OF THE BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS OF THE ANIMAL.
4. SOFTWARE CONTROL PARADIGMS/ FRAMEWORK FOR
SCREENING OF ANIMAL BEHAVIOR.
5. USE OF IMAGING TECHNIQUES ENABLE TO UNDERSTAND
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN PHYSIOLOGICAL
PATTERNS AND THE BEHAVIOR OF THE ANIMAL.

9. REQUIREMENTSIN
UNDERSTANDING
THERELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN
EXTERNAL
OBSERVABLESAND
FEATURESOF
CONSCIOUSNESS

10. 1. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EXTERNAL OBSERVABLES AND FEATURES OF CONSCIOUNESS REQUIRE
KNOWLEDGE OF ANATOMY, PHYSIOLOGY AND BEVIORAL STUDIES WHICH HELP IN ESTABLISHING
EXTERNAL OBSERVABLE CHARACTERISTICS EXHIBITED BY ANIMALS HAVING CONSCIOUSNESS.
2. KNOWLEDGE OF BRAIN ANATOMY & PHYSIOLOGY- WHICH IS STUDIED BEST WITH THE HELP OF
EEG (EXTERNAL OBSERVABLE FEATURE) GIVES A GOOD INFORMATION ABOUT ACTIVITY OF BRAIN
CELLS AND HENCE THE CONSCIOUS STATE OF THE ANIMAL.
•3. AUTOMATIC VIDEO TRACKING SYSTEM- ENABLES IN RECORDING OF THE BEHAVIORAL
PATTERNS OF THE ANIMAL.
•4. USE OF IMAGING TECHNIQUES- ENABLE TO UNDERSTAND THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BRAIN
PHYSIOLOGICAL PATTERNS AND THE BEHAVIOR OF THE ANIMAL
5. SOFTWARE CONTROL PARADIGMS- FOR SCREENING THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR

11. KEY FEATURES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

12. Qualitative richness: conscious contents we experience are specified by a
wide, varied palette of sensory modalities (vision, audition, somato-
sensation, olfaction, taste, vestibular sense) and sub modalities (e.g., for
vision: texture, motion, color, size, shape, depth). This notion does not
imply that any experience is required to involve all or most modalities at
the same time, but does imply that contents are constituted by modally
specific elements that are experienced as distinct from one another.
Situatedness: whatever a subject in a healthy, normal condition
experiences is set in a specific spatiotemporal situation, i.e., the subject is
immersed in a multimodal situation characterized by a specific body
position occupying a place in an environmental space and within a
temporal framework. With “immersion” we mean that the subject is not
looking at its own situation from a distance, but experiences its own body
as being within the situation.

13. Intentionality: experiences are fundamentally about something other
than is entailed by the neuronal substrates (“vehicles”) underlying their
generation.
This process can alternatively be described as making subjective
inferences on the causes of sensory inputs reaching our brain, e.g., on
objects emitting light, sound waves or other changes in energy
impinging on sensory receptors. This is not to say that the brain would
be insensitive to the causes and their ensuing sensory inputs. On the
contrary, the latter affect the brain via the cranial nerves and spinal cord.
Our experiences fundamentally depend on an interpretation of the
external or internally generated inputs to the brain which are processed
by neural mechanisms that are of a different nature than the
subjectively experienced contents.

14. Integration: the elements of a scene or situation we perceive are
experienced as a unified whole, and this “in-one-piece” property is not
compatible with subjects sustaining different aware experiences at the
same time. We consider integration to be a broad, overarching term
that comprises different forms and computational mechanisms, such as
binocular fusion (i.e., the merging of different visual information
originating from images projected on the left and right eye), temporal
integration of visual information across saccades and eye blinks,
integration of contours and other Gestalt features into whole objects,
and multimodal integration (e.g., perceived audiovisual simultaneity in
the presence of physical light-sound delays).

15. Dynamics and stability: brain systems for conscious processing
allow for both dynamic changes in experience as well as for
short-term stabilization of percepts, e.g., when viewing
ambiguous pictures (e.g., Necker cube inversion; binocular
rivalry , experiencing illusions (e.g., a Kanizsa triangle; or
change detection. Moreover, when moving one’s eyes and
navigating through a stable environment, the subject
experiences objects and scene elements as being stably
positioned, indicating that the involved brain systems
generate stable percepts despite a plethora of dynamic
changes in sensory inputs.

16. INDICATORS OF CONSECIOUSNESS

17. PROPERTIESOF
ANIMAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
1. Emotions are defined as modulators of cognitive capacities involving changes in
attention, judgement learning, or memory.
2. Metacognition is defined as “cognition about cognition”. That is the ability to
monitor and control one’s own cognitive processes. It is thought to be a crucial
component of self-awareness.
3. Episodic memory is defined as memory of autobiographical events. It has been
demonstrated by assessing whether various animal species can characterize what,
where and when, or in which context, they experience specific events. The
characteristics of episodic-like memory studied in animals have many similarities to
episodic memory in humans, in both behavioral and neurobiological aspects.
4. Attention- Attention is the ability to actively process specific information in the
environment while tuning out other details

18. NEUROBIOLOGICAL
BASISOFANIMAL
CONSCIOUSNESS
A given dimension of
consciousness is unlikely to be
related to a single brain structure
or neural network., as suggested
by research on humans.
There are few comparative studies
providing a direct mapping of
behavioral performances of
animals on specific neural
substrates.
In mammals, recent evidence
indicates that telencephalic
cortical areas sharing rich
connections with other parts of
the brain may be involved in
consciousness.
In birds and fish, such cortical
areas are not present but
functionally-related structures like
the telencephalic pallium or the
mesencephalic tectum may enable
the animal to experience
conscious content.
The role of mid-brain nuclei, which
are present in all vertebrates,
should also be stressed.
In any case caution is required
when excluding the presence of
consciousness in species that do
not have the same brain structures
as mammals, because different
neural architectures may mediate
comparable processes.

19. PRECAUTIONS TO BE
TAKEN IN
BEHAVIORAL
EXPERIMENTS