AUTHORS: Yan Sun1 , Xiaojuan Xue1 , Zefeng Li1 , Hailin Ma2,3,  Delong Zhang1

1 Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China 2 Plateau Brain Science Research Center, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China 3 Plateau Brain Science Research Center, Tibet University, Lhasa 850012, China

© The Author(s) 2023 Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY‐ NC

KEYWORDS cardiopulmonary, consciousness experience, homeostasis, executive control, mental imagery

This paper provides an exciting breakthrough in our understanding of the role of homeostasis in mind, body and behaviour. It provides strong evidence on homeostasis in brain-mind functioning that is supportive of, and consistent with, the General Theory of Behaviour (Marks, 2018). 

ABSTRACT

Background: Despite accumulating evidence suggesting the tight relationship between human conscious experiences and cardiopulmonary metabolism, the psychophysiological basis underlying this relationship remains unclear. In this study, we present the hypothesis that the oxygen‐delivering efficacy of the cardiopulmonary metabolism contributes to the conscious experiences.

Method: To test this hypothesis, we carried out a large cohort of investigations with regards to mental imagery, to highlight the connection of visual imagery vividness with oxygen‐delivering ability in an organism. The properties of the red blood cells, under the control of immune cells, played significant roles in this phenomenon. Additionally, we combined the hyperbaric oxygen treatment approach and the conscious awareness detection tasks to demonstrate that the improved cardiopulmonary metabolism accelerated and promoted the processing and strength of conscious awareness along with the intensified attention executive control ability.

Results: The results provided experimental evidence for the association of cardiopulmonary metabolism with consciousness, in conjunction with the executive role of mental imagery.

Discussion: Overall, the data highlights the essential role of the oxygen available in the body, in the integrity of cardiopulmonary metabolism, which is related to consciousness, and further implies that the internal consciousness experience may exhibit executive control in psychology and physiology homeostasis.

Comments:

These results might indicate a correlation between image strength and executive control ability, which corresponded to the general theory of behavior [6], according to which, mental imagery is an essential component in control of behavior. This theory also suggests consciousness performs the function of executive control by constructing the imagery of the world and predicting the relevant responses accordingly. As a famous saying goes “The purpose of a brain is not to think, but to act” [48].

The present data demonstrated that the oxygen‐delivering ability is an important component underlying the modulation of immunity cells properties constituting the physiological basis of consciousness. In addition, mental imagery and executive control seem to be synchronous since increased oxygen availability in the body improves the imagery vividness accompanied with the enhanced executive control function of brain. We speculated that these observations were corresponding to the insights that the con‐ sciousness exhibits an executive function that controls the organization and the behavior performance, and that the central executive system of consciousness enables organisms to mentally map the environment and predict the upcoming events, thereby prompting them to act via mental imagery process. Better mental stimulation with regards to optimum action    can be achieved through increased vividness of mental imagery.

Conclusions

In summary, this study offers an initial contribution toward the insights into the biological processes underlying the association between consciousness and cardiopulmonary metabolism with the executive role of mental imagery, in which the oxygen available in the body may be the core requirement to ensure that the physical and psychological balance is achieved. Consciousness can be considered as an open system that is connected to its mental, physical and social surroundings to produce an internal system with limited setting, necessitating automatic adjustments to ensure that that the internal and external conditions work in tandem to maintain stability and equilibrium. The internal conscious experiences (psychological homeostasis) works in unison with the dynamic surroundings by means of executive actions which underlines the biological fact that organisms are adapted to each other and the environment (physiological homeostasis).