Neural correlates of consciousness

Shane Legg — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 23:18:45 +0000

I just saw another neuroscience paper on neural correlates of consciousness. When I first heard about this idea in a lecture series given by Christof Koch, I thought it was a good idea. I now suspect, however, that this line of research is going to produce very little. What it will probably find is that when certain areas of neurons are active in certain areas of cortex the individual is able to report this as a conscious experience. These neurons will be found to be very well connected to key higher areas of the cortex. On the other hand, areas which aren’t reported as conscious experience (e.g. dorsel stream) will turn out to not be well connected to certain important areas of cortex. In other words, if a part of the cortex is well connected to the parts of the cortex that are needed to report something, the individual will say it was a conscious experience. And when it isn’t, no report will be made.

But what does this mean? Nothing really. Like in the brains of people with a cut corpus callosum, who’s to say that there isn’t a conscious experience of what is taking place in these parts of cortex that aren’t being reported as conscious experience? It’s just that this conscious experience is not integrated with the parts of my conscious experience that are able to report. There could be a number of other “conscious awarenesses” residing in my own head that “I” don’t experience as “I” (the part of my brain that is able to report) am not sufficiently integrated with them.

That’s a pretty weird thought, and yet it seems reasonable. A touch Freudian even.

vetta project » Consciousness

Neural correlates of consciousness