What Is It Like To Be A Bat? What Is It Like To Be You?

In today's New York Times, I profile the neuroscientist Giulio Tononi, who has been obsessed since childhood with building a theory of consciousness–a theory that could let him measure the level of consciousness with a number, just as doctors measure temperature and blood pressure with numbers.

There's one fascinating aspect of Tononi's work that I simply didn't have room for in a newspaper article (even with my editor's long-suffering generosity with the column inches). During each moment of ...