The Secrets of Consciousness Quotes

“Similarly, our experiences of color have an intrinsic three-dimensional structure that is mirrored in the structure of information processes in the brain’s visual cortex. This structure is illustrated in the color wheels and charts used by artists. Colors are arranged in a systematic pattern—red to green on one axis, blue to yellow on another, and black to white on a third. Colors that are close to one another on a color wheel are experienced as similar. It is extremely likely that they also correspond to similar perceptual representations in the brain, as one part of a system of complex three-dimensional coding among neurons that is not yet fully understood. We can recast the underlying concept as a principle of structural coherence: the structure of conscious experience is mirrored by the structure of information in awareness, and vice versa.”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness

“consciousness? And what makes a certain type of information correspond”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness

“It should strike us as odd that we feel inclined to nod our heads in agreement to the twangy, sweetly discordant folk vocals of Iris Dement in “Let the Mystery Be,” a humble paean about the hereafter. In fact, the only real mystery is why we’re so convinced that when it comes to where we’re going “when the whole thing’s done,” we’re dealing with a mystery at all. After all, the brain is like any other organ: a part of our physical body. And the mind is what the brain does—it’s more a verb than it is a noun. Why do we wonder where our mind goes when the body is dead? Shouldn’t it be obvious that the mind is dead, too?”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness

“In 2008 Haynes asked volunteers to carry out a simple task—to choose whether to press the left or right button on a remote control while in the fMRI scanner. When Haynes set his MVPA algorithm to learn which patterns corresponded with this decision, he was astounded to find strong signals in the prefrontal and parietal cortices (areas involved in processing novel or complex goals) up to 10 seconds before the volunteer consciously decided to act. This result has deep ramifications. Does it mean that we have no free will? Or does free will kick in only for more complex decisions? More research will be needed to answer these questions—but it is exciting that MVPA has moved such concerns, once strictly the domain of philosophy, into the province of scientific study.”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness

“This neuronal correlate of consciousness—the transient assembly—satisfies all the items on the shopping list of phenomena above. The efficacy of an alarm clock is explained as a very vigorous sensory input that triggers a large, synchronous assembly. Dreams and wakefulness differ because dreams result from a small assembly driven by weak internal stimuli, whereas wakefulness results from a larger assembly driven by stronger external stimuli. Anesthetics restrict the size of assemblies, thus inducing unconsciousness. Self-consciousness can arise only in a brain large and interconnected enough to devise extensive neuronal networks. The degree of consciousness in an animal or a human fetus depends on the sizes of their assemblies, too.”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness

“The central problem is that models developed by Llinas and others conceive of consciousness as an all-or-nothing condition. They fail to describe how the physical brain can accommodate the ebb and flow of a continuously variable conscious state. I favor an alternative. For more than a decade, scientists have known that the activity of tens of millions of neurons can synchronize for a few hundred milliseconds, then disband in less than a second. These “assemblies” of coordinating cells can vary continuously in just the right space and timescales for the here-and-now experience of consciousness. Wide-ranging networks of neurons assemble, disassemble and reassemble in coalitions that are unique to each moment. My model is that consciousness varies in degree from one moment to the next and that the number of neurons active within an assembly correlates with the degree of consciousness present at any given time.”
― Scientific American, The Secrets of Consciousness