Biology of consciousness

The Dynamic Core and Global Workspace hypotheses were independently put forward to provide mechanistic and biologically plausible accounts of how brains generate conscious mental content. The Dynamic Core proposes that reentrant neural activity in the thalamocortical system gives rise to conscious e...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Frontiers in psychology 2011-01, Vol.2, p.4-4
Main Authors: Edelman, Gerald M, Gally, Joseph A, Baars, Bernard J
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Dynamic Core
Global Workspace
Neural Darwinism
primary consciousness
Psychology
qualia
reentry
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The Dynamic Core and Global Workspace hypotheses were independently put forward to provide mechanistic and biologically plausible accounts of how brains generate conscious mental content. The Dynamic Core proposes that reentrant neural activity in the thalamocortical system gives rise to conscious experience. Global Workspace reconciles the limited capacity of momentary conscious content with the vast repertoire of long-term memory. In this paper we show the close relationship between the two hypotheses. This relationship allows for a strictly biological account of phenomenal experience and subjectivity that is consistent with mounting experimental evidence. We examine the constraints on causal analyses of consciousness and suggest that there is now sufficient evidence to consider the design and construction of a conscious artifact.
ISSN:1664-1078
1664-1078
DOI:10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00004