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If you don’t know anything about neuroscience, that’s okay — one researcher’s striking theory might send us all back to the start anyway.
Peter Coppola is a visiting neuroscience researcher at the University of Cambridge, where he recently finished a review of over 100 years of brain science. The goal, he wrote afterward in The Conversation, was to chart a hierarchy of the brain, to see which regions were more important for consciousness.
To undertake the exhaustive study, Coppola turned over every rock in the field of neuroscience, from extreme surgical studies of cats and monkeys to the effect of electrical pulses and magnetic stimulation on the brain. The results of his survey, he says, is a body of evidence that challenges the most widely understood theories of consciousness to date.
Consciousness is typically defined as immediate awareness of our feelings, emotions, and experiences. Because we experience consciousness from the comfort of our own minds, it’s what’s known as a subjective phenomenon.
Science, however, is an objective practice, using observable truths rather than personal experience. We don’t have to be Isaac Newton to understand that an apple fell onto his head.
As a result, consciousness as a concept is extremely hard to study, resulting in a surprisingly shaky understanding of the phenomenon, even though it’s central to everyone’s existence. While theories of consciousness can generally be broken into four competing schools, they each tend to agree that at least some part of the neocortex — the wrinkled outer layer of the brain — is necessary for consciousness.
futurism.com
Peter Coppola is a visiting neuroscience researcher at the University of Cambridge, where he recently finished a review of over 100 years of brain science. The goal, he wrote afterward in The Conversation, was to chart a hierarchy of the brain, to see which regions were more important for consciousness.
To undertake the exhaustive study, Coppola turned over every rock in the field of neuroscience, from extreme surgical studies of cats and monkeys to the effect of electrical pulses and magnetic stimulation on the brain. The results of his survey, he says, is a body of evidence that challenges the most widely understood theories of consciousness to date.
Consciousness is typically defined as immediate awareness of our feelings, emotions, and experiences. Because we experience consciousness from the comfort of our own minds, it’s what’s known as a subjective phenomenon.
Science, however, is an objective practice, using observable truths rather than personal experience. We don’t have to be Isaac Newton to understand that an apple fell onto his head.
As a result, consciousness as a concept is extremely hard to study, resulting in a surprisingly shaky understanding of the phenomenon, even though it’s central to everyone’s existence. While theories of consciousness can generally be broken into four competing schools, they each tend to agree that at least some part of the neocortex — the wrinkled outer layer of the brain — is necessary for consciousness.
Neuroscientist Says We're All Wrong About Root of Consciousness in Our Brains
A researcher went back over 100 years of brain science that lead him to a radical conclusion about consciousness.
futurism.com
