Jun 12, 2024 05:30 PM
(This post was last modified: Jun 12, 2024 05:32 PM by C C.)
https://www.sciencenorway.no/the-brain/w...ed/2374790
EXCERPTS: How on earth can these subjective experiences arise in a lump of biological material? What mechanisms are behind this? And what is the minimum requirement for these mechanisms to start working?
Does consciousness only exist in immensely complicated systems, like the brains of humans and primates? Or can there be small sparks of consciousness even in insects? Or trees? Or computers?
“Philosophers have been grappling with these questions for millennia,” says Johan Storm, a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Oslo. But in recent decades, something has changed: Brain researchers have become much more actively engaged. Storm is one of them.
[...] “For a long time, consciousness was almost a non-topic for the majority of brain researchers and psychologists,” says Storm. “This was largely due to behaviourism – a trend that dominated psychology in the 20th century – which claimed that it was unscientific to study subjective experiences."
But since the turn of the millennium, attitudes have changed, and we’re seeing progress in the field, Storm explains.
[...] There are actually up to 20 serious theories about consciousness, according to an article in Quanta Magazine in 2023. Around five of them can be considered the leading theories. And one of these is the much-discussed theory that was recently accused of being pseudoscience.
The controversial theory is called integrated information theory (IIT). “IIT is a very ambitious theory,” says Storm.
Very simply put, IIT says that consciousness arises when there is both a high information content in the brain and at the same time a very high degree of interaction – or integration – between the information in the different elements of the brain.
[...] “A theory like this could explain a number of strange things, like why the cerebellum isn’t important for consciousness. If you remove the cerebellum, you end up with problems like poor balance, but it has no impact on consciousness,” says Storm. And that is despite the fact that the cerebellum is extremely complex and contains an awful lot of information.
“But the information in the cerebellum is much less integrated than information in the cerebral cortex. IIT highlights that the cerebellum consists of slightly more separate modules that don’t communicate as much with each other as the parts of the cerebral cortex do,” says Storm.
[...] Another main theory is called the global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT). “The core idea here is that what becomes conscious is information that is important enough to be broadcast to many parts of the brain,” says Storm, elaborating:
[...] A third model – dendritic integration theory – takes us right down to the cellular level, says Storm. Research in recent years has shown that brain cells are not at all like simple transistors that are either on or off. Quite the contrary.
"Every single neuron is like a computer. It has thousands of molecular mechanisms that process information in intricate ways within the cell. At the same time, each cell can have more than 20,000 connections to other neurons,” says Storm...
[...] In contrast to earlier times, there is now no shortage of theories about how the brain can give rise to consciousness. The problem is that we do not know which one is correct. Each theory is supported by scientific studies...
[...] “We propose a completely different approach to this controversy. If you look closely, these theories are much more compatible than they appear at first glance,” says Storm.
As part of the large EU Human Brain Project, Storm and 11 EU colleagues compared five of the leading theories of consciousness, including IIT. Instead of looking for controversies, they searched for commonalities suggesting the theories could be united or complement each other.
Storm believes that much of the conflict revolves around the researchers partly talking past each other and attributing different meanings to words and concepts. They are trying to explain different forms of consciousness and focus on mechanisms at quite different levels, such as the cellular level and the system level.
“People see things differently because they’re trying to explain different aspects of consciousness,” says Storm, illustrating the point with a famous Indian parable. [...] Storm and his colleagues are now trying to convince the world that the situation might be similar in consciousness research. They have created a large review article showing how the theories might be intertwined... (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: How on earth can these subjective experiences arise in a lump of biological material? What mechanisms are behind this? And what is the minimum requirement for these mechanisms to start working?
Does consciousness only exist in immensely complicated systems, like the brains of humans and primates? Or can there be small sparks of consciousness even in insects? Or trees? Or computers?
“Philosophers have been grappling with these questions for millennia,” says Johan Storm, a professor of neurophysiology at the University of Oslo. But in recent decades, something has changed: Brain researchers have become much more actively engaged. Storm is one of them.
[...] “For a long time, consciousness was almost a non-topic for the majority of brain researchers and psychologists,” says Storm. “This was largely due to behaviourism – a trend that dominated psychology in the 20th century – which claimed that it was unscientific to study subjective experiences."
But since the turn of the millennium, attitudes have changed, and we’re seeing progress in the field, Storm explains.
[...] There are actually up to 20 serious theories about consciousness, according to an article in Quanta Magazine in 2023. Around five of them can be considered the leading theories. And one of these is the much-discussed theory that was recently accused of being pseudoscience.
The controversial theory is called integrated information theory (IIT). “IIT is a very ambitious theory,” says Storm.
Very simply put, IIT says that consciousness arises when there is both a high information content in the brain and at the same time a very high degree of interaction – or integration – between the information in the different elements of the brain.
[...] “A theory like this could explain a number of strange things, like why the cerebellum isn’t important for consciousness. If you remove the cerebellum, you end up with problems like poor balance, but it has no impact on consciousness,” says Storm. And that is despite the fact that the cerebellum is extremely complex and contains an awful lot of information.
“But the information in the cerebellum is much less integrated than information in the cerebral cortex. IIT highlights that the cerebellum consists of slightly more separate modules that don’t communicate as much with each other as the parts of the cerebral cortex do,” says Storm.
[...] Another main theory is called the global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT). “The core idea here is that what becomes conscious is information that is important enough to be broadcast to many parts of the brain,” says Storm, elaborating:
[...] A third model – dendritic integration theory – takes us right down to the cellular level, says Storm. Research in recent years has shown that brain cells are not at all like simple transistors that are either on or off. Quite the contrary.
"Every single neuron is like a computer. It has thousands of molecular mechanisms that process information in intricate ways within the cell. At the same time, each cell can have more than 20,000 connections to other neurons,” says Storm...
[...] In contrast to earlier times, there is now no shortage of theories about how the brain can give rise to consciousness. The problem is that we do not know which one is correct. Each theory is supported by scientific studies...
[...] “We propose a completely different approach to this controversy. If you look closely, these theories are much more compatible than they appear at first glance,” says Storm.
As part of the large EU Human Brain Project, Storm and 11 EU colleagues compared five of the leading theories of consciousness, including IIT. Instead of looking for controversies, they searched for commonalities suggesting the theories could be united or complement each other.
Storm believes that much of the conflict revolves around the researchers partly talking past each other and attributing different meanings to words and concepts. They are trying to explain different forms of consciousness and focus on mechanisms at quite different levels, such as the cellular level and the system level.
“People see things differently because they’re trying to explain different aspects of consciousness,” says Storm, illustrating the point with a famous Indian parable. [...] Storm and his colleagues are now trying to convince the world that the situation might be similar in consciousness research. They have created a large review article showing how the theories might be intertwined... (MORE - missing details)
