[Tyler]

Stanislas Dehaene on Consciousness
     


The folks over at EDGE have an
interesting new post about Stanislas
Dehaene and his research into consciousness and the new hypothesis
he has formulated around it. The talk occurred at an October 17 EDGE
Reality Club meeting at The Hotel Ritz in Paris.
For the past twelve years my research team has been using
all the brain research tools at its disposal, from functional MRI to
electro- and magneto-encephalography and even electrodes inserted deep
in the human brain, to shed  light on the brain mechanisms of
consciousness. I am now happy to report that we have acquired a good
working hypothesis.

The main thing Stanislas and his team noticed is that when neural
activity in the brain exceeds a particular communications threshold
across multiple brain areas, the brain enters a large-scale synchronous
state and consciousness appears. The researchers have also devised an
empirical test for the presence of consciousness and tested it on human
patients in coma, vegitative state, and locked-in syndrome. So far,
their test seems to reliably detect which patients have residual
consciousness. For more, see the Cognitive Neuroimaging Research Unit.
   

http://robots.net/article/2954.html