Scientific Understanding of Consciousness
Consciousness as an Emergent Property of Thalamocortical Activity

Perception, Memory, Consciousness

Perception, memory, and consciousness are closely intertwined.  The basis for consciousness is "the self" comprised of the entire ensemble of neurons and their synaptic connections laid out by genetics and continually modified via neuronal plasticity through a lifetime of experience and interactions with the environment.  The neuronal network is, in general, never completely idle but in a quiescent state with neurons firing at about five spikes per second, and with neural signals circulating throughout the network in a reentrant fashion, always functioning recursively via the synaptic connectivity pattern to represent the ever-changing thoughts of perception.

Firing rate of a neuron is an ever-changing dynamic value that depends upon the momentary participation of the neuron in a neuronal assembly.

I conceptualize the self as a molecularly engraved synaptic network comprising a portion of the biological organism of a person.  Neuronal activity in a subset of the synapses comprises a perception or a reenacted memory. This instantaneous neural activity involving a mental image of perception with memory comprises the dynamic core of consciousness, Our experience of consciousness is an emergent property of the neural activity of the dynamic core.

A perception is the activation of a neural subnetwork within the self.  The network activity in the perception subnetwork results in neural firing rates of about a hundred spikes per second, significantly different from the quiescent rate of about five spikes per second.  Neural simulation from the senses finds its way via highly-used neural pathways into a pattern of millions of synaptically connected neurons similar to the patterns activated in similar prior perceptions.  This perceptual pattern stimulates and activates the pattern of similar neural memories.  The neural activity of the pattern of a perception (mental image) with the memory comprises the dynamic core of consciousness.  The neural activity of the dynamic core results in the emergent property of consciousness, which is discussed in a consciousness diagram.

A memory is the reactivation (or reconstruction) of a perception.  Of course no memory is an exact reenactment of the original perception, which entailed a pattern of millions of neurons widely extensive in the cortex and supporting subcortical structures, which would have been modified, and probably extensively modified, by subsequent similar perceptions and memory reenactments.

Consciousness is an emergent property of the convolution of a perception with memory.

 

 

 

 

Link to — Human-type consciousness

Link to — Consciousness Subject Outline

Further discussion — Covington Theory of Consciousness