What do we know about Consciousness? Consciousness is associated with some complex, adaptive, biological networks (not immune system nor enteric nervous system) Consciousness does not require behavior Consciousness does not require emotions Consciousness can be dissociated from selective attention Consciousness does not require language — babies are shown to be conscious Consciousness does not require self-consciousness Consciousness does not require long-term memory Consciousness can occur in one cerebral hemisphere – which means that we could have 2 simultaneous separate conscious experiences Destruction of cortical regions interferes with specific content of consciousness – which indicates that there is not a “center of consciousness” in the brain, but it arises from distributed activity These … Continue reading Christof Koch