Neural correlates of consciousness: Progress and problems
Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, et al. · 2016 · Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17, 307-321
Summary
Review of progress and open problems in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, including anatomical and neurophysiological candidate markers.
Why it matters here
A strong neuroscience anchor for the brain-dependence side of the consciousness cluster, while still admitting unresolved problems.
Linked claims
The brain as transducer, not source — proposed by James, Bergson, Huxley. Compatible with neural correlates but harder to falsify.
The materialist / physicalist view: lesions, drugs, anesthesia, and imaging all show tight brain–mind coupling, and physical mechanism explains an enormous range of phenomena. Why neural activity feels like anything at all remains the open exception.
Physical mechanism explains an enormous range of phenomena. The qualitative character of experience is the open exception.
Descartes' view that mind and body are two distinct substances that somehow interact. The most intuitive position; also the one neuroscience has worked hardest to discredit.
Related evidence hubs
What consciousness is, how it relates to brains, and whether it's basic to reality.
The nature of subjective experience.
Mind–brain relation, qualia, intentionality.
Whether anything of mind continues.
Cryptomnesia, anoxia models, cold reading. Counter-anchors.