Neural correlates of consciousness: Progress and problems
Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, et al. · 2016 · Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17, 307-321
This source is used as supports evidence across 4 linked claims and 5 related evidence hubs. Its citation record is marked verified; that verifies the source trail, not the truth of any linked claim.
Two-minute evidence summary
Review of progress and open problems in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness, including anatomical and neurophysiological candidate markers.
How this source is used on the map
A strong neuroscience anchor for the brain-dependence side of the consciousness cluster, while still admitting unresolved problems.
Citation record
- Authors
- Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, et al.
- Year
- 2016
- Publication
- Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 17, 307-321
- Source type
- Review
- Map role
- supports
- Credibility level
- primary
- Citation status
- Verified
- DOI
- 10.1038/nrn.2016.22
- PubMed
- Recorded
- Not recorded
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.
Related research reports
Related sources
The defining paper for terminal lucidity as a serious clinical phenomenon worth studying.
The reference work for what 'physicalism' even means before any empirical question is asked.
The reference for what mind-body dualism means and why most contemporary philosophers reject it.
Functionalism is the implicit metaphysics behind the case that AI could be conscious.
Pulls together the conceptual frameworks behind every empirical claim about consciousness.
Useful authority source for careful language: it separates recalled experiences of death from broad spiritual conclusions and lays out better future-study standards.