Consciousness

• What is consciousness?• Where does consciousness happen?• How does consciousness happen?

What is Consciousness?

Awareness of the environment Awareness of internal mental events/states

Where Does Consciousness Happen?

• Descartes (1600’s): the body and soul interact through the pineal gland

• Damasio (1999): consciousness is the self in the act of knowing - the thalamus helps to relate signals across brain areas (early sensory and higher-order cortices)

Global Workspace Theory(Baars, 1996)

• Consciousness works by “broadcasting” information across brain areas

• Make information simultaneously available to many areas so that the correct decisions can be made to coordinate thinking

Global Workspace Theory

• Expert Processors are specialized, unconscious processors

• Contexts are groups of expert processors that work together; guide and constrain global messages but are not conscious

• Global Workspace is the ability to broadcast the information to the entire system

Evolutionary Psychology

• What is the function of consciousness?• How could consciousness have evolved?