IF YOU had to point to the place where consciousness emerges, you would probably aim your finger squarely at your head. That is the easy bit. Exactly where the brain circuitry for consciousness lies, or how the physical properties therein seemingly transform into the subjective feeling of being, are questions that have bamboozled us for centuries. And it turns out that we might have been looking in the wrong place all along.
The brain on its own isn鈥檛 enough to generate subjective experience, says , a neuroscientist at the Ecole Normale Sup茅rieure in Paris, France. Without the body, the self simply wouldn鈥檛 exist. 鈥淛ust as the notion of 鈥榗ar鈥� exists only if a certain number of components are present and interacting with each other,鈥� she says.
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Instead, researchers have come to recognise that our sense of interoception, which monitors internal body signals 鈥� such as heart rate, pain, thirst and pleasure 鈥� plays a major role in creating our thoughts and emotions. Now, many consider interoception to be a fundamental feature of consciousness, too.
Our internal organs, particularly the heart and gut, are key players in building our conscious experience, says Tallon-Baudry. Both have their own self-generated rhythm, separate from the brain 鈥� and this, Tallon-Baudry believes, provides a handy hook on which the brain can hang its sense of self.
Taking the idea a step further, at the University of Southern California says that internal body signals aren鈥檛 just involved in consciousness 鈥� they are consciousness. 鈥淧eople continue talking about consciousness as the great mystery that will be revealed by understanding the brain, and that鈥檚 wrong,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not about the brain, it鈥檚 about what the brain achieves with the interoceptive system in the body.鈥�
In this view, the brain is still involved, but more in an operational role. Conscious thought allows us to respond to what the body is saying, 鈥渂ut you are not conscious because of the cognition鈥�, says Damasio.
The hard problem of consciousness
What鈥檚 more, he believes that the body-centred view of consciousness makes the question of how physical matter gives rise to conscious experience, known as the hard problem, disappear. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think it exists, because these feelings generate a constant perspective,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t is the construction of a self.鈥�
Not quite, says at the Sussex Centre for Consciousness Science, UK. 鈥淭hinking about low-level feeling states as primordial consciousness is probably the way to go, and then the expectation is that everything builds up from that,鈥� he says. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 where it gets really complicated.鈥�
This idea of consciousness arising in the body still doesn鈥檛 explain how physical processes turn into that feeling of being 鈥測ou鈥�, says Critchley, nor how consciousness allows us to mentally travel back and forth in time.
Even so, few in the field today believe that consciousness is an entirely brain-based phenomenon. 鈥淏odily explanations are a step toward understanding how subjective experiences can arise from biological material,鈥� says Tallon-Baudry. 鈥淚n that sense, they are a step toward solving the hard problem.鈥�
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