ABSTRACT

A neuroscience of consciousness is now possible. Techniques involving the sychophysical studies of Homo sapiens with neocortical lesions, the measurement of 40 Hz oscillations in the magneto-encephalogram, and imaging of the neocortex with PET and fMRI offer the prospect of studying the likely sites of consciousness in Homo sapiens as well as in other species. According to the philosophers Searle and Chalmers, the problem considered in this book, of examining the extent to which neuroscience has explained consciousness, is ill-posed. Attempts to produce a robot that can use a reasonably sophisticated seeing device have not yet been successful. The first purpose of this book has been to present the contributions which neuroscience has recently made to our understanding of where the different contents of consciousness arise in the brain. The second has been to see how the workings of the synaptic connections in the brain might give rise to these contents.