ABSTRACT
Human consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries in the universe. The hard problem of consciousness is to explain how our brains produce phenomenal consciousness. The conscious feelings come in many kinds: pains, aches, tickles, hunger pangs, itches, tingles, and tastes. Scientific research on consciousness currently lacks the conceptual framework needed to address the hard problem. The 'easy' problems of consciousness that scientists are most interested in concern the neural correlates of consciousness. States of consciousness can be categorized as a combination of two factors, wakefulness and awareness. Perceptual awareness is the term given to the sensory information we are aware of at any given moment. Several theories have been proposed to explain various aspects of consciousness, the global neuronal workspace model and recurrent processing theory both offer accounts of the way perceptual awareness arises, whereas integrated information theory suggests that consciousness can be measured as the amount of integrated information in a system.
