ABSTRACT
A complete theory of consciousness should consist of a psychological model at its core and linkages between the model and at least five domains of knowledge: introspection, neuroscience, ethology and behavioural psychology, the theory of evolution and the sociology of institutions. Many writers, in trying to arrive at a concise theory of consciousness emphasize one or the other attribute of consciousness, minimizing or denying the existence of others which do not easily fit into their theory. Nadel and O'Keefe have proposed that the hippocampus acts as a cognitive mapping system, which identifies different environments and locates the animal's position within those environments. Furthermore the system encodes the location of objects in an environment. The parallels between some of the characteristics ascribed to human consciousness and the properties of the rat septo-hippocampal system suggest that, with suitable modifications and additions, the latter might act as the neural substrate for the former.
