On the neurodynamics of the creation of consciousness

Abstract

Consciousness is expected to have a specific temporal dynamics. The COrollary Discharge of Attention Movement (CODAM) model of consciousness is deduced from an engineering approach to attention and motor attention. This model is briefly described, as is support arising from brain dynamics, especially that for the attentional blink. The understanding of known temporal dynamics in the brain associated with the emergence of consciousness is then developed from CODAM, and specifically related to the N2 ERP brain signal. How the pre-reflective self, as content-free, interacts with the content of experience is discussed in terms of the possibility that such experience arises from some proto-self generated by body signals; experiments are described which indicate that no pre-reflective self based on body signals is observable. Only a content-free pre-reflective self is consistent with this data, as CODAM suggests. How such a pre-reflective self can be further fused to give temporal continuity of a sense of self is considered in terms of various mechanisms which could be present for preserving the sense of self. The observation of the N2 signal in hippocampal encoding is proposed as providing a justification for the encoding of the N2-P3 sequence of brain signals. This would correspond to episodic encoding of the sequence of experiences of the pre-reflective self; this will thereby provide the necessary control signals in time so that 'I' is experienced as part of the retrieval of such memories.

Dynamic characteristics of multisensory facilitation and inhibition

“…In addition, we found a significant correlation between RTs and P3 latency (R = 0.64, P \ 0.001) within the auditory target group. Since P3 is an important component of ERPs that mainly reflects the process of working memory updating (Verleger 1991;Vogel et al 1998;Li et al 2011;Taylor 2007), we speculate that working memory updating played an important role in the difference of RTs, which were directly related to the difficulty of the task. Particularly, the difficulty for the participant in detecting the target event (A) was varied because of the presence of the multisensory background events (v, s, and vs) (Bresciani et al 2008).…”

On the time course of short-term forgetting: a human experimental model for the sense of balance

“…Even if an entity such as consciousness would never become available to objective empirical investigation (cf. Fabbro et al 2015 ), attempts to discern its main components, and physical basis, have produced a plethora of imaginative theories (for notable contemporary examples, see Taylor 2007 or Werner 2009 ). The concept of memory appears to be as persistent as it is central for the understanding of complex species; dating back to the ancient Greeks (for a review, see Danziger 2008 ) it prevails in most branches of psychology and neurobiology.…”

On consciousness, resting state fMRI, and neurodynamics

“…An other interesting neurodynamics theory of consciousness is the COrollary Discharge of Attention Movement (CODAM) model of J. G. Taylor and co-workers [ 132 , 133 ], based on application of engineering control theory and artificial neural networks. The CODAM framework is claimed to have considerable experimental support for certain of its modules.…”

“…The framework consists of an input module (for pre-processing in low-level visual cortex), the object map (where object codes are stored), the inverse model controller (IMC) which is a generator of the signal to move the focus of attention in lower cortices, the corollary discharge module where a copy of the attention movement signal is stored temporarily, the working memory (WM) holding an estimate of the attended target representation, and the monitor producing an error signal given by the difference of the required goal signal and that produced by the corollary discharge module as a predictor of the attended next state or of the working memory module activation (cf. [ 133 ]). So far, very little work has been done to put fMRI experiments into the CODAM framework, which might have been due to difficulties of interpreting fMRI data in terms of timing and inhibition ( [ 134 ]).…”