Researchers Urge Expanded Scientific Study of Consciousness

Why does a continuous stream of subjective experience normally fill your awareness? While that question can feel like an enduring mystery, researchers at Northwestern University argue that consciousness is well within the domain of scientific investigation. Although the field lacks a universally accepted objective index of consciousness, multiple laboratories worldwide are making steady progress toward measurable, testable explanations.

“The debate about the neural basis of consciousness rages because there is no widely accepted theory about what happens in the brain to make consciousness possible,” said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Cognitive Neuroscience Program.

Damage to the brain clearly alters conscious experience, the researchers note, but the critical challenge is distinguishing neural activity that corresponds to conscious awareness from neural signals that support thinking or perception without entering conscious awareness. That distinction remains unsettled, and it is central to building a scientific account of consciousness.

In a recent article, Paller and Satoru Suzuki, also a professor of psychology at Northwestern, identify several common but flawed assumptions about consciousness and argue that a broad, multidisciplinary approach will yield the best insights. They emphasize that perception and decision-making studies provide important empirical avenues for progress.

“It’s natural to assume that careful attention to something guarantees awareness of it, or that deep analysis requires consciousness,” Suzuki observed. Experimental findings in perception contradict those intuitions: complex, high-level processing can occur without accompanying subjective awareness. Similarly, the feeling that we make decisions at a discrete moment belies evidence that the neurocognitive processes underlying choice often begin earlier and outside conscious awareness.

These observations matter because they challenge the notion that consciousness is beyond scientific reach. If common intuitions about awareness and control are misleading, then dismissing consciousness research on philosophical or practical grounds may be premature. Instead, the authors argue, empirical methods that probe perception, memory, and neural communication are likely to produce valuable progress.

Experimental work has lent support to theories that associate consciousness with particular patterns of neural communication. Some of these accounts can be framed directly in terms of identifiable neurophysiological signals, while others are best described in abstract computational terms. Advances will accelerate as researchers identify specific neural measures that can be tested against these theoretical proposals.

Paller and Suzuki themselves study related cognitive domains—memory and perception, respectively—and each sees a role for laboratory research in clarifying how conscious experience arises from brain activity. By synthesizing recent empirical advances, they aim to counter the view that consciousness is an intractable problem and to encourage continued scientific inquiry.

Beyond theory, the authors highlight practical benefits that could follow from better understanding consciousness. Improved scientific knowledge could inform medical approaches to diseases and injuries that alter awareness, guide ethical and legal considerations related to human rights, and shape environments and technologies that support individual and societal well-being. In short, clarifying the neural basis of consciousness has implications for health, ethics, and public policy.

While philosophical and religious perspectives will continue to contribute to discussions about the nature of mind and personhood, Paller and Suzuki conclude that empirical research on human consciousness merits a central place in neuroscience. As methods and theories mature, scientific study of consciousness promises to transform both basic understanding and applied practice.

Source: Hilary Hurd Anyaso — Northwestern University
Contact: Northwestern University press release
Image Source: The image is credited to geralt and is in the public domain
Original Research: Abstract for “The Source of Consciousness” by Ken A. Paller and Satoru Suzuki in Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Published online July 9, 2014. doi:10.1016/j.tics.2014.05.012