SEAT OF CONSCIOUSNESS

摘要

Consciousness feels like an on-off phenomenon: either you're experiencing the world or you're not. But finding the switch that allows our brains to move between these states is tricky. "Consciousness is not something we see, it's something through which we see, which makes it challenging to study," says George Mashour, director of the Center for Consciousness Science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. One common definition of consciousness is "the thing that abandons us when we fall into a dreamless sleep, and returns when we wake up". But say I anaesthetise you: you may hear my voice, but not respond to it; you may be dreaming and not hear my voice; or you may hear or experience nothing at all. What patterns of brain activity correlate with these levels of conscious experience?