Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Table of Contents - 2007 - Volume 30, Issue 5-6  

Open Peer Commentary

The measurement problem in consciousness research

Rafael Malacha1

a1 Department of Neurobiology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel 76100. rafi.malach@weizmann.ac.il http://www.weizmann.ac.il/neurobiology/labs/malach

Abstract

States of sensory absorption may offer a means to disentangle perception from report. Interestingly, such states lead to an antagonistic relationship between perceptual and cognitive-access networks, suggesting that perceptual awareness does not depend on a read-out by high order cognitive-access mechanisms. Rather, it may emerge internally, through a cooperative coding dynamics, whereby each neuron simultaneously represents and reads-out the perceptual awareness state.

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