New Study Pinpoints Brain Region Where Consciousness May Arise

In a quest to identify the parts of the brain underpinning consciousness, neuroscientists measured electrical and magnetic activity as well as blood flow in the brains of 256 people in 12 laboratories across the US, Europe and China, while the participants viewed various images. The measurements tracked activation in various parts of the brain.

The researchers found that consciousness may not arise in the smart part of the brain the frontal areas where thinking is housed, which progressively grew in the process of human evolution but rather in the sensory zones at the back of the brain that process sight and sound.

Why is any of this important? asked neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute in Seattle, one of the leaders of the study published this week in the journal Nature.

If we want to understand the substrate of consciousness, who has it adults, pre-linguistic children, a second trimester fetus, a dog, a mouse, a squid, a raven, a fly we need to identify the underlying mechanisms in the brain, both for conceptual reasons as well as for clinical ones, Koch said.

The subjects in the study were shown images of peoples faces and various objects.