Consciousness as an Emergent Phenomenon: A Tale of Different Levels of Description

Abstract

One of the biggest queries in cognitive sciences is the emergence of consciousness from matter. Modern neurobiological theories of consciousness propose that conscious experience is the result of interactions between large-scale neuronal networks in the brain, traditionally described within the realm of classical physics. Here, we propose a generalized connectionist framework in which the emergence of “conscious networks” is not exclusive of large brain areas, but can be identified in subcellular networks exhibiting nontrivial quantum phenomena. The essential feature of such networks is the existence of strong correlations in the system (classical or quantum coherence) and the presence of an optimal point at which the system’s complexity and energy dissipation are maximized, whereas free-energy is minimized. This is expressed either by maximization of the information content in large scale functional networks or by achieving optimal efficiency through the quantum Goldilock effect.