Psyche, Signals and Systems

Abstract

For a century or so, the multidisciplinary nature of neuroscience has left the field fractured into distinct areas of research. In particular, the subjects of consciousness and perception present unique challenges in the attempt to build a unifying understanding bridging between the micro-, meso-, and macro-scales of the brain and psychology. This chapter outlines an integrated view of the neurophysiological systems, psychophysical signals, and theoretical considerations related to consciousness. First, we review the signals that correlate to consciousness during psychophysics experiments. We then review the underlying neural mechanisms giving rise to these signals. Finally, we discuss the computational and theoretical functions of such neural mechanisms, and begin to outline means in which these are related to ongoing theoretical research.

Additional Information

© 2016 The Author(s). Open Access This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/) which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the work's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if such material is not included in the work's Creative Commons license and the respective action is not permitted by statutory regulation, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to duplicate, adapt or reproduce the material. Date: 03 May 2016. We would like to thank Nathan Faivre for invaluable comments and discussions on the manuscript. We would also like to thank Christof Koch and Gyorgy Buzsaki for providing us a venue to report these thoughts and considerations. Finally, we both are thankful to the foundations that support our work: the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Human Frontier Sciences Programme, the Whitaker International Program and the Paul and Jodie Allen foundation.

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