Human consciousness and its relationship to social neuroscience: A novel hypothesis.
Cognitive Neuroscience January 1, 2011 Michael S A Graziano, Sabine Kastner
Consciousness may not be a direct property of the brain but rather a construct created by the same neural machinery used to understand other people's minds. This hypothesis proposes that awareness is a perceptual reconstruction of attentional state, built by brain systems specialized for social intelligence. Evidence from studies on social perception, hemispatial neglect, out-of-body experiences, mirror neurons, and decision-making supports the idea that the mechanisms computing others' awareness also compute one's own awareness. The article argues that consciousness emerges from social cognitive processes, not from neuronal complexity alone, and that its adaptive value lies in predicting behavior.