The consciousness circuit - an approach to the hard problem.
Advances in experimental medicine and biology January 1, 2010 Sulamita Frohlich, Carlos A Franco
A theoretical model of consciousness is presented, building on earlier work presented at a 2006 neuroscience congress. The model proposes that visual consciousness arises from interactions between cortical areas via feedforward sweep, recurrent, and wide-spread recurrent processes, linked to light entering the eyes. A reciprocal interaction model describes how the eye responds to light by regulating sleep-wake states through EEG synchronization, controlled by thalamic-cortical activity from brainstem nuclei. This yields an orthogonal graph representing all states of human consciousness, including emotional, unconscious, dreaming, and pre-conscious states, allowing observation without subjective experience. The Quantum Orch OR Model is applied to the graph, proposing that phenomenal conscious vision depends on quantum computation in microtubules, with the vertical axis representing a cholinergic-aminergic scale that triggers quantum mechanisms.