Is consciousness inherently unstable? An iterated data rate theorem model of high metabolic demand in neural tissues

Abstract

Evolutionary process has selected for inherently unstable physiological systems in higher animals that can react swiftly to patterns of threat or affordance, for example blood pressure and the immune response. However, these require ongoing strict regulation: unregulated blood pressure is fatal, and immune cells can attack 'self' tissues. Consciousness, perhaps the most sophisticated rapid large-scale neural process, demands high rates of metabolic free energy to both operate and regulate the basic physiological machinery. Both the 'stream of consciousness' and the 'riverbanks' that confine it to useful realms are constructed and reconstructed moment-by-moment in response to highly dynamic internal and environmental circumstances. Using an information bottleneck method that links control and information theories, it is relatively easy to show that rapid response based on instability and its stabilization will always require high rates of metabolic free energy. In sum, neural structures in higher animals are highly 'coevolutionary', responding both to environmental signals and to signals from other physiological systems, and stabilizing coevolutionary cognitive structures is as difficult as programming them. Consciousness appears fundamentally unstable, and the necessary synergism between conscious action and its regulation underlies the ten-fold higher rate of metabolic energy consumption in human neural tissues. Implications for the etiology of certain psychiatric disorders are obvious.