Temporal Selection and the Question of Machine Consciousness – Reflections on Rapid Alternation of Conscious and Suppressed Stimulus Representations in the Primate Brain

Abstract

A recent large-scale Neuropixels study in macaques demonstrates that, under binocular flash suppression, both inferotemporal and prefrontal cortex rapidly alternate (approximately 15 Hz) between high-fidelity micro-epochs representing the consciously perceived stimulus and micro-epochs representing the continuously present but suppressed stimulus. Averaged activity shows only weak modulation by consciousness because it collapses these opposing representations. Conscious access, on this evidence, appears less as a stable localization and more as a form of temporal selection within distributed cortical populations. This paper examines, with explicit caution, what follows for the question of machine consciousness. It argues that the findings shift emphasis from static architectural loci toward dynamic, temporally resolved selection processes, raise the possibility that functional analogues of such selection in artificial systems deserve closer theoretical and experimental attention, and identify concrete research directions while underscoring the substantial gaps between primate neurophysiology and claims about artificial systems.