What is consciousness really? For neuroscientists, it is our ability to have subjective experiences: feeling the taste of an apple, seeing a color, feeling a feeling. The most common theories in the scientific field argue that consciousness depends on the external part of the brain: the cortex, in particular the neocortex, the area that has evolved more recently and that distinguishes us, according to many, from the other animals.
But in a study published by Peter Coppola, of the Cambridge Neuroscience, another hypothesis emerges. After analyzing over 100 years of neurological studies, Coppola suggests that we could have been looking for in the wrong place. Perhaps consciousness is not born at all in the neocortex, but in oldest regions, such as the subcortex or even the cerebellum.
To understand where consciousness was born, Coppola has decided to use magnetic impulses and electric discharges on different regions of the brain. When stimulated the neocortex – the most advanced part of our brain, the one that helps us to reason, decide and think in a complex way – the subjects have had hallucinations and judgment disorders.
But it was working on the subcortex, an ancient brain area, that the deepest effects have occurred: depression, emotional alterations and even loss of consciousness. And in the cerebellum, considered almost useless in this context, the stimulations have changed sensory perception.
All these results indicate that some more “old” areas of the brain could have a key role in our conscious experience. But be careful: Coppola himself specifies that we cannot yet talk about certainties. The cerebral regions are connected to each other, so it is difficult to understand who does what isolated.
The most surprising tests come from those born without neocortex
Clinical data show that some people, even without the part of the brain that was thought to be fundamental, are able to experience emotions, recognize and interact. Coppola then analyzed real cases: patients with brain lesions in various areas. Those who have damage to the neocortex can have strange or impulsive behaviors, but keep consciousness. On the contrary, damage to the subcortex can cause coma or death.
But there is more: there are individuals born without neocortex or without cerebellum, which still manage to speak, play, interact and get excited. In theory, they should be in a vegetative state. In practice, they are alive and conscious. This opens completely new scenarios: perhaps the neocortex is not so indispensable for consciousness, and the primitive regions of the brain are more important than we think.
According to Coppola, there could be a “bulb of consciousness” in these deep areas of the brain. And if it were really so, even animals – who have similar brain structures – could have much more complex forms of consciousness than we have ever imagined.
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