| What goes on
in our heads when we have a thought? Why do physical events that occur inside
a fistful of gelatinous tissue give rise to a universe of conscious experience,
a universe that contains everything we know and everything we are? Scientists
and philosophers have pondered these questions for more than two thousand years,
but not until now has there been the possibility of answers grounded in scientific
experiment. In A Universe of Consciousness, Edelman
and Tononi present an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness.
The theory provides for the first time a scientific understanding of the most
general and fundamental properties of consciousness -- the private and unitary
nature of experience and yet the infinite variety of conscious states, stretching
as widely as one's memory and as far as one's imagination. What kind of neural
process might explain the generation of this fantastic number of unified conscious
states -- something far beyond the capabilities of present day computers?
To answer this question, Edelman and Tononi apply all of the
resources and insights of modern neuroscience, from the largest computer models
of the brain ever constructed to new experiments that detect the changes in brain
activity that actually occur when we are conscious or unconscious of a stimulus.
Their arguments build on the radical ideas introduced by Edelman in a monumental
trilogy -- Neural Darwinism, Topobiology and The Remembered Present
-- works that apply Darwinian principles to the development of brain and mind.
The results of this pioneering work challenge much of the conventional
wisdom about consciousness: consciousness processes continuously interact with
myriads of unconscious routines occupying a large part of the brain; conscious
processes are not localized to a special brain region, but depend on interactions
among many brain regions; and these interactions are not stereotyped, but are
highly individual. The ideas in this book, underscoring the complexity and uniqueness
of each individual, have momentous implications for philosophy and for our view
of ourselves. Gerald M. Edelman, M.D., Ph.D. is Director
of the Neurosciences Institute and President of the Neurosciences Research Foundation.
He received the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1972. He is the author
of Neural Darwinism (1987), Topobiology (1988), The Remembered
Present (1989) and Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (1992), all published
by Basic Books. Giulio Tononi, M.D., Ph.D.
is a Senior Fellow in Theoretical and Experimental Neurobiology at the Neurosciences
Institute. He is the editor, with Olaf Sporns, of Selectionism
and the Brain (1994). |
