Abstract

The nature of consciousness remains one of the main unsolved questions in neurobiology. Although recent advances suggest that sooner or later we will be able to understand the neural mechanisms underlying awareness, it seems very difficult to understand how neural activity becomes a subjective experience, the so-called hard-problem of consciousness. The apparent intractable nature of this problem causes some scientists to avoid it altogether and deal only with the neural correlates of consciousness. However, for others, consciousness is an epiphenomenon, that is, something without a direct function, like the redness of blood – a characteristic which was not selected for, but was a consequence of the mechanism selected to deliver oxygen. In that view, qualia, the phenomenological experiences, correspond to internal discriminations that are reliable correlates of underlying neural mechanisms. Consciousness itself is not causal. It is the neural structures underlying conscious experience that are causal. In contrast, a hypothesis is proposed here for which the functional integration of cortical circuits could generate the conscious experience as a feedback mechanism that allows the brain to continuously alter its ongoing operation in order to get a very precise adjustment of the organism to its internal and external environment. This means that without consciousness the brain function would lose versatility and effectiveness.