Mind

Consciousness

I hypothesize that the thalamus (maybe hypothalamus) is the seat of consciousness and that the cortico-thalamic circuit is functionally the intelligence-consciousness circuit.

The usual understanding of the thalamus is that it's at the center of the brain, quite old in evolution, and roughly, responsible for connecting everything. It is well-recognized that there is a cortico-thalamic circuit that is necessary for normal cognition, whereas large parts of the cortex (e.g. >90%) can be missing without causing noticeable problems [Sheffield, Marseille]. The thalamus is also directly related to control of conscious states, sleep and attention.

The non-neuron cells of the thalamus, the neuroglia (astrocytes and oligodendrites) are usually considered a support metabolic structure. But it's been found they form a "syncytium", which means they merge their cell bodies and/or establish gap junctions that allow a shared electrical field; not an ionic channel but a DC circuit. If so, an extended network of these would form a highly convoluted EM manifold, with very rapid electrical dynamics. That manifold could be modulated directly by the neuroglia and indirectly (or perhaps internally coupled) by the neurons.

There are neurons that extend from the thalamus up to the cortex where intelligent work happens (tho there are smaller syncytia dispersed in the cortical columns and elsewhere in the nervous system). In this approach, the neurons are doing the thermodynamic work necessary to encode and process information, but they're largely unconscious computers that perhaps are substrate independent (again, with the caveat about their syncytia distributed throughout the nervous system and maybe providing proprioception in general).

But that highly convoluted EM manifold.. is what I hypothesize is the most localizable physical correlate of consciousness. If so, it suggests panpsychism is correct and that the EM field somehow carries qualia in its primary essence, along with its essential electromechanical properties. I think our interior EM field is basically operating as a mirror of the exterior EM field that the creature finds itself embedded in. It's like the old "consciousness is the universe observing itself."

So, artificial consciousness would be achieved by creation a suitably convoluted electrical field. This may well be substrate independent, so long as the EM field has the right shape. Note, it's *not* simulatable, in the same way simulating gravity doesn't attract matter to your computer.

To achieve artificial consciousness, I think we need to create very specific, complex EM manifolds. I anticipate this will best be accomplished by creating neuroglia organoids, linked by neurons or DC circuit to other consciousnesses for subjective experimental observation, i.e. telepathy.

Related Work

2006: There is one known example of a shared consciousness in the conjoined "craniopagus twins" of Krista and Tatiana Hogan (born 2006, currently living in Vancouver) who are unique in sharing a thalamus and also in reportedly being able to see out of each others' eyes.

2010: "It is reasonable to consider the thalamus a primary candidate for the location of consciousness, given that the thalamus has been referred to as the gateway of nearly all sensory inputs to the corresponding cortical areas."  - A thalamic reticular networking model of consciousness. Theor Biol Med Model. 2010 Mar 30;7:10. doi: 10.1186/1742-4682-7-10. PMID: 20353589; PMCID: PMC2857829.

2011: The Role of theThalamus in Human Consciousness, teaching slides by Lawrence Ward, Prof. Psych at U BC.

2018: "All patients with severely impaired arousal (coma, stupor) had lesion extension into the midbrain and/or pontine tegmentum, whereas purely thalamic lesions did not severely impair arousal." - Thalamic Strokes that Severely Impair Arousal Extend into the Brainstem. Annals of Neurology,  U. Iowa, https://doi.org/10.1002/ana.25377

2020: "we stimulated CL in anesthetized macaques and effectively restored arousal and wake-like neural processing" M.J. Redinbaugh, et al. Thalamus modulates consciousness via layer-specific control of cortex, Neuron, 106 (2020), pp. 66-75.e12

2023: "Traveling waves of activity are a prevalent phenomenon within neural networks of diverse brain regions and species, and have been implicated in myriad brain functions including sensory perception, memory, spatial navigation and motor control ... at the brain-wide scale, cortical spiral waves were coordinated with subcortical spiking patterns in the thalamus, striatum and midbrain." - Brain-wide topographic coordination of traveling spiral waves - Allen Institute, U. Washington, bioarxiv,  https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.12.07.570517

I think the thalamus operates as a dynamically linked synctium (continuous cell body) to enable wide-area, tissue-level EM manifold convolutions that produce spatial standing-wave modes that encode and experience a holographic model of the sensed world, in the sense of McFadden's CEMI fields and Steven Lehar's harmonic resonance theories of consciousness.