Consciousness is one of the most puzzling phenomena in science. How does the electric and chemical activity in your brain produce your subjective experiences; the colour red or the taste of chocolate?
Consciousness might emerge from a particular kind of information processing.
Shutterstock
Consciousness is one of the most mysterious phenomena we know of. But evidence is emerging that it might just be a very special kind of information processing.
Doctors currently have no perfectly reliable way of ensuring patients are adequately unconscious before an operation begins.
from shutterstock.com
Measuring certain kinds of brain activity may help doctors track and predict how patients will react to anaesthesia before going under for surgery, our research has found.
Can a machine really think, be in awe and wonder?
Shutterstock/Photobymhu
As machines get ever more complex as we strive to make them complete more complex tasks, it’s time to ask again: will they ever be able to think? But what is thinking anyway?
Have questions about robots and artificial intelligence?
Shutterstock
Will we ever have a scientific measure of consciousness? This was the essay topic I set my student a few months ago – only days before I went on maternity leave for the recent birth of my baby Joe (more…
Take the screen on which you are reading this article. When you look at it, you see one complete scene, but you know that this scene is composed of millions of pixels that only come in three colours: red…
Consciousness: understandable, but no less amazing.
Alice Popkorn
We have no entirely satisfactory explanation for why a relentless stream of experiences normally fills your mind. On close examination, consciousness can seem truly miraculous and hopelessly ineffable…
Where do our thoughts gather?
www.ruffrootcreative.com
Consciousness is one of the most fascinating and elusive phenomena we humans face. Every single one of us experiences it but it remains surprisingly poorly understood. That said, psychology, neuroscience…
When patients suffer from a brain injury and are unresponsive, we often don’t know whether they have suffered irreversible damage from which they will never recover, or whether the damage is a temporary…
Piecing together the puzzle through brain imaging.
Stephenphampshire
A serious illness or brain injury can put a person into a coma: a sleep-like or a vegetative state where they are awake but unaware. These disorders of consciousness are sometimes not accurately diagnosed…
That’s me: Scientists agree animals are conscious, but public attitudes still lag behind.
flickmor/Flickr
Neil Levy, Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health
Are animals conscious? Notoriously, the famous 17th century philosopher René Descartes thought they were not. He believed that possession of a soul was necessary for rational thought and for consciousness…
Despite being considered a scientific taboo in the past, the study of consciousness is slowly gaining momentum.
emmakate deuchars
Until 20 years ago, scientists interested in empirical work on consciousness – our private subjective experiences – hid it by minimising or eliminating the “c-word”, the use of which was a career-limiting…
Hesitation might be our crowning achievement.
nana untel
Understanding what is special, if anything, about the human brain is a scientific problem of such magnitude it has defied all manner of investigation for centuries. And human consciousness, our experience…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford