Theories of Consciousness

Video Map of Fundamental Theories of Consciousness

There are a few ways to divide up all approaches to understanding consciousness. One way is to pit Integrated Information Theory against Global Workspace Theory: is consciousness the anastomotic merger in the posterior cortex, or a top-down broadcast from the anterior cortex/thalamus?

Another way is to separate approaches that are more scientific from those that are more "woo". Scientific conferences like SfN (Society for Neuroscience) keep things rigorously accurate, but often show disinterest or even hostility towards trying to crack consciousness. The Science of Consciousness conferences held by Stuart Hameroff allow more voices, and I must say they are fairly proactive towards understanding consciousness, although openness allows some time-wasting, unserious nutcrackers, even occasionally onto the main stage.

A third approach, which this video takes (see paper: A landscape of consciousness: Toward a taxonomy of explanations and implications (Robert Lawrence Kuhn), is to try to divine the essence or substance of conscious experience, thereby creating fields of materialism, quantum, idealism, dualism, and monism.

Of course, who knows whether hunting fundamental substance, or hunting mechanism, may be more fruitful. The Ring/Bank Theory mostly focuses on understanding the mechanism and hopefully finding neural correlates. This involves using the following approaches:

• Phenomenology: Study experience and subjective reports.
• Philosophy/Logic: Run compatibility checks in your mind, analyze experiences over and over for crystal clear accuracy of phenomenology, postulate plausible mechanisms, test them for legitimacy.
• Alteration: Observe the effects of sleep deprivation, meditation, and other agents.
• Neuroscience: Use tools to observe the intricate behavior of the brain, including electrical signals revealed from SUA (single-unit activity of firing of individual neurons, very accurate, but fairly local), electrical signals from EEG (a fairly muddy happenstantial compilation of events at layers 2/3, 4, and 5 creating a net dipole along axon of pyramidal neurons) and BOLD signals revealed by fMRI/fNIRS (fairly slow/slight fluctuations in oxygenated blood a few seconds after increased neural firing of a region), and including signal analysis techniques that can be used, such as complex Morlet wavelet convolution and AM- and FM-PCA.

The goal is to force as much correlation as possible in the hopes it will finally reveal bits of the mechanism. If I must place the Ring/Bank Theory on this chart, I would say it likely fits best with a materialist, functionalist, computationalist approach (with the disclaimer that agency and/or binding might require quantum).

The fact is, phenomenology from ring/bank theory has seen tremendous correlation in a few tests. Most notably, a study by Deisseroth et. al. found 2 Hz pulsing arising from layer 5 HCN1 channels of retrosplenial cortex in rats that were administered ketamine at sub-anesthetic doses. These pulses entrained the entire cortex, and are almost certain to be correlated with the 2 Hz 'reality frames' reported in ketamine, salvia, hemp, cannabis, and alcohol states (all of these are NMDA antagonists, setting up hyperpolarization and increased burst mode). Another test found that attention (in pulvinar, etc.) can change voices, i.e., can change between air puffs on whiskers to visual stimuli (hello, interrupt-style mic!). This is akin to Michael Graziano's Attention Schema Theory, that the brain makes a model not only of the world, but of the 3D cursor location/shape of attention within that world model, which is practically the same thing as ring/bank theory.

Another pivotal clue linking mind and matter is the discovery, by Mark Churchland, of FM-PCA rings in monkey motor/premotor cortex. A cyclic or repeated behavior like turning a hand-pedal is tied to a tracer making FM-PCA rings. Another study found FM-PCA rings whose duration and 0º phase locked to mental and overt metronome beats. While these rings might sometimes align with percetual rings in timing/phase, they go on even when motor is handled autonomously, and attention is elsewhere, indicating perceptual rings either use a different mechanism, or are free to roam the larger cortex. Nevertheless, these are two tremendous data points showing, functionally, that sequencism by sub-groups of neurons is used to chunk (and progress through) task or tempo. Ring/bank theory says that the worldsim itself is often refreshed in chunked revolvic sweeps or by a tracer following an imperfect ringlike trajectory.

Caldwell’s Dynamic Frame Theory (Aka, Ring Bank Theory)

Do you agree the world around you is the brain’s model of it? I do; this is called representationalism, as opposed to naive realism. (Unsure of the difference? Check out Steven Lehar’s Cartoon Epistemology).

To render this model, the brain separates paint (visual/semantic content) from frames (the somatic/tactile “screen” of awareness). While many focus on predictive modeling, I argue for a postdictive process—a system that builds the world by back-dating inputs into a coherent 3D story.

The Tale of Three Mixer Boards

This is my best guess, presented not as fact, but as an interesting possibility of mechanism with some experimental validation. Imagine the brain operates three distinct mixing consoles to manage and respond to the data of reality:

• The Low-Level Console (The Chorus): This board has thousands of mic-ins, each wired to a specific receptive field (a pixel in your vision or a point on your skin). These are automatic event-detectors that unconsciously build a ready-made 3D reality in the background. This console is the more prominent one in normal-state consciousness.
• The High-Level Console (The Soloist): This board has only a singular, high-level mic-line-in. It is monophonic and specially crafted to handle only one high-level semantic “qualia” voice at a time. This is why you cannot fully “voice” a scent while simultaneously “voicing” a tactile vibration; you switch between them in rapid succession. This console is the more prominent one in sedated-state consciousness. In heavy sedation, the low-level console fades out entirely here and there, leaving only the "frames" of the high-level console.
• The Executive Output Console (The Envelope): This third board (Fp1/2) is a pure Response Stream. It functions as an "Out"—a continuous, rolling amplitude modulation of Beta/Gamma power that correlates with the intensity of speech or action. This stream is not always conscious; it can undulate and drive behavior on autopilot while you are "miles away." However, when you truly attend to your actions, the High-Level Console (The Soloist) "parrots" this fluctuating level, temporarily syncing the internal "Aboutness" to the same smooth rise and fall of the output power.

This high-level mic uses Time-Division Multiple Access (interrupt-style), changing its voice 2–4 times per second. While a voice has the mic, it spits out varying amplitudes that are “printed” as transient ringframes (0-2D manifolds) onto a 2D plane (access manifold) at the “now” point of the time schema.

From Signal to Schema

The process follows a strict postdictive pipeline with varying latency (typically 35–250 ms):

1. Time Schema (3D): A record of events is printed along a 1D time axis. Salient events are given geometrical reification as rings or frames, which may flow, and which rapidly fade away.
2. Real & Imaginal Schemas (3D): Meaning (“paint”) is added to these geometrical structures, building out the full 3D scenery of current or imagined reality.
3. Bank Schema (3D): Also called the shape schema, this is the lifetime agglomeration of access manifold shapes (the potential surface which mic crests can use to print ringframes)—a collection of “ruts” that define the known geometry of the world.

TL;DR: Perception is a marriage of a high-level conscious attention console working with a low-level awareness console and responding (sometimes on autopilot) via an output console. In sedation, coming back to full awareness (after a momentary blip) starts, as is always present, as a monophonic mic-line that rotates between voices (audio, then visual, then mood). This signal is reified into ringframes at the location of attention, and the full 3D world-sim is deduced last in the pipeline.

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Contact

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me at caldwbr@gmail.com.