THE quest to understand the human brain and its most mysterious output – consciousness – has been ongoing for centuries. There are now several competing ideas that seek to explain how we generate the sensations of sentience, but, so far, progress has been slow.
One idea, known as integrated information theory (IIT), is an attempt to mathematically quantify the level of consciousness of any information-processing system. But it is currently impossible to work out a value for the entire human brain because we don’t yet know the structure of this 86-billion-neuron organ in detail. Even if we did, the calculations would be too onerous.
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A new approach gets around this problem by applying the calculations to a simplified model of the human brain (see “Brain scans are putting a major theory of consciousness to the test”). This is a step in the right direction, but it is still early days for IIT.
Some argue that the whole endeavour is futile and that it is beyond the scope of the thinking mind to understand how its own subjective experience occurs.
And yet, we shouldn’t lose heart. Firstly, we are making progress in understanding our inner thought processes, even if they are very different to those of others (see “Revealed: What your thoughts look like and how they compare to others”). Secondly, some of humanity’s greatest advances emerged from serendipitous discoveries in apparently unrelated fields, often when scientists were prepared to think big.
For instance, there have been numerous unexpected spin-offs from space exploration research, from fire-fighting kit to cochlear implants. We have the gene-editing therapy CRISPR only thanks to research into bacterial defences against viruses. And the world wide web was developed as a way for particle physicists at CERN to share their data.
Research into consciousness could lead to better treatments for people with medical conditions that affect awareness levels, new forms of artificial intelligence or perhaps advances that we can’t yet imagine. When scientists aren’t afraid to take on these daunting challenges, who can say where their journey will end?
