17 ongoing discussion of francis crick and christoph koch (vol. 2, no. 1): commentary by douglas...

7/25/2019 17 Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1): Commentary by Douglas Watt (Boston)

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Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and ChristophKoch (Vol. 2, No. 1): Commentary by Douglas Watt(Boston)Douglas Watt

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aQuincy Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine, Quincy, MA 02169, e-

mail:

Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article:Douglas Watt (2001) Ongoing Discussion of Francis Crick and Christoph Koch (Vol. 2, No. 1):Commentary by Douglas Watt (Boston), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the

Neurosciences, 3:1, 104-106, DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2001.10773342

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1 4

Ongoing Discussion

of

Francis

Crick and

Christoph Koch (Vol. 2,

No.1)

Commentary by Douglas Watt (Boston)1

Douglas Watt

The two authors of this essay graciously ac

knowledge that virtually everything on the table in

terms of theories of consciousness is probably quite

preliminary, potentially subject to substantive revi

sion, and potentially contrasted with opposing ideas

that are equally plausible. The easiest possible state

ment about current consciousness theory is that it is

long on interesting ideas and short on empirically

based consensus, a feature shared with any new sci

ence. In view of that most important agreement with

the authors, I would like to take them up on this point,

and offer some contrasting formulations. Mostof my

questions derive from one of their central assump

tions: that consciousness depends on the activityof a

definable set of consciousness neurons. They out

line two alternative views: that

any

neuron can, in

principle, at some time or another, contribute to con

sciousness (pp.

3-4)

and the more extreme notion

that consciousness cannot be localized, and arises

out of the holistic interaction of all cells making up

the nervous system (p. 4). This is a version of mass

action equipotentiality. I would only offer additional

alternatives not listed as options. A corollary

of

these

additional perspectives is the possibility that Crick and

Koch are seeking to map discrete populations

of

neu

rons that support specific contents, but are not consid

ering the deep problem of

state content relations and

differences.

One other possibility not mentionedis that

consciousness is not about a relatively static set of

consciousness neurons, but about the operations

of

globally resonant fields

of

interactions between neu

rons, that consciousness is more grounded in

interac-

tions between various systems in the brain

and is thus

more about the dynamical organization of many sys

tems of neurons, versus one neuron being neatly

in

the consciousness subset while another neuron is

equally neatly not in the consciousness subset. I

suspect that the state-content distinction is also highly

relevant for any meaningful discussion of the neural

correlate of consciousness (NCC), and that state neu

rons or more

accurately

state neural

fields

are

highly distributed, whereas

content

neurons are

more local, particularly when one is talking about

Douglas Watt, Ph.D., is Director

of

Neuropsychology, Quincy Medi

cal Center, Boston University School

of

Medicine.

highly specific sensory content. However, one has to

suspect that other, more primitive contents, like emo

tional feelings, pain, and other primitive kindsof qua

lia, may not have neat localization. However, all of

these are still quite speculative and uncharted.

My reasons for most of these suppositions, in a

field that has few clear or established answers, rest

simply in the plausible assumption that consciousness

has a deep and basic continuity with other natural phe

nomena. I doubt that consciousness can be that differ

ent from other emergent properties (like the existence

of

stable atomic structures once outside

of

certain

ranges of temperature and pressure, or life itself). New

levels of emergent phenomena appear to be grounded

in the crucial and quite specific

organization

of build

ing blocks from the antecedent level

of

organization.

Thus, I wonder

if

a winning formula in t he race for

consciousness (John Taylor s metaphor for this com

pelling scientific quest) can be built

on

the notion

of

, consciousness neurons that have (to quote the es

say) one or more unique features, such a particularly

strong type of synaptic interconnection, unique cellu

lar morphology, a particular set

of

ionic channels or

neuromodulators. I just

don t

think

it s

going to be

that simple, and it just seems much too neat to look

for an NCC in those terms, although these characteris

tics in various ways may indeed define important func

tional aspects

of

neurons in both the brain s arousal

(monoamine and reticular cores) and gating systems

(MRF, ILN, and nRt). Indeed, some

of

those charac

teristics are likely central to the operations

of

neurons

in

those regions. Put perhaps a bit simplistically, the

difference here is between concepts for consciousness

that suggest something like a click-on mechanism

in

a statically positioned subset

of

the brain s neurons,

versus a foundation that is neurodynamically very

complex and

of

necessity involving interactions be

tween several

not many systems of neurons.

Given what we know about the foundations for

other emergent phenomena (like life itself), I am just

inclined to bet on the lat ter rather than the former. I

wonder if there could be a single NCC versus a com

plex hierarchy of such NCCs. It would be analogous

to

proposing a search for th chemical correlate of

life

(an area where one of the authors is obviously

a foremost contributor). Of course, no one considers


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Ongoing Discussion (Vol. 2,

No.1)

the

chemical correlate

of

life to be a meaningful ques

tion. Instead of a single chemical correlate, we have

dynamical organizations of complex subsystems, bio

chemically highly interdependent, interactive, and

self-organizing, with DNA serving a role

as

an organi

zational nexus and supplying the master code for as

sembling proteins. From this analogy, perhaps the field

of consciousness science just doesn t have its DNA

mapped out yet (an organizational nexus), but another

implication of the analogy is that there probably isn t

a simple neural correlate of consciousness in any

meaningful sense, onlya hierarchy such correlates.

However, several leading theorists (see recent work by

Damasio, 1999; Taylor, 1999; Llinas, Newman, and

Baars, 1999; Schiff and Plum, 1999) have argued that

perhaps a comparable organizational nexus is poten

tially provided by the interactions between a host

of

ventral brain systems in pons and midbrain, their ex

tensions in the nonspecific thalamic systems, and their

interactions with highly distributed neocortical sys

tems that provide much of the content (at least all of

the cognitive content) of consciousness.

From this perspective of highly distributed

arousal/gating systems, particularly the triad of MRF,

ILN, and nRt, enabling integrated cortical function

(both feature binding as well as the selectivity of con

tent), I would also ask the authors how they might

understand the crucial distinction betweencontent and

state.

(Christof has the advantage in this regard

of

very

recent exposure to leading theories of ILN function,

Niko Schiff and Fred Plum, by virtueof being a panel

ist in their recent ASSC E-Seminar on ILN and corti

cal gating). I would ask Christof to clarify how he

would conceptualize the activity and contributionsof

ILN (and nRt and MRF for that matter), in the map

ping of neurons active in a particular percept. In other

words, what about widening the scope here?

Much of the current work on cognitive aspects

of

consciousness fails to make this state-content dis

tinction, and focuses all the scientific attention on the

cortical systems that provide much

of

the specific con-

tent

consciousness

(especially all the cognitive con

tent) while neglecting the more mesodiencephalic, but

also distributed, systems that underpin the state of

consciousness in which those contents can be added

(or subtracted, in the case

of

discrete thalamocortical

lesions). I would wonder if the author s research strat

egy is going to yield increasingly detailed and specific

maps of populations of individual neurons that might

participate in the provision

of

conscious visual con

tent, but little understanding about the underpinnings

of conscious state, as this type of approach might take

1 5

this quite for granted. I would also strongly suspect

that those maps of neurons that participate in a partic

ular content would shift at least somewhat as that ob

ject acquires additional personal meaning(s). In other

words, even these neural maps for specific content

may prove to be terribly evanescent, fleeting corre

spondences that flit about the brain, changing slightly

but significantly with each encounter with the object

whose correlates in consciousness are being mapped.

I would also be curious about what the authors

might make of the potential distinctions between

, global state functions, like emotion, attention, self

representation, and executive functions,

and channel

functions, which sit at the top of the brain s pro

cessing hierarchy, like vision, or audition. It would

seem to me that channel functions, and all higher cog

nitive operations, are dependent upon the integrity

of

the more global state functions (but the reverse is not

true at all). Primary disorders of core conscious

ness like coma, persistent vegetative state, akinetic

mutism, show in varying degrees impairmentof all of

these global state functions. Consistent with this, the

authors propose that visual awareness involves the

creation

of

integrated representations that are made

available to the parts of the brain that make a choice

between many different possible courses of action.

This reminds us that consciousness cannot be under

stood without some kind of framework for mapping

these various global state functions, in this case, an

explicit preference to executive functions, and an im

plicit reference to attentional functions required to get

the stimulus into conscious focus. From these consid

erations, I would wonder if the authors might agree

that attentional and executive functions, emotion,

pain-pleasure, and self representation are perhaps

different slices of the consciousness pie. These

global state functions thus become differential aspects

of global integration, something that brains achieve

intrinsically and gracefully, but that neuroscience (as

the hardest kind of reverse engineering) struggles to

understand, often with much effort and a conspicuous

lack

of

grace.

In their review of

J

ackendoff s wor

k

I am puz

zled by the notion that emotion is a

more

diffuse

percept and am skeptical that emotion can be re

duced to simple relationships between various sensory

qualia. I simply wouldn t agree that emotion is best

conceptualized

as

a degraded fuzzy percept. I am

also skeptical that the most important aspects of con

sciousness are fundamentally perceptual (as opposed

to the notion that conscious content has a crucial per

ceptual component for which there is little doubt, but


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6

one integrated seamlessly with motor components). 1

would wonder if single-minded emphasis on percep

tion also may yield potential neglect of this crucial

importance

of

sensorimotor integration in con

sciousness.

Furthermore, if emotion is just a fuzzy kind of

perception, this would make it derivative of or some

how secondary to higher cortically derived contents.

If

one takes this position, one is left with a theory in

which there is little real evolutionary hierarchy, or

where the hierarchy is in fact reversed (I would see

pain-pleasure as protoqualia, with emotion evolution

arily added to those mechanisms, and cognitive con

tent on top of emotion). Pain itself has been

conceptualized by a leading theorist, Dick Chapman,

as a primary emotional or valenced experience that

has secondary somatosensory correlative mappings.

One can disrupt the somatosensory mappings (via sen

sory strip lesions) without disturbing the aversive na

ture of pain (which requires more insular and ventral

brain participation) and vice versa (loss of the aversive

experience of pain with preserved ability to accurately

map tissue damage somatotopically). An alternative

concept for emotion has also been proposed by Pank

sepp (1998), in which primary emotions reflect global

tunings of the body and brain to deal with prototypical

adaptive challenges. Of course this has sensory as

pects, in terms

of

sensory constellations that yield trig

gers for emotion in appraisals

of

world events, and in

terms of the basic James-Lange feedback of motor

and autonomic changes. Of course sensation and per

ception broadly defined are integral to this process,

but one cannot leave out the defining connection that

emotion has to organismic value.

From this perspective, emotions embody evolu

tionarily derived valuing mechanisms, a central com

ponent

of

which is

action

or (in the case of creatures

capable

of

much cortical inhibition)

motor

priming.

To implicitly make this complex composite of pro

cesses secondary to cortically organized perception

would make me worry that the cart is being placed

Douglas Watt

before the horse. Although the body is the playground

of

the emotions, and various autonomic and visceral

activations and sensory feedback are a very important

part

of

conscious (and unconscious) emotion (but not

the whole story), this notionof affect as a more diffuse

percept suggests that valuing and action are being

given short shrift in the brain s generation of con

sciousness. Overall, 1would suggest that although per

ceptual appraisal and other top-down drivers are a key

part of the complex composite (Watt, 1998) of

components that make up primary emotions, I have

some trouble with the notion that allof that multifacto

rial composite is best thought of as a more diffuse

form of perception.

From this base of partial agreement with the au

thors, I am trying to make sense of the proposal for

an unconscious homunculus in the brain. I suspect I

just have not understood the concept, and have to

admit to some confusion about the concept and its

meanings. First of all, 1 am not sure what the existence

of view

independent cells might mean. 1would just

hope for some further clarification

on

that point from

the authors. The problem with finding correlations be

tween single unit firings and qualia or even behavior

that one still cannot know what these mean, in that

conscious events must require the concerted opera

tions

of

many, many cells whole populations. Popu

lation dynamics can never be revealed in single unit

recordings, although those recordings can reveal pos

sible correlations with population behavior. I am curi

ous what the authors might have to say on this point,

particularly the nature of these populations that might

underpin a particularpercept a content correlate, but

probably not a correlate of the more global state of

being able to flexibly entertain many contents.

Respectfully submitted, with feedback always

welcome.

Quincy Medical Center

Boston University School

Medicine

Quincy 02169

e mail: [email protected]

17 ongoing discussion of francis crick and christoph koch (vol. 2, no. 1): commentary by douglas...

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