Neural Population Codes, Nature's true democracy constitutes the basis of conscious thought and intelligent behavior (Part 2): The emergence of individual consciousness.

 Clearly we still have much to learn from Nature on how our consciousness is placed at the service of the entire organism. Indeed, if the conscious level of our brain, as the executive office of the animal organism, has direct control over the muscles, what prevents the neurons making up consciousness from emulating those at the top of human societies in taking advantage of using their power in their very own interest? The Ideology will of course always disingenuously put all the blame of human complex societies' dysfunctionality on the evil of human nature: human beings are selfish, only look after one's own, and will never feel any genuine concern for the wellbeing of others, let alone the common good. Yet, there is no indication that neurons are any tiny bit less selfish. Definitely, it is knot known that neurons feel any kind of love, compassion or concern for anything but themselves. In fact, to the extent that neurons have no soul nor brain and, consequently, it seems safe to say that they do not experience any feeling or whatsoever, it can only be reasoned that neurons are even more self-minded than humans. 

Definitely, the miracle of God or Nature is how to get such an immense number of self-minded units to work together as one. It is certainly intuitive to doubt the fitness of an animal organism, where a tiny fraction of elite neurons only use all other cells in the organism to their very particular advantage. Naturally, following their instincts, the elite units will never see any end to their thirst for pleasure (in whatever form this may come) and will abuse and exploit everybody else to death. Alternatively, if the peasant units are every bit as self-minded as the elite, it would only be natural, if they would constantly be looking for the slightest opportunity to break free. Now, if nobody in the organization cares for the whole and the association only works for a tiny powerful minority, it clearly stands to reason that it will be a matter of time before the system breaks down, falls and is wiped off existence by the competition.

OK, so we all get that an unbalanced complex system is not likely to survive; but that still does not answer how a mutually beneficial agreement may be achieved among a large population of self-minded units. As the discovery of the population coding scheme shows, in the same way that in our modern human societies there is no single individual who holds all executive power, there is no single neuron in our brain, which represents the voice or the will of our consciousness.. Rather, in the same way that power in our modern human societies results from the agreement of many different power brokers, consciousness is again a construct resulting from the activity of millions of neurons spread over innumerable nueral populations. Moreover, whereas neurons project output signals to the muscles, the brain receives powerful input signals from tissues all over the body.

Fascinatingly, the reasoning keeps feeding back and we are just about to close the circle. In the same way that the study of the principles and mechanisms operating in the brain provides good insights on how it may be possible to improve the functioning of complex human societies; we can use the same concepts and mechanisms, which explain the rise of Civilization, to likewise visualize and understand how does Consciousness emerge:

Consciousness emerges when the joint activity and cooperation of a population of units give rise to a consistent sequence of actions and behaviors firmly aimed at the advancement of the standing of the whole in the world. Indeed, the basic purpose of our thoughts is to establish the foundations and elaborate the plans and strategies to advance our fitness and standing in the environment, and it is the joint activity and cooperation of the neurons in our brains what produce the coherent sequence of actions and behaviors which make up said plans and strategies. As our neurons start coming up with intermediate milestones to accomplish our ultimate goal, as well as the plans necessary to achieve said milestones, the first thoughts emerge in our minds on what are our needs and desires, as well as what plans should we follow to, respectively, satisfy and achieve them. As Descartes stated, the moment we start thinking on our needs and desires , as well as what is what we should do in order to fulfill them, becomes the moment where we become aware of their existence; that is, the moment we become conscious of our very own existence. Indeed, at some point it starts feeling as our train of thoughts have acquired life of its own.  

Neurons in the inferior temporal cortex (IT) develop selectivity for certain complex visual patterns such as facial features: whenever the preferred visual stimulus falls into the neuron's 'receptive field' (field of view), it will cause the cell to elicit a burst of action potentials. On the other hand, neurons in the Lateral Intra-Parietal sulcus (LIP) have been observed to be specialized in the coding of locations in the environment in eye-centered coordinates. Unlike their counterparts in IT, LIP neurons' bursts of activity may serve sensorial and or motor functions: namely, they may code the location of a stimulus in the environment and or the target location for a saccade (abrupt eye movement between fixations). In the latter case, the excited firing rates of LIP neurons pointing at different target locations should be seen as competing against each other; so that whichever stimulus draws most activity and gathers most support wins the competition, and will become the next pattern we look at. Importantly, this competition can be biased and directed based on "our wishes". Indeed, those LIP neurons pointing at some specific "sought-after stimulus" will received enhanced support from neurons in the visual cortex responsive for said "sought-after stimulus". Now, while LIP neurons code locations in eye-centered coordinates, in other areas of the parietal cortex other reference systems are employed. Obviously, trunk-centered and hand-centered coordinates are better suited for grasping and other hand actions. In addition, head-centered coordinates are very useful to transform between different reference frames, like, for example, when reaching for a visual target, or in many other visual-motor coordination tasks.    

To make a very long story short, exactly as in a complex society, we find in the brain countless 'populations' of neurons specialized at a plethora of different tasks. The magic spark then ignites when one of these populations of neurons (most likely in the prefrontal cortex) connects the dots and sets all other cells to work together! For instance, whenever we need to find a certain visual stimulus in the environment, these prefrontal cortex neurons issue a command to retrieve from memory a visual representation of the sought-after stimulus. This mental representation is then projected into the visual cortex, most likely through the inferior-temporal cortex. In fact, experimental evidence suggests, that neurons in the visual cortex responsive for those features, which make up the sought-after stimulus, will receive this kind of top-down / feedback, enhance activity. Consequently, if the stimulus turns out to be present in the visual field, those visual cortex units selective for its visual features and those LIP units selective for its eye-centered position will fire more strongly. In other words, the sought-after stimulus will win the competition for attention, as the LIP units coding its location impose the target for the next saccade. Hence, next thing we know is that the sought-after stimulus is right before our eyes, and our wish has been fulfilled.  

Clearly, as long as the different parts work together, the whole stays alive. Consequently, the feeling of being alive corresponds to the activity of those units coordinating - at the highest level - all the other units in the organization. The beautiful music of life goes on playing, as long as the conductor of the orchestra maintains the synchrony. Interestingly, when it comes to our consciousness, we get this view from the top down; whereas, when it comes to our nation, we get the view from the bottom up. Indeed, our thoughts reflect what we need and desire, as well as how we should act to fulfill those needs and desires: "Where is X? Ah, there it is! Now, let's act upon X to achieve Y", "Hmm, I feel hungry, let's go get some food", "Oh, my baby is crying, I need to feed it some food". Similarly, if we watch mass-Media, we would see what those at the top of the society think the nation should do, in order to flourish and prosper. They are the voice of the nation and it feels as we could hear what is going through the nation's mind, what does the nation have in mind: "The drought will cause this year a low agricultural yield: we will need to import some food", "One of our allies has been attacked, we should send them some aid to help in their defense".