A Plastic Temporal Brain Code for Conscious State Generation

Figure 2

Developmental selection of temporal activity patterns coding for conscious state access. Figure 2 illustrates schematically how the critical temporal activity patterns for conscious states would be progressively selected through activity dependent plasticity during lifespan brain development. At birth, a potentially infinite number of temporal activity patterns would be generated more or less randomly in the neural circuits of the brain. As brain learning progresses, repeated matches of brain events would generate resonant states in long-distance neural circuits. Such resonant states result from higher order processing in dedicated resonant circuits which function independently from sensorial and perceptual processes. Whenever the temporal firing patterns produced by these dedicated resonance circuits reach the statistical temporal coincidence threshold, they generate a conscious brain state. Such a temporal code would unlock the door to consciousness like some bar code would unlock the door of an electronically protected safe.