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Asked by to Claire, Ian, Sergey, Vicky, Zena on 24 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
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Sergey Lamzin answered on 24 Jun 2014:
Your consciousness is a state of the brain which is responsible for you being self-aware.
It is distinct from the state of being alive in the way that you may be unconscious (asleep, coma, knocked out), but still alive.The consciousness is what separates us from more primitive life forms that do not have that state and are thus not self aware, like plants.
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Claire Shooter answered on 24 Jun 2014:
If you someones body apart to find all the bits that make them a person, the consciousness is all the stuff you can’t locate a physical source for
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Ian Simpson answered on 25 Jun 2014:
Technically consciousness is being aware of your surroundings.
One nice analogy trying to explain what consciousness is has been drawn by a Scientist called Giulio Tononi who is a Neuroscience Professor in the USA and Italy:-
Consider a picture of an apple taken by a camera, it’s just a collection of pixels. Next consider what the image of an apple which is physically the same thing means to you. Your brain receives input from your retina and then integrates that information in a complex way to interpret the meaning of the image. This could include memories, smells, tastes and a contextual interpretation of the image. This is consciousness too. Tononi’s ideas about consciousness which are based on a career of experimental observation talk about the idea of connectivity being crucial to consciousness and that this is something that is highly evolved in humans (and higher vertebrates). The more primitive parts of the brain act a lot more like a camera. They process basic inputs and give standard (non-integrated) outputs like breathing, heat regulation etc. The less primitive more recently diversified parts of the brain (ultimately up to the cortex) are more complex, inter-connected and integrate information. It is here that the mechanism of consciousness lies.
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