How cortex of the brain and subcortical mechanisms interact to produce consciousness

What is it about?

This paper reviews the over 30 years long development of the perceptual retouch theory of conscious experience and its recent liaison with the dendritic integration theory. Historical overview is combined with description of the theory and its empirical foundations from neuroscience and experimental cognitive psychology. The theory explains both, the state of consciousness and phenomena of the contents of consciousness. It spans inter-areal brain mechanisms and neuronal level micro-mechanisms altogether.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Usually state-of-consciousness accounts and accounts of contents of consciousness have been treated separately. Another bias in contemporary most influential research on consciousness is that theories tend to be "cortico-centric" and forget the fundamental and seminal research on the necessity of subcortical mechanisms for a human to be able to enjoy consciousness. Moreover, typical theories are either large-scale descriptions of gross brain areas and how they interact or abstract quantitative models. The recent version of the retouch theory and its "sibling", DIT theory add single-cell and subcellular neural level to the theoretical picture.