Consciousness and the brain
I’m not even sure what I’m researching at this stage, but this book caught my attention in a Washington Post book review which said:
Dehaene outlines his “global neuronal workspace” theory of consciousness and tracks down four of its “signatures” in the brain. Some of the experiments in this hunt are ingenious, and we follow along as he and his colleagues circle their prey, eliminating neural correlates of complex but still unconscious behavior. Awareness results, he believes, when distant neurons become synchronized and distribute information widely, allowing a thought to be used in multiple ways by different brain modules — to be stored, reported, acted on or evaluated.
If I read the book will I understand how awareness is born and what its relationship to consciousness is? More importantly, will I be able to weave these ideas into the YA Speculative Action novel I’m writing.
In my writing this morning I had the dilemma of describing how one of my main characters as a toddler managed to rearrange space and time as part of an experiment thus demonstrating profound outcomes that the experimenter wasn’t sophisticated enough to be aware of. That’s what happens when you start to explore human potential. 🙂
