In the mid-1980's at the University of Toronto, John Eccles delivered a lecture on consciousness. Eccles, being a dualist, declared that the interface to consciousness is in the supplementary motor area (Brodmann area 6) of the cerebral cortex. This hypothesis compelled Peter Schiller to determine whether this is so (Mann et al. 1988; Tehovnik and Slocum 2000). Looking for the inner man has a long history. As early as 1927, Ivan Pavlov who worked on dogs lesioned large chunks of the neocortex to identify the center of consciousness, defined as the site that mediates classical conditioning (Pavlov 1927). Pavlov concluded that the center was located somewhere in the neocortex and that the location was dependent on the sensory system being utilized to perform a conditioning task. Many years later Thompson revisited this question in lower mammals showing that eye-blink conditioning is dependent on neurons below the midbrain including the cerebellum (Swain, Thompson et al. 2011; also see Gallistel et al. 2022). Thus, classical conditioning was deemed an unconscious process with no relevance to the neocortex, thereby diminishing the significance of Pavlov's conclusions.
When both the frontal eye fields and superior colliculi are destroyed in monkeys, they can no longer generate visually guided saccadic eye movements (because the neocortex has been disconnected from the brain stem), but reflexive behaviors such as optokinetic nystagmus are spared (Schiller et al. 1980). Liu et al. (2016) have found that when they optogenetically inhibited visual corticofugal neurons that project to the terminal nuclei in the brainstem that mediate optokinetic nystagmus, the ability to change the gain was reduced and in some cases abolished; therefore, the neocortex ‘the putative conscious organ’ and the brainstem cannot be studies in isolation even for reflexive behaviors [also see: Hasan et al. (2013) who disrupted (trace) eye-blink conditioning by disabling the glutamate receptors of the motor cortex].
Accordingly, there is no neural center to consciousness, as already concluded by Wilder Penfield (1975), who observed that his patients always realized that electrical stimulation (and not them) was causing the evoked perception or movement [a similar tendency has been observed in monkeys subjected to frontal lobe electrical stimulation: the animals would actively avoid making eye movements in specific parts of the visual field to avoid being stimulated, particularly when the stimulation fixed their eyes in one orbital position against their will, Tehovnik et al. 1993]. Furthermore, consciousness is a network phenomenon that depends on both the neocortex and the cerebellum, even though declarative memories are stored in the neocortex and these memories are linked to the motor system by way of the cerebellum (Corkin 2002; Hasanbegović 2024; Mariën et al. 2017; Squire et al. 2001; Tehovnik, Patel, Tolias et al. 2021).
This question straddles science, pseudo-science, and spirituality far beyond consciousness and the neocortex or any part of the brain.
The inner woman/man is gifted with a mind prepared by cosmic vibrations that are unperceptively all around us.
To ask any such question, the questioner must be qualified far beyond science -- the puny efforts of humans to understand and even master Nature.
The key is the prepared mind, that only very few of us possess. The arrogance and impatience of science un-prepares any and all of us from the quest for the Inner Human.
Frailty, fragility, humility, acceptance, and a perpetually wondering (not wandering) mind can or might prepare one for the Inner Human (Man or Woman) as described in parts by Aldous Huxley in The Perennial Philosophy, 1985).
Like all arts, comprehension of Inner Human is an art, and all arts have their laws. (L. Trotsky)
Preparation for the INNER HUMAN consumes the life (or several lives for those who believe in after-life and rebirths).
You do not look with your senses or experiments; it is an extra-sensory gift, not granted to most Humans.
All observations (or experiments) and the evidence gleaned from them are subjective, there is nothing like a purely objective observation including RCCT (Medawar, 1967; Gupta, 2010)
MUST READ:
Alexis Carrel, Nobel Laureate, 1947. Man, The Unknown.
18-MAY-2024
New Delhi
ORCID iD: 0000-0002-67705916
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