Sufficiency of Neuronal Interactions for Consciousness

Determine whether phenomenal consciousness can be fully accounted for at the level of interactions between neurons—i.e., neural circuits and large-scale networks—as assumed by computational models that omit intra-neuronal processes, or whether processes occurring within neurons are required for consciousness.

Background

The paper argues that many AI and computational neuroscience models abstract away intracellular processes and focus on interactions between neurons at the circuit and network levels. The authors note that this abstraction presupposes that consciousness arises solely from neuron-to-neuron interactions.

Drawing on neurobiological evidence, including the Dendritic Integration Theory and findings that anesthesia can decouple apical-basal integration in pyramidal neurons via metabotropic mechanisms, the authors suggest that subcellular processes may play a critical role in enabling conscious processing. This raises a fundamental unresolved question about the level(s) at which consciousness is mechanistically realized.