Paper detail

A temporal access code to consciousness?

While questions of a functional localization of consciousness in the brain have been the subject of myriad studies, the idea of a temporal access code as a specific brain mechanism for consciousness has remained a neglected possibility. Dresp-Langley and Durup (2009, 2012) proposed a theoretical approach in terms of a temporal access mechanism for consciousness based on its two universally recognized properties. Consciousness is limited in processing capacity and described by a unique processing stream across a single dimension, which is time. The time ordering function of conscious states is highlighted and neurobiological theories of the temporal brain activities likely to underlie such function are discussed, and the properties of the code model are then introduced. Spatial information is integrated into provisory topological maps at non-conscious levels through adaptive resonant matching, but does not form part of the temporal access code as such. The latter, de-correlated from the spatial code, operates without any need for firing synchrony on the sole basis of temporal coincidence probabilities in dedicated resonant circuits through progressively non-arbitrary selection of specific temporal activity patterns in the continuously developing brain.