Scientists have struggled for
millennia to understand human consciousness - the awareness of one's existence.
Despite advances in neuroscience, we still don't really know where it comes
from, and how it arises. But researchers think they might have finally figured
out its physical origins, after pinpointing a network of three specific regions
in the brain that appear to be crucial to consciousness. For the first time, they
found a connection between the brainstem region involved in arousal and regions
involved in awareness, two prerequisites for consciousness.
Consciousness is generally
thought of as being comprised of two critical components - arousal and
awareness. Researchers had already shown that arousal is likely regulated by
the brainstem - the portion of the brain that links up with the spinal cord -
seeing as it regulates when we sleep and wake, and our heart rate and
breathing. Awareness has been more elusive. Researchers have long thought that
it resides somewhere in the cortex - the outer layer of the brain - but no one
has been able to pinpoint where.
More information: