In fact, not much is known about consciousness - awareness of one's existence and environment, other than that it is somehow related to the brain. But theories of how exactly gray matter shapes consciousness are challenged by the existence of a fully conscious person who has been found to have most of the brain missing.
A few years ago, a 44-year-old Frenchman went to the hospital complaining of mild weakness in his left leg. It was found that his skull was filled mostly with fluid, with only a thin layer of real brain tissue around the perimeter.
However, this man was married, had two children and was in the civil service, with an IQ of 75 - below average - but he was not mentally retarded.
Doctors believe that the human brain slowly decays over 30 years due to the accumulation of fluid in the ventricles of the brain, a condition called "hydrocephalus." Hydrocephalus in this patient, when he was an infant, was treated with bypass surgery, in which fluid was removed into the blood. But the shunt was removed when he was 14 years old. Over the following decades, fluid accumulated in the skull, leaving less and less room for the brain.
While this may sound like a medical miracle, it also poses a major challenge for cognitive psychology, says scientist Axel Cleiremans of the University of Libre in Brussels.
"Any theory of consciousness should be able to explain why such a person, who lacks 90 percent of their neurons, still exhibits normal behavior," says Cleiremans. A theory of consciousness that depends on "specific neuroanatomical characteristics" cannot explain this.
According to the theory, the frontal, parietal, temporal, and occipital lobes of the brain control movement, sensitivity, conversation, vision, hearing, and emotional and cognitive functions. But all these areas of the brain are almost absent from the French. However, he does not have significant mental disorders, which suggests that if the trauma develops slowly, then over time, the brain can adapt to survive, despite serious damage in these areas.
Clearemans, who lectured on the topic at a conference in Buenos Aires, believes that the observed plasticity of the brain is the key to understanding how consciousness works.
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He believes that the brain learns to be conscious. Thus, only a few specific neural functions are necessary for consciousness, since the brain is able to adapt and develop consciousness itself.
“Consciousness is a non-conceptual theory of the brain about itself, accumulated through experience - that is, in the process of learning, interacting with oneself, the world and other people,” he says.
The scientist asserts in his article, where he puts forward this thesis, that for awareness it is necessary not only to know the information, but to know that they know it. In other words, unlike a thermostat that simply registers temperature, conscious people know and take into account what they know. Cleiremans argues that the brain is constantly and unconsciously learning to re-describe its own activities to itself, and these descriptions form the basis of conscious experience.
Ultimately, Clearmans believes that consciousness is "the brain's theory of itself." Therefore, while the Frenchman may have a tiny brain, he seems to still be able to generate a theory about himself, which is "a prime example of how the brain learns to adapt."
Sergey Lukavsky