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The Sackler Centre is home base for Seth’s world of neuroscience, but
also philosophers, physicists, computational scientists, and artists—creating
a multidisciplinary tableau through which to look at questions about the mind
and brain. Seth and his team are applying a range of methods and tools—
from computational science and virtual reality to brain imaging—to identify
the mechanisms that compose consciousness.
“I said, ‘something is missing here’,” Seth told me. “I think that gave
me the motivation to think I want to know more.”
But he didn’t think it was possible to specifically study the core idea of
consciousness until 2001, when he flew across the pond to the
Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California to work with Gerald Edelman,
a Nobel Prize-winning biologist who argued that the mind and consciousness
were purely biological. Explained in his book Neural Darwinism, Edelman’s
theory is focused on how genetics and the environment influence the way
neurons in the brain interact and reproduce to create consciousness.
“Here was the first time people were not only studying consciousness
but studying the brain [in that context],” Seth said.
His role in San Diego was multifaceted. Seth spent his time building
robots with brain architecture that mimicked the human brain. The robots
were tasked with solving visual perception problems, or mazes. Afterward,
Seth needed to find a way to continue his exploration of consciousness.
But Seth said he’s also frustrated by the lack of neuroscience and data
in the larger understanding of consciousness. Given the nature of his work,
Seth has been active in speaking and writing about consciousness for an
audience outside of academia.
Seth said he hopes there will be an even larger application of his work
when it comes to mental health. Understanding consciousness, he said,
could help uncover some of the mechanisms of complex disorders like
schizophrenia and delusions. Right now, he said, psychiatry can often fall
short of this kind of treatment. “You can suppress people’s symptoms, but
you don’t get to the cause.”
Citation: Rao, Ankita (2018, October 11) How Our Experience of Reality Is
a Bunch of Hallucinations We Collectively Agree On. Vice.
Retrieved March, 15, 2020 from
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xjbn3/consciousness-is-just-a-bunch-of-
hallucinations-we-collectively-agree-on