The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach

About this Title

Consciousness is the major unsolved problem in biology. How do the elemental feelings and sensations making up conscious experience, the redness of red and painfulness of pain, arise from the concerted actions of nerve cells and their associated synaptic and molecular processes? Can such feelings be explained by modern science, or is some quite different kind of explanation needed? And how can this seemingly intractable problem be approached experimentally? Designed as an introduction to the field and drawing upon anatomical, physiological, clinical and psychological observations, this book seeks answers to these questions within a neurobiological framework; that is, how do the operations of the conscious mind emerge out of the specific interactions of myriads of neurons.

About the Authors

Born in the American Midwest, Christof Koch grew up in Holland, Germany, Canada, and Morocco, where he graduated from the French Lycèe Descartes. He studied Physics and Philosophy in Germany and was awarded his Ph.D. in Biophysics. After four years at MIT, Koch joined the California Institute of Technology, where he is the Lois and Victor Troendle Professor of Cognitive and Behavioral Biology. He lives in Pasadena, loves dogs, Apple Computers, climbing and long-distance running in the San Gabriel mountains around Los Angeles. The author of more than three hundred scientific papers and journal articles, patents, and many books, Koch studies the biophysics of computation, and the neuronal basis of visual perception, attention, and consciousness.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Francis Crick

1. Introduction to the Study of Consciousness
2. Neurons, the Atoms of Perception
3. The First Steps in Seeing
4. The Primary Visual Cortex as a Prototypical Neocortical Area
5. What Are the Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness?
6. The Neuronal Correlates of Consciousness Are Not in the Primary Visual Cortex
7. The Architecture of the Cerebral Cortex
8. Going Beyond the Primary Visual Cortex
9. Attention and Consciousness
10. The Neuronal Underpinnings of Attention
11. Memories and Consciousness
12. What You Can Do Without Being Conscious: The Zombie Within
13. Agnosia, Blindsight, Epilepsy, and Sleep-Walking: Clinical Evidence for Zombie Agents
14. Some Speculations on the Functions of Consciousness
15. On Time and Consciousness
16. When the Mind Flips: Following the Footprints of Consciousness
17. Splitting the Brain Splits Consciousness
18. Further Speculations on Thoughts and the Unconscious Homunculus
19. A Framework for Consciousness
20. An Interview

Glossary
Bibliography
Index

Praise

"An ideal combination of exquisite prose and rigorous science." —SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, by Michael Shermer

"Exciting and compelling...The Quest for Consciousness is a brave attempt to fuse the best scientific thinking with one of the central aspects of human existence"—SCIENCE, by Patrick Haggard

"From the start, the reader is taken on an in-depth exploration of the most recent developments in the biology of consciousness...The outcome is, in my view, exceptional."
—NATURE, by Jean-Pierre Changeux

"The quest for consciousness has been the great intellectual adventure of recent years, as neurobiology has started to close in on its ultimate goal, to define the neural basis of human consciousness. Christof Koch, in intimate collaboration with Francis Crick, has been one of the major pioneers in this quest, and in this new book he offers a vivid, brilliant and very personal account of how our understanding has developed in the last twenty years, moving from the basic processes of visual perception to the highest reaches of consciousness. He unfolds a new, dynamic vision of the brain, based on experimental findings, clinical observations, and neural modelling, in which coalitions of nerve cells form, dissolve and reform continually, weaving our ever-changing but integral sense of consciousness.The Quest for Consciousness is not only a mine of information, and full of provocative thoughts and insights, but a delight to read and ponder." —Oliver Sacks, Author of Author of Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Uncle Tungsten

"Christof Koch has written a superb introduction to the modern exploration of the biology of consciousness, based on his collaborative work with Francis Crick. The Quest for Consciousness is an extraordinarily well-written book that outlines in clear terms the key issues that the biology of the mind will be confronting in the next several decades. The book is a must for both the general reader as well as for scientists in the field." —Eric Kandel, Author of Principles of Neural Science and winner of the 2000 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine