Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-dnltx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-19T12:47:20.627Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

What do Neuronal Network Models of the Mind Indicate About Animal Consciousness?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2023

J G Taylor
J G Taylor*
Affiliation:
Department of Mathematics, King's College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The attempt to provide a firm scientific basis for understanding consciousness is now in full swing, with special contributions from two areas. One is experimental: brain imaging is providing ever increasing detail of the brain structures used by humans (and other animals) as they solve a variety of tasks, including those of higher cognition. The other is theoretical: the discipline of neural networks is allowing models of these cognitive processes to be constructed and tested against the available data. In particular, a control framework can be created to give a global view of the brain. The highest cognitive process, that of consciousness, is naturally a target for such experimentation and modelling. This paper reviews available data and related models leading to the central representation, which involves particular brain regions and functional processing. Principles of consciousness, which have great relevance to the question in the title, are thereby deduced. The requisite neuronal systems needed to provide animal experience, and the problem of assessing the quality and quantity of such experience, will then be considered. In conclusion, animal consciousness is seen to exist broadly across those species with the requisite control structures; the level of pain and other sensations depends in an increasingly well-defined manner on the complexity of the cerebral apparatus.

Keywords

animal welfareattentional controlconsciousnessmemory systemsneuronal networkspain
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 10 , Issue S1: Consciousness, Cognition and Animal Welfare: Proceedings of the UFAW Symposium, Zoological Society of London, 11-12 May 2000 , February 2001 , pp. S63 - S75
Copyright
© 2001 Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bermudez, J L, Marcel, A J and Eilan, N 1995 The Body and the Self. MIT Press: Cambridge, USA Coull J T and Nobre A C 1998 Where and when to pay attention: the neural systems for directing attention to spatial locations and to time intervals as revealed by both PET and fMRI. Journal of Neuroscience 18: 7426–7435Google Scholar
Crick, F H C and Koch, C 1998 Consciousness and neuroscience. Cerebral Cortex 8: 97–107CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Damasio, A 1995 Descartes’ Error. Picador Press: London, UKGoogle Scholar
Henderson, J M 1994 Two representational systems in dynamic visual identification. Journal of Experimental Psychology 20: 410–426CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hornik, P, Stinchcombe, J and White, H 1989 Multilayer feedforward networks are universal approximators. Neural Networks 2: 359–366CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Izquierda, I, Quillfield, J A, Zanatta, M S, Quevedo, J, Schaeffer, E, Schmitz, P K and Medina, J H 1997 Sequential role of hippocampus and amygdala, entorhinal cortex and parietal cortex in formation and retrieval of memory for inhibitory avoidance in rats. European Journal of Neuroscience 9: 786–793CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, W 1950 The Principles of Psychology. Dover: New York, USAGoogle Scholar
Jonides, J and Smith, E E 1997 The architecture of working memory. In: Rugg, M D (ed) Cognitive Neuroscience pp 243–276. Taylor & Francis: Hove, UKGoogle Scholar
Kalaska, J, Scott, S H, Cisek, P and Sergio, L E 1997 Cortical control of reaching movements. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 7: 849–859CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Karnath, H-O 1997 Neural encoding of space in egocentric coordinates? Evidence for and limits of a hypothesis derived from patients with parietal lesions and neglect. In: Their P and Karnath H-0 (eds) Parietal Lobe: Contributions to Orientation in 3D Space pp 497–520. Springer: Heidelberg, GermanyCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Libet, B, Alberts, W W, Wright, E W, DeLattre, L D, Levin, G and Feinsein, B 1964 Production of threshold levels of conscious sensation by electrical stimulation of human somatosensory cortex. Journal of Neurophysiology 27: 546–578CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Luu, P, Flaisch, T and Tucker, D M 2000 Medial frontal cortex in action monitoring. Journal of Neuroscience 20: 464–469CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marcel, A J 1980 Conscious and preconsious recognition on polysemous words: locating the selective effects of prior verbal contexts. In: Nickerson, R S (ed) Attention and Performance VIII. Lawrence Erlbaum: Hillsdale, USAGoogle Scholar
Mesulam, M 1985 Attention, confusional states and neglect. In: Mesulam, M M (ed) Principles of Neurobiology pp 125–168. F A Davis Co: Philadelphia, USAGoogle Scholar
Miall, R C and Wolpert, D 1996 Forward models for physiological motor control. Neural Networks 9: 1265–1279CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Milner, A D 1997 Neglect, extinction and the cortical streams of visual processing. In: Their, P and Karnath, H-O (eds) Parietal Lobe: Contributions to Orientation in 3D Space pp 3–22. Springer: Heidelberg, GermanyGoogle Scholar
Milner, A D and Goodale, M A 1995 The Visual Brain in Action. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UKGoogle Scholar
Moutoussis, K and Zeki, S 1997 Functional segregation and temporal hierarchy of the visual perceptive systems. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 264: 1407–1414CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mozer, M C and Sitton, M 1997 Chapter 9. In: Pashler, H (ed) Attention pp 341–393. Taylor & Francis: Chichester, UKGoogle Scholar
Pashler, H E 1998 The Psychology of Attention. MIT Press: Cambridge, USAGoogle Scholar
Pollen, D 1999 On the neural correlates of visual perception. Cerebral Cortex 9: 4–19CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Posner, M I, Walker, J A, Friedrich, F A and Rafal, R D 1987 How do the parietal lobes direct covert attention? Neuropsychologia 25: 135–145Google ScholarPubMed
Stein, J 1992 The representation of egocentric space in the posterior parietal lobe. Behavioural Brain Science 15: 691–700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talairach, J and Tournoux, P 1988 Co-planar Stereotaxic Atlas of the Human Brain. Thieme: Stuttgart, GermanyGoogle Scholar
Tanaka, K 1996 Inferotemporal cortex and object vision. Annual Review of Neuroscience 19: 109–139CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, J G 1996a A competition for consciousness? Neurocomputing 11: 271–296Google Scholar
Taylor, J G 1996b Breakthrough to awareness. Biological Cybernetics 25: 59–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J G 1999 The Race for Consciousness. MIT Press: Cambridge, USAGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J G 2000 A general framework for the functions of the brain. Proceedings of the Joint International Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN2000). Disk publisher InControl Productions Inc: Monterey, USAGoogle Scholar
Taylor, J G The importance of the parietal lobes in consciousness. Consciousness and Cognition (in press)Google Scholar
Taylor, J G and Alavi, F 1995 A global competitive neural network. Biological Cybernetics 72: 233–248CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taylor, J G, Schmitz, N, Ziemons, K, Grosse-Ruykin, M, Gruber, O, Mueller-Gaertner, H-W and Shah, N J 2000 The network of brain areas involved in the motion after-effect. Neurolmage 11: 257–270CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tootell, R B H, Reppas, J B, Dale, A M, Look, R B, Sereno, M I, Malach, R, Brady, T J and Rosen, B R 1995 Visual motion aftereffect in human cortical area MT revealed by functional magnetic resonance imaging. Nature 375: 139–141CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Treisman, A 1988 Features and objects: the fourteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 40A: 201–237CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treisman, A, Cavanagh, P, Fischer, B 1990 Form perception and attention: striate cortex and beyond. In: Spillman, L and Werner, J S (eds) Visual Perception: the Neuropsychological Foundations pp 273–316. Academic Press: San Diego, USACrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weese, G D, Phillips, J M and Brown, V J 1999 Attentional orienting is impaired by unilateral lesions of the thalamnic reticular nucelus in the rat. Journal of Neuroscience 19: 10135–10139CrossRefGoogle Scholar