Many Paths to Consciousness or Just One?: Life in a Bounded Continuum

We contend that there are not separate systems working in parallel that construct consciousness, as that would be singularly inefficient and perhaps even dangerous. We require sentience as the scanning mechanism to sit as the basis of interaction with our environment. It is not a separate component of consciousness but rather an integral part of it. Disorders of consciousness reflect a functional disconnection syndrome. It is the effective global functional interconnectivities that are the best markers of clinical states of consciousness rather than the activity associated with a piece of the larger system.