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By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News
Sep. 11 — A British geneticist has proposed a theory, which is gaining ground, as to why humans are conscious and aware.
If proven correct, the theory not only would explain one of science's greatest mysteries, the "hard problem" of awareness, but it may also, in future, allow for the development of artificially intelligent, conscious computers.
In a paper published in the latest issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies, awareness is said to be generated by the brain's electromagnetic field, which is a product of the over 100 billion electrically active neurons in the brain.
The activity of individual neurons can result in unconscious actions, like breathing and eye blinking, but collective, synchronous neuron firings, according to the report, produce an electromagnetic field and the state of human awareness.
Johnjoe McFadden, professor of molecular genetics at the University of Surrey and author of the paper, first came up with the idea while writing the book "Quantum Evolution," published earlier this year. He became convinced that "consciousness was some kind of field that bound our thoughts." But without quantum states in the brain, he wondered where the field could be.
"An obvious possibility was the brain's own electromagnetic field, generated by neurons and able to influence neuron firing," McFadden explained to Discovery News, "so I started to examine the proposition that the brain's electromagnetic field is consciousness and became convinced."
He added that human consciousness is awareness that can communicate complex information with a sense of self-referral. It goes beyond self-awareness, which, he said, could be the state many animals are in.
For humans, he believes that information taken in from the outside world through our senses passes through the brain's electromagnetic field to neurons in the brain and then back again to the field, creating a self-referring loop that could be the key to consciousness.
If, as McFadden suggests, consciousness is a component of the brain's electromagnetic field, it would then likely be possible to reconstruct artificial systems duplicating the process, i.e., computers with a conscious.
Roy E. John, a professor in the School of Medicine and Psychiatry at New York University who has developed a similar theory concerning human awareness, suggested that AI enthusiasts not hold their breath because "a whole new technology would be necessary."
Bruce MacLennan, associate professor of computer science at the University of Tennessee and an expert in field computation, said McFadden's theory is "very interesting and thought-provoking." He agrees that conscious computers may be possible, but not in the near future.
"I cannot exaggerate how far we are from being able to construct a robot with the real-world cognitive capacities of a simple mammal, let alone a human," said MacLennan. "We are even further from being able to make a principled claim that any artificial system is conscious. We have so much more to learn."
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