A temporal access code to consciousness?

TL;DR

This paper explores the concept of a temporal access code as a brain mechanism for consciousness, emphasizing its role in processing capacity, temporal ordering, and neurobiological underpinnings, distinct from spatial information processing.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical model of a temporal access code for consciousness based on temporal coincidence probabilities and resonant circuits, expanding understanding of neural mechanisms underlying conscious experience.

Findings

Proposes a temporal access code based on temporal coincidence in resonant circuits.

Highlights the role of time ordering in conscious states.

Differentiates the temporal code from spatial information processing.

Abstract

While questions of a functional localization of consciousness in the brain have been the subject of myriad studies, the idea of a temporal access code as a specific brain mechanism for consciousness has remained a neglected possibility. Dresp-Langley and Durup (2009, 2012) proposed a theoretical approach in terms of a temporal access mechanism for consciousness based on its two universally recognized properties. Consciousness is limited in processing capacity and described by a unique processing stream across a single dimension, which is time. The time ordering function of conscious states is highlighted and neurobiological theories of the temporal brain activities likely to underlie such function are discussed, and the properties of the code model are then introduced. Spatial information is integrated into provisory topological maps at non-conscious levels through adaptive resonant matching, but does not form part of the temporal access code as such. The latter, de-correlated from the spatial code, operates without any need for firing synchrony on the sole basis of temporal coincidence probabilities in dedicated resonant circuits through progressively non-arbitrary selection of specific temporal activity patterns in the continuously developing brain.