Is consciousness only brain activity?

We leave quantum fluctuations while they settle into statistical vapor, then ride bio-lightning up neuro-freeways to our awaiting minds. At the other end of our neurological wires await likewise confounding fields of shadows and sparks. Once stimulated by probability clouds kind enough to coalesce into a table when tapped, our nerves send charges along cellular tethers. Science adeptly tracks the voyage. The signals terminate exactly where expected, dancing across our cortexes and burying themselves deep into cerebral structures. There is more mystery, though, hiding in our tangles of intuitive wiring. Digital blips reach their destinations. Electricity scurries and bounces. Little storms brew in predictable patches. And that’s it. Dispatches from our fluctuating environment never merge into a definitive edifice for central processing. Information is never reformed into a discernable construct to be appreciated by our consciousness. No heat or focused bolts fly to signify receipt or creation of complex ideas. If our minds are biological motherboards, they lack an obvious core. There is no soul to be seen, no center to be found, only networks that end in a flash. Are we too deep in the goop to find or too high in a spiritual dimension to see? Two directions emerge without clear conclusions.

Neurology, like all its fine associates, is a science on the march. We can hope that progress will soon pinpoint consciousness. Neuroscientist Christof Koch anticipated the breakthrough when he famously bet a colleague that the discovery of biological awareness was just around the scientific corner. It’s not that he lost that should distract us along our quest for truth. Wayward wagers are easily forgiven in the grand scheme, but the gentlemen shook hands in 1998. Leaps and bounds have propelled every aspect of biological inquiry forward, but the glowing axis of spirit is still lost among shadows and sparks, leaving us with strong leads yet mysterious mechanisms for gathering, recording, and accessing hard data from our experiences.

“We can never arrive at the real nature of things from without.” Schopenhauer

The unexpected eccentricity shattered a stable paradigm but ushered new options. Where is memory? Where is consciousness? How does our information system really work? We may now choose from theories a la carte. Erudite options replace conclusions, as often happens when science wrings reality to its limits. Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, Higher-Order Theory, and a host of others compete for our devotion. Many astute guesses drift toward the quantum realm, where science tends to sweep enigmas. Sparks and shadows keep their secrets, for now.