How human consciousness baffles neuroscientists

The idea that human consciousness originates from brain cells is not as obvious as many conventional research fields would have us believe.

Decades of brain research have accumulated extensive knowledge about the brain's electrochemical and biochemical functions and reactions. Today, the structure and composition of a brain cell can be described in great detail, as can its function. The brain has been established as the central organ of the nervous system, transmitting impulses that enable motor functions, among other things. This wealth of knowledge about the brain and other physical organs is beneficial in cases of dysfunction, injury, treatment and surgery.

“It is just the brain”

However, what has not been mapped, proven or explained is human beings and human consciousness. Nevertheless, large parts of the scientific community, particularly brain researchers, stubbornly maintain that human beings are their brains and that the brain controls their entire consciousness, i.e. everything they think, feel, say, remember and do. Not only is the brain given the function of being the overall part of the nervous system, it is also attributed the leading position over the human being itself. To an independently thinking individual, it may seem absurd that such reasoning has been allowed to pass as scientific fact and is widely accepted as truth within mainstream natural science.

If brain research — and, by extension, physical science — cannot prove how the brain produces human thought, emotion and memory, how can it claim to do so with such confidence? Furthermore, how can such claims form the basis of public discourse about the brain? We are constantly presented with this 'knowledge' about the brain’s supposed influence over us across websites, television programmes, and institutions in healthcare and education. However, none of the claims regarding the brain’s role in producing human consciousness and memory have been verified by science.

These explanations are often contradictory, depicting the brain and the human self as separate entities, and they defy reason by reducing human beings — living entities with dreams, desires, willpower, reflection, intelligence and agency — to passive slaves under the control of a wrinkled mass of organic matter and its electrochemical signals.

The following quotes, taken from a well-known Swedish healthcare website, illustrate contradictory arguments about how you are presented as a human being:

"The outer layer of the cerebrum is called the cerebral cortex. It consists of gray matter that contains nerve cells. The cerebral cortex is responsible for our awareness of different sensory impressions. The cortex is where our thoughts, feelings and memories are created".

"The brain is involved in almost everything we do, feel, and experience. It gives us our personality and emotions. The brain is what allows us to have consciousness, to think, and to remember".

"The brain uses very few neurons to remember things it sees".

"Research claims that neurons act as thought cells, capable of specializing on certain memories previously selected by the brain".

Note how the cerebral cortex is described as grey matter containing neurons, and how this grey matter is responsible for consciousness of sensory impressions – 'it sees', 'it remembers'. Furthermore, consider how the brain is ascribed properties that enable thought and memory, and how it "selects" memories based on "what it sees". You have no control over these processes; you must rely on the assumption that the brain 'sees correctly' and that the neurons 'remember what the brain sees'. In other words, you are entirely subordinate, and neither who you are nor what the brain needs you for is made clear.

The way in which the brain, with its nerve cells, 'chooses', 'sees' and 'remembers' cannot be explained by physicalist research, yet this research is not willing to reconsider its claims.

Analogy

Taking a reductionist view of humans and consciousness, I will now offer a humorous perspective on the 'life of the brain cell mass known as Edgar'.

Edgar was created at the same time as the physical body in which he is located. They both emerged from the same "package" via the body of a third brain cell mass, known as "mother", who had previously decided to breed with a fourth brain cell mass, known as "father", to create a new brain cell mass.

The brain cell mass Edgar is now an adult and lives in his own apartment. Not far away lives his best friend, Agaton, who is also a brain cell mass. They spend a lot of time together, to the extent that they are often mistaken for twins. They are extremely similar to each other. They are both pinkish-grey in colour with a wrinkled appearance; they weigh the same, are similarly shaped, and each has the same number of lobes and ventricles. They both have identical cerebellums and brain stems, and the cerebral cortex of each brain cell mass, which unites the two halves, is deceptively similar. Their thalamuses, hypothalamuses and limbic systems also look the same and are located in the same places. In short, their structure, organisation and function are indistinguishable, and they are very easy to mistake for each other at a glance.

Despite their incredible similarity, there is one significant difference between them. Since its inception, the Agaton brain cell mass has been adept at producing beautiful sounds on various instruments. In contrast, the Edgar brain cell mass is completely untrainable when it comes to making music and is also completely tone deaf, despite many valiant attempts. They have both asked themselves on several occasions how this can be. After all, the two brain cell masses are so similar, and they both have the same functions in their respective parts. Edgar once asked Agaton how he is so musically skilled. Did Agaton's parents play a lot of music? Agaton searched his brain feverishly, both in the cerebral cortex and in the grey matter where short-term and long-term memories are said to be located, but without result. Agaton could not find where or when the interest in music arose or how the ability to play different instruments emerged. Growing up, there were no other music-making brain cells in the vicinity.

Some of Edgar’s cortical neurons found this realisation frustrating, reacting with sadness and generating a state of melancholy. Other neurons deemed it unfair. The two brain masses debated the issue extensively, communicating with each other by emitting bursts of sound through the largest hole in Edgar’s head.

More relevant questions

This representation of human beings raises many questions, only a few of which are addressed in this text. An intelligent reader with the perception of possessing self-activated thought can certainly ask more questions:

• Which brain cells are missing from Edgar's brain that seem to have been present in Agaton's brain since its creation?

• Which brain cells decide what to select and learn, and where to store what has been learnt? How do the cells decide where to store it?

• Despite the same diligent training, similar upbringing and sometimes even the same parents (if siblings are involved), why are there such individual differences between brain cell masses?

• If brain cells create thoughts and feelings, as other brain cells involved in brain research and education have taught, which brain cells get upset and sad, as in the case of Edgar's brain cells, and how do they create these feelings?

• If brain cells have the same function in all healthy brain masses, what makes one phenomenon upset and sadden the brain cells in the cerebral cortex in some masses but not in others? How is this determined, and by what?

Furthermore, if you don't remember something at a certain time, but then remember it clearly at a later time, does this mean that the brain cells storing the memory were busy or off duty at the first time, and then back on duty at the second time, allowing you to retrieve the memory? How do the 'memory-carrying' brain cells pick up the memory image itself? And how does it become a picture in your mind? How is the memory, which is spread over several neurons, assembled? And 'oneself', by the way, is it oneself who wants to remember something, or is it the brain? If it is 'oneself' who wants to remember and sees the memory image 'in one's mind', then 'oneself' must be something other than the brain itself. How, then, do these two entities relate to each other?

Such questions cannot be answered by physical science, which dismisses them as irrelevant. However, if science is to guide us towards knowledge, it should adhere to scientific practice. This means acknowledging what is and isn't ascertainable, and not creating guesses and theories to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Science knows that the brain is an organ belonging to the physical organism, like other organs.

Conventional science understands how nerve cells function and the electrochemical and biochemical signals they transmit to one another. It knows that these signals trigger other signals and activities in different organs. However, today's science neither understands nor can explain what consciousness is.

Because of this ignorance, science reduces living people to intelligence-free, will-less grey matter.

It is like pressing inappropriate pieces into an already established puzzle while rejecting pieces that do not fit.

Physicalistic scientists often defend this position by saying that much of what concerns the brain remains a mystery, largely because it is difficult to research. However, the real mystery is not the physical brain itself; rather, it is the living being — the human with consciousness — that remains unexplained. To dispel some of the confusion surrounding this 'mystery of the brain', it would be helpful if those conducting the research did not claim so dogmatically that human memory and consciousness are created by an organic mass of grey brain cells and are merely the secondary result of brain cell impulses.