BRINGING CONSCIOUSNESS TO COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE: A COMPUTATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

This paper focuses on three connected to each other fundamental beliefs that appear to be unconsciously taken for granted at the basis of modern cognitive neuroscience: (i) the attractor hypothesis, (ii) the neural code hypothesis, and (iii) the supervenience hypothesis about human subjective experience. Their precise understanding and experimental verification is an important challenge that calls for a scientific paradigm change and needs to be addressed for future progress in cognitive neuroscience. The work presents a theoretical analysis and preliminary experimental and modeling results that suggest a roadmap to solving the challenge.