Merker, B. (2006).

Consciousness without a cerebral cortex:

A challenge for neuroscience and medicine.

Behavioral and Brain Sciences (in press)

 What does consciousness refer to?

• As the state or condition presupposed by

any experience whatsoever
• The medium of any and all possible
experience

Architectonic view Quantitative view

Arrangement Complexity of contents,

processes,
What does consciousness refer to here?

• Is independent of content sophistication.

Diff. degrees of the SAME consciousness

Architectonic view • Sensation This

• experience This is so.
Arrangement • Self-consciousness
I’m affected by this which is so
7. Self-awareness
So this is I who am affected by
this which is so.
Consciousness without a cerebral cortex
Main Thesis
• A novel principle relating target selection, action selection and
motivation to one another as a means to optimize integration for
action in real time is introduced.

• the principal macrosystems of the vertebrate brain plan can be seen

to form a centralized functional design in which an upper brain stem
system organized for conscious function plays a key role.

• the prototypical core around which an expanding forebrain could

serve as a medium for the elaboration of conscious contents

• integrates the massively parallel and distributed information capacity

of the cerebral hemispheres into the limited-capacity, sequential
mode of operation required for coherent behavior
 Penfield & Jasper (1954)
Centrencephalic system

Proposal: the highest integrative functions

of the brain are not completed at the
cortical level, but in an upper brainstem
system of central convergence supplying
the key mechanism of consciousness
 → Corticocentric

e.g., cortical excisions

Centrencephalic system
 Motivation
Large cortical excisions Absence epilepsy
3 patients data

Continuity of consciousness remains

Lack of EG pattern When midline
thalamus is stimulated
 Centrencephalic system
• centrencephalic system is symmetrically related to
both cerebral hemispheres
• a convergently innervated upper brainstem system
serving to coordinate and integrate the functional
economy of the forebrain as a whole, intimately
involved in conscious and volitional functions as well
as in the laying down of memories across the lifespan
• Not just integrations, but also control:

- anatomically subcortical but functionally supracortical

- “higher” control, not “higher” sophistication
- superordinate decision making
Merker’s argument of an integrative
action center of consciousness
How did the brain get centralized?
From a distributed neural system to a centralized brain

Motor control: Motor control:

concentrated to segmental ganglia organized motor nuclei

motor control has moved up

It all began with image-forming eyes…
• Sensori-motor problems of image-forming eyes
– To solve stabilization problem
• Independent spatial mobility of the receptor array
– To solve intermodal integration
• Sensory integrating mechanism of colliculus/tectum
Bonus:
mobile eyes present efficient means for sampling
the environment, if their control can be linked to
motivational mechanisms with shifting needs
 The synencephalic bottleneck
and how the vertebrate brain came to be centralized around it
synencephalon

Optic tract

Data reduction
 Selection triangle
Action
selection

I can only do one thing at a time.

The best current action depends on

Needs and the current body location.

target Motivation
selection priority

Opportunities are for those I have lots of needs.

being at the right place at the right time
 “what should I do next?”
• Sol.: analog real time reality simulation
(constitutes a conscious mode of function)
– Action domain embedded in target domain via
a shared spatial coordinate system, subject to
bias from motivational variables.
2D->3D Registry and stabilization
 Evidence for brainstem as the
location
• Coherent behavior w/o cerebral cortex
• Coherent behavior when midbrain is
stimulated; Fragmented behavior when
cortex is stimulated.
Consciousness in children w/o cortex
• Report of awareness (Shewmon, 1999)
• Awake, alert, responsive to environment,
smiling, laughing, crying, excitement,
preference, expectation, etc..
 Interaction btw the forebrain

• zona incerta: an arbiter of moment to moment

decision making “in the light of all available
evidence”
Gamma oscillations and cortical binding

• Is the gamma oscillation btw cortical cortex

alone doing the binding?

• Synchronized firing of cortical areas fire their

direct laminar superposition of topographic
projections within a unified collicular topography.
• These firings would assist crossing collicular
thresholds by summation.
• By crossing the threshold, cortical activity would
gain access to the mesodiencephalic system
and projections to the cortex. Which leads to
awareness.