Chapter 27 - The thalamic intralaminar nuclei and the property of consciousness

Summary

This chapter is devoted to reviewing some aspects of thalamic structure and function as they may contribute to making small fractions of mentation momentarily conscious, with particular emphasis on those thalamic constituents sometimes called non-specific. It offers a brief discussion of usages of the word consciousness and a few explicit assumptions about neuronal activity patterns (NAPs). The chapter employs a philosophically technical usage, following Wimsatt, who contrasts emergent with aggregative. The idea that consciousness is generated independently in different places is supported by the finding that color and motion occurring at the same time can sometimes be perceived at different times. The chapter's hypothesis suggests that for some content represented by neuronal activity pattern in cortex to be endowed with consciousness, there must be a connection between the intralaminar nuclei (ILN) and the region(s) of cortex containing those NAPs.