The computer, smartphone or other electronic device on which you may be reading this article, tracking the weather or checking your e-mail has a kind of rudimentary brain. It has highly organized electrical circuits that store information and behave in specific, predictable ways, just like the interconnected cells in your brain. On the most fundamental level, electrical circuits and neurons are made of the same stuff—atoms and their constituent elementary particles—but whereas the human brain is conscious of itself, man-made gadgets do not know they exist.

Consciousness, most scientists would argue, is not a shared property of all matter in the universe. Rather consciousness is restricted to a subset of animals with relatively complex brains. The more scientists study animal behavior and brain anatomy, however, the more universal consciousness seems to be. A brain as complex as a human's is definitely not necessary for consciousness. On July 7 of this year, a group of neuroscientists convening at the University of Cambridge signed a document entitled “The Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in Non-Human Animals,” officially declaring that nonhuman animals, “including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses,” are conscious.

Humans are more than just conscious; they are also self-aware. Scientists differ on how they distinguish between consciousness and self-awareness, but here is one common distinction: consciousness is awareness of your body and your environment; self-awareness is recognition of that consciousness—not only understanding that you exist but further comprehending that you are aware of your existence. Another way of considering it: to be conscious is to think; to be self-aware is to realize that you are a thinking being and to think about your thoughts. Presumably human infants are conscious—they perceive and respond to people and things around them—but they are not yet self-aware. In their first years of life, children develop a sense of self, learning to recognize themselves in the mirror and to distinguish between their own point of view and the perspectives of other people.

Numerous neuroimaging studies have suggested that thinking about ourselves, recognizing images of ourselves, and reflecting on our thoughts and feelings—that is, different forms of self-awareness—all involve the cerebral cortex, the outermost, intricately wrinkled part of the brain. The fact that humans have a particularly large and wrinkly cerebral cortex relative to body size supposedly explains why we seem to be more self-aware than most other animals. But new evidence is casting doubt on this idea.

“Got a Towel?”

If this anatomical hypothesis were correct, we would expect, for example, that a man missing huge portions of his cerebral cortex would lose at least some of his self-awareness. Patient R, also known as Roger, defies that expectation. Roger is a 57-year-old man who suffered extensive brain damage in 1980 after a severe bout of herpes simplex encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain caused by herpesvirus. The disease destroyed most of Roger's insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and medial prefrontal cortex, regions near or at the front surface of the brain that are thought to be essential for self-awareness. About 10 percent of his insula remains and only 1 percent of his anterior cingulate cortex.

Roger cannot remember much of what happened to him between 1970 and 1980, and he has great difficulty forming new memories. He cannot taste or smell either. But he still knows who he is. He recognizes himself in the mirror and in photographs, and his behavior is relatively normal.

In a paper published earlier this year postdoctoral researcher Carissa L. Philippi of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and neuroscientist David Rudrauf of the University of Iowa and their colleagues investigated the extent of Roger's self-awareness. In a mirror-recognition task, for example, a researcher pretended to brush something off of Roger's nose with a tissue that concealed black eye shadow. Fifteen minutes later the researcher asked Roger to look at himself in the mirror. Roger immediately rubbed away the black smudge on his nose and wondered aloud how it got there.

9 Comments

1. 1. BaldEgalitarian 11:42 AM 12/4/12

   Noticing life (bugs, frogs) avoiding human presence, I’m relatively certain rudimentary awareness wishes to live, and I believe if humans evolved with only one sense (touch), we still would be enthralled with existence. These thoughts have burdened me with a plethora of boxelder bugs. Please tell me this Indiana Jones like infestation can hurt my brain more than vacuuming hundreds of bugs out of existence.

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2. 2. micha 12:29 PM 12/4/12

   There is a third level of awareness (beyond consciousness and awareness of self) that I don't think is being addressed -- awareness of that awareness. None of the experiments told about "Roger" address metacognizance. Yes, they indicate he has a sense of "I" and knows which nose is his. But does he "hear himself" think? Does his model of "I" include his thoughts, or his physical self? Can he think about his thoughts on a meta-level and amend them?

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3. 3. nanorat 12:49 PM 12/4/12

   "Cognito ergo sum."- René Descartes (1644)
   

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4. 4. nanorat in reply to nanorat 12:55 PM 12/4/12

   By this article you have propelled one of the greatest minds of the 17th century into the 21st century

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5. 5. micha in reply to nanorat 01:02 PM 12/4/12

   I'm not sure your implicit description of the Cogito is correct. Descartes wasn't asserting anything about the nature of awareness, self-awareness, or existence.
   
   Rather, he was saying that the one unquestionable postulate is that the person doing the thinking exists. Because either the postulate is correct, or there is no one involved to say they're incorrect. He then proceeds to try to prove his entire worldview, God and all, from that one given.

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6. 6. sjfone 06:32 AM 12/5/12

   Slowly, slowly we're piecing it all together, mirrors and prisms.

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7. 7. nonHandJaunt 11:19 AM 12/5/12

   Perhaps it should read: *Reported* Self Awareness...
   There is no objective evidence of subjectivity. The article uses the phrase " scientists would argue" and also references a "declaration" rather than asserting "proof" or "evidence". It could be argued that consciousness is a folk-belief like God or ghosts. I know of my own consciousness - but not empirically, using objective measurements. As for your consciousness - I don't really know if it at all. If I asserted to you that I was not conscious, you wouldn't be able to disprove the claim. Claims of consciousness are all by nature unfalsifiable.

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8. 8. The Philosopher 10:20 PM 12/5/12

   I am interested in your comment nonHandJaunt, but wonder if you wouldn't mind elaborating upon it. How is it that you are defining consciousness? It is important that you clarify this so that others can address your claim that "if I asserted to you that I was not conscious, you wouldn't be able to disprove the claim". Your ability to make such a claim is itself dependent upon your being a conscious animal. The simple act of claiming that you are not conscious proves that you are in fact conscious. Now you may be disputing the depth of Roger's perceivable self-awareness, and to this I say that I too am unsure about the thoroughness of the research. As Micha said, metacognition was not sufficiently addressed in this study.
   
   In response to Nanorat, I believe that you have dreadfully misinterpreted this article in an effort to claim evidence for Descartes' body-mind dualism. Those who are apt to read spirits into brain science should mull over Antonio Damasio's research, and the correlations between the brain stem and consciousness, before they jump to any fanciful conclusions. I also hope you realize the word "universal" is not used here to open up discussion about, or give credence to, any metaphysical hypotheses about a universal mind.
   
   On a final note, posting a quote in Latin does not in any way enhance its effectiveness.

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9. 9. nonHandJaunt in reply to The Philosopher 11:05 PM 12/5/12

   By consciousness I mean what most people mean - i.e.
   
   first person subjective experience. Note that is not an
   
   objective definition, and indeed when people use the
   
   word conscousness they are not describing a behavior or
   
   anything else which can be carefully described
   
   objectively.
   
   "Your ability to make such a claim is itself dependent
   
   upon your being a conscious animal." My point is that
   
   *you* don't know that *I* am a conscious animal. If you
   
   saw me in a cafe and the me that you saw claimed not to
   
   be conscious, the you that is you wouldn't know if that
   
   were true or not.
   
   "The simple act of claiming that you are not conscious
   
   proves that you are in fact conscious." To me yes. But
   
   not to you. That is my point. And therefore, in
   
   "empirical" endeavor, wherein we correlate observables
   
   with other observables, we cannot every include "first
   
   person subjective experience" in our list of
   
   observables - therefore in the strictest sense, there
   
   is no scientific investigation of consciousness. Only
   
   of those particular behaviors & reports of the subjects
   
   which the observers deem to truly indicate "first
   
   person subjective awareness."
   
   Nice bit on page 147 of "How The Mind Works" (Pinker) - "The philosopher Georges Rey once told me that he has no sentient experiences. He lost them after a bicyle accident when he was fifteen. Since then, he insists, he has been a zombie. I assume he is speaking toungue-in-cheek, but of course I have no way of knowing, and that is his point."

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