Theory of neuronal Cognition and Consciousness

Claude Touzet (1)

1 LNIA - Laboratoire de Neurosciences intégratives et adaptatives

Formalized in 2010, the Theory of neuronal Cognition (TnC) and Consciousness departs from all existing materialist theories of mind by claiming that our brain does not process information, but only represents information. The logical implication is that we are only a crystallization of our interactions with the environment. Since « extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs », the goal of my tutorial is to provide researchers at all levels with the neuronal blueprints of a (large) number of cognitive functions and concepts. After the description of the cortex as a hierarchy of self-organizing associative memories, I will show how the synergy between sensory and sensory-motor maps generates behaviors. I will then offer explanations about intelligence (a side effect of the observer knowledge), consciousness (an automatic verbalization), endogenous and exogenous attentions, episodic and semantic memories, motivation or joy (a side effect of associative memories functioning). TnC also offers tentative explanations about a few brain diseases (schizophrenia, depression, Alzheimer's disease, autism) and answers to long-lasting questions such as why we must sleep, how hypnosis works, what is the placebo effect, and how unsupervised systems achieve homeostasis. However the biggest TnC result relates to the fact that the absence of free-will is a sure guaranty that we must promote altruism to increase our personal happiness.

Mots clés: Theory of neural Cognition

Domaines: Sciences cognitives

Claude Touzet. Theory of neuronal Cognition and Consciousness. ASCC 2014 (Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness), Jul 2014, Brisbane, Australia. ⟨hal-01355053⟩