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If you had to point to where consciousness manifests, you would probably point your finger straight at your head. It’s the easy bit. Where exactly are the brain circuits for consciousness, or how physical properties within them translate into subjective presence, is a question that has plagued us for centuries. And it turns out we may have been looking in the wrong place all along.
Catherine Tallon-Baudry, a neuroscientist at the Supérieure des Normales in Paris, France, says that the brain alone is not enough to generate subjective experience. Without the body, the self does not exist. “Just as the concept of a ‘car’ exists, it only exists if there are a certain number of components and they interact with each other,” she says.
Instead, researchers should recognize that interoceptive sensations, which monitor body signals such as heart rate, pain, thirst, and pleasure, play an important role in generating our thoughts and emotions. Now, many people also consider interoception to be a fundamental feature of consciousness.
Our internal organs, particularly the heart and intestines, play an important role in building our conscious experiences, says Tallon-Baudry. , which Tallon-Baudry believes provides a convenient hook from which the brain can hang its sense of self.
Taking this idea a step further, Antonio Damasio of the University of Southern California states that the body’s internal signals are not only concerned with consciousness, but consciousness. “People keep talking about consciousness as the great mystery that is revealed by understanding the brain, but they are wrong.”
