How is this so good and free on the internet? Where does the money come from? I'm blown away; Thank you Robert Lawrence Kuhn!

One day when I was 5 or 6 I looked at my mom and suddenly realized, she cannot see through my eyes and neither could I see through hers. That was my first self awakening. Knowing that I am an island and all of us are islands.

The brain is not conscious, it just holds it.

Consciousness is a complex and mysterious phenomenon we are still struggling to understand now in the 21st century.

Thank u so much , I'm intrigued by all what has been said. ❤

This was another great video, Dr. Kuhn. The music on this episode was brilliant!

Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux just blew my "mind". And explained so much about human behavior in a simple (and guilt relieving) statement: "...our prefrontal cortex has no communication with the amygdala (!). So the part of the cortex, prefrontal cortex involved in thinking, planning and decision making, is NOT connected with the amygdala (emotional center)....that's why it is so hard for us to have conscious control over an emotion like fear, anxiety...we can't just say 'okay I'm not going to be anxious, depressed anymore' because there's NO connectivity there." Wow!

To sum up: no one has a clue how the physical brain gives rise to consciousness (..experience, sentience, qualia, whatever).

Dr. James Cooke's "living mirror" theory is worth looking at. One can draw the line anywhere for defining "consciousness" (e.g. Michio Kaku's "number of 'feedback loops'", thermometer as "one unit" of "consciousness"). But another, more intuitive line, is between (biological) living systems and non-living systems. We intuitively know there's a difference between a rock and a bacterial cell. The former strictly follows Newton's laws of motion. The latter displays some "interiority" and autonomy. This is the first "proto-consciousness", even before the development of brains. Dr. Cooke draws heavily from Karl Friston's "free energy principle". The natural tendency of physical systems is towards greater entropy. But somehow biology bucks this trend (enabled with the ongoing with energy intake). It does this by separating "self" from the "environment". Hence, the first living system has a cell wall. There's an "inside" and "outside". The "inside" has some inner representation of the "outside". We call the inside "experience". The outside maybe called "reality". The inside is not the same as the external reality, but attempts to mirror it. There is a constant need to reconcile the "inner" representation with what is actually on the outside, to help it to navigate the world. (You can apply Bayesian modeling to it to explain the dynamics.) The interface to the external world includes "perception" and "motor control". So the whole configuration of "self"/"environment", "senses"/inner representation/motor control, forms a specific complex, whereby we can say it is "living", and "conscious", in its environment (according to this definition). It's a specific (macro) configuration, operating with a certain set of processes. Of course, human beings, with their brains are even more complex than this. There is an aggregation of low level integration processes (the "voting" analogy described by one of the interviewees) to form higher level representations. You can also have "model of models, of models, ..."., i.e. meta-perception, meta-cognition, "awareness of 'awareness'", "awareness of 'self'". The meta-cognition of one layer over earlier layers are greater "degrees of freedom". (This can allow a non-abstract notion of "free will", with constraints (?)). The basic biological prototype, also explains, the interiority, the private nature of consciousness. Its integrative function leads to a "unitary" sense. The last layer of perception adds to the sense of "transparency" (not quite visible, just as an eye cannot see itself, but can see its "contents"). Beside perceptual, "consciousness" is also intentional, if you add motor control to the mix. Interaction with the environment is fundamental to the conscious system (e.g., issues relating to infant development, sensory deprivation tank, ..., even controlled experiments in the scientific method).

EXCELLENT !!! (as usual) Thank You !!!

This is just the most fascinating subject. Cheers

Great program, thanks for putting it together 👍

what i think is that throughout millions of years, the mind became so fast and functioning in very complex way that it reached something like consciousness, an evidence that i have is that if we look at now kids we see that people comment : “ when i was his age i was still thinking my dad is a super hero” or something like that!! u got my point, a new kid automatically adapts! it’s like a state which is developing because of the mind developing accordingly to it functioning. and if it is for us to be aware we should have been aware of what we are!! and all truth is, but we know nothing we are not aware at all, we just solved all problems to survive and then we looked at another problem we picked the problem of how and why we exist and created imaginative things to answer!

Scheibel - What a great teacher!

Personally think the brain is a converter which turns thoughts from consciousness in too physical actions. Like a radio turns radio waves in too sounds. So without a brain/radio the counsciousness and radiowaves still exists

I love his work and research for humans here on planet earth ❤

Excellent.... thanks 🙏.

It seems to me that consciousness manifests when a critical mass of neurons are generating their chemoelectrical signals. As these electral signals travel on the axons, an electromagnetic wave is produced that radiates a short distance. When multiple neurons fire simultaneously, the interactions of intersecting waves creates a field that is more than the sum of its parts (by waves reinforcing each other). This is consciousness. Feedback loops increase or decrease firings from specific brain areas as we focus or ignore information from them.

I love this program :)

Great documentary

This guy is amazing 🤩

"consciousness involves the brain, nobody doubts that." thats a fundemental assumption.

13:15 I can relate. When i sit and mediate there's the voice that counts and a conciousness listening and one always wandering off...at least 3 but 4 or more makes sense to me.

Consciousness is a transcendent (supernatural) experience. That's why we have such a difficult time understanding it.

Honesty is the ultimate truth.

Consciousness, is the brain just the transceiver connecting the meatsuit to a higher realm via some kind of quantum connection? And that once we die that connection disconnects and we find ourselves back in that realm, true home? All fascinating stuff...!!

In enjoy these high-ly 👌

Yes, observed is observer. Thanks. 💕

What would it mean that different networks of neurons each can produce conscious experience? Does it mean something in the networking of neurons produces conscious experience? Or could it mean something besides network of neurons is needed to produce conscious experience? Or might it mean something inside each neuron produces conscious experience, so that any network of neurons will produce conscious experience? Or something else?

What is main ingredient of subjective awareness? Is it emotion / feeling, sensory perception, other or combination? Perhaps there is both conscious and subconscious elements in subjective awareness.

Poor Christof....he was still talking : )

Great series. The fact that neuroscientists have to elicit "belief" and have little to no proof that consciousness emerges from the brain is perfectly summarized at the end. It's the reason that Robert, himself a neuroscientist, continued to follow his intuition that there is something more, a mind, soul, whatever you want to call it, and create awesome episodes of this great show. I'd love for a neuroscientist to explain that. Why do we have such strong metaphysical insights or intuition that we follow, which go beyond the material? Indefinitely, they would be able to.

What I find amazing , is living things that don’t have brains at least what we think of as brains such as plants . they seem to have consciousness. They reproduce react to the world around them. Maybe life itself is consciousness. Love your shows.

Christof Koch made the most sense

Emotions come from your thoughts

There are many things on theatre stage but the light spot is just on one and that is consciousness.. It´s sensing now and here

I hope RLK reads these comments. I have a theory. What makes brains conscious? We as humans become conscious because like no other animal are forced to go to the restroom. It is this process at the age of 2 - 4 we have to shift our brains to realize we have to catch ourselves before we need to go and act on it. This makes us self-aware.

Can the brain / mind experience and figure out what energy is doing, then focus and direct energy to do something?

Man, that Dr. Christoph was a fast talker, he wore me out trying to keep up with him.

From 24:48 to 24:55 sums it up for me quite well. I'm totally convinced that the structure of my brain has a massive influence on how I perceive, react, and emote to the world. When I was young I was basically socially incapacitated by crippling shyness. It has an extremely negative effect on all my social interactions from normal social interactions and loss of opportunities due to being too shy to speak up or volunteer to participate in actives that I knew I would be really good at, to the serious devastation of my ability to initiate intimate relationships with a potential partner. The problem was that even though I was acutely aware of the problem I couldn't seem to solve it. I made purposeful attempts to overcome this crippling shyness and they all failed. This is why I am convinced that this problem was indeed caused by brain structures, and not by mere conscious thoughts. Disclaimer: I'm not saying that the problem could not have been solved. I am a firm believer in brain plasticity and the ability to rewire our own brains via correct therapy. The problem for me at that time was that I neither had knowledge of, nor access to the types of mentors or guidance that could have helped me achieve that goal. This innate crippling shyness had a strangle hold on me well into adulthood. I didn't truly begin to overcome it until my 40's. At that point in my life I basically quit worrying about what other people thought of me, and my shyness faded away. That's actually a very wrong solution to the problem. It basically meant that I simply gave up on trying to achieve that things I'd like to achieve. And that's no solution. I know now that with the correct therapy I could have been cured of my crippling shyness at a much younger age. In fact, with the proper mentors it could have been nipped in the bud at an extremely early age, as soon as it was first recognized to be a problem. However, regardless of the form that therapy took, the ultimate result would have been a rewiring of my brain through neural plasticity. Let on my own, I could not address it. The harder I tried the more angry I would become that I couldn't change it. My crippling shyness caused me extreme great anger. Although this anger was never aimed at myself. It was just anger of pure frustration as I did not blame myself as being the cause of this shyness. Indeed it was something I wanted to have nothing to do with. So from my perspective it was a crippling condition that I had no control over. And so I could hardly be blamed for something I have no control over, right? So I never blamed myself for this condition, again from my perspective it was similar to having cancer. Having cancer might make a person extremely angry, but they most certainly aren't going to focus that anger on themselves unless they are convinced that their own actions caused the cancer. I certainly didn't feel that I was causing my extreme shyness. It was something I wished would go away. I just couldn't make that happen until much latter in life when I basically gave up trying. But that also resulted in giving up many other things as well, so it was not a productive solution. So yeah, I'm totally convinced that many psychological problems are indeed caused by structures in the brain that our beyond our control. Yes, perhaps they are not entirely beyond our control with sufficient plasticity therapy, but lacking the knowledge of how to employ those therapies it can indeed be crippling. On the topic of "Free Will". Do we really have free will? I would say no. If I had free will I would have simply willed my crippling shyness away. The fact that I couldn't do that seems to imply that if I have free will it is extremely limited. Could I have "willed" it away via proper plasticity therapy? Probably so. But how free is my will if I'm not even aware of how to employ such therapies? If "Free Will" is dependent on having knowledge we don't currently have, then it's not worth a whole heck of a lot IMHO.

Do neural correlates of consciousness happen because something different than the neurons is producing conscious experience in correlation of neurons? And would that mean something inside the neurons produces neural correlates of consciousness, or something in the networking produces neural correlates of consciousness?

"Correlation does not mean causation" . We know what it's like to be unconscious, so it suggests the functionality of the brain is important - meaning that rocks aren't conscious. So regardless of whether there actually is an extra-brain component or not, the physical brain is ultimately required for consciousness.

How old is some of this? Dude at @8:00 is using Windows XP on a laptop that looks like it's 10 years old! Great video, as always, though. :)

Arnie nailed it.

Brain science alone might take us closer, but not the whole way. Stephan Chorover makes valid points. External environmental factors have to play a big role. The entire body experience consciousness due to the environment, Then the the brain processes that information into specific parts of the brain which we can see happening. The problem I see is we think its solely in the brain. The entire body has neurons which take in information to the brain which process that information. So it's possible consciousness doesn't exist in the brain, but the entire body. Just because the brain process that information, that doesn't mean it produces consciousness.

Being aware of you conscious is trait that only a select few have evolved to do so. Human brains are just a network of various independently thinking parts that collectively form an identity. This "identity" is what allows us to second guess our actions specific to our experiences. This "identity" is shaped by external influences experienced since birth till death. In a sense, consciousness, is a second brain, a part that works independently from the rest of the whole. The "speaking voice" in you head that is conscious of what the rest of the body is doing.

At 19.30 he says that there is no connection between amygdala and PFC. But recent research have shown that there is a some sort of connection between them, especially with ventromedial pre frontal cortex and dacc. Dacc aggravates anxiety vmpfc stops it and reduces anxiety stimulation from all over the brain. Please correct me if there is anything dubious.

What Makes Brains Conscious? To me, it starts with the evolution of brains. As brains become more complex, there come a point where the brain learns and employs a simple standard method of processing information in order to survive. I think fear had a lot to do with first signs of consciousness.

As an alien observer from a 4.2 light year away planet which i choose to disclose the human brain is a testament to the computing power of the universe😊

- A windows XP laptop wired to another screen with a paper sheet indicating "Dell Laptop Display" - A German guy with some stereotypical accent. - This video is conscious

when we are sleeping, we are conscious in dreams, we talk and think and see. being conscious simply means more senses are active, you are in survival mode.

Listening to Kristoff speak is what I imagine being hugged by cocaine would feel like.

But things don't necessarily need brains or even nervous systems. Look at the jellyfish and sponge. Since you don't need a neural network to produce (or receive) consciousness, then what *do* you need? Where does consciousness actually come from?

We rightly know that in general, "correlation does not (necessarily) mean causation," but to ignore direct strong correlations over time and space of aspects of consciousness to brain activity is to deny statistical causation which is the core of science.

Consciousness is present inside and out side of the body at the same time as well connected to cosmic consciousness question is where consciousness goes when we leave body? may be merged with cosmic consciousness

Do you slow down the audio sometimes??

As far as I know atoms are smaller than neurons. Therefore consciousness is quantum mechanical.

Is there anything else happening in brain when there is conscious experience / subjective awareness besides neural correlates? What does oxygen from the blood do during neural correlates of conscious experience?

My brain is conscious enough to know that this lot don't know where brain's consciousness come from.

Hi Sir, I have a simple question. Inside a factory at the end of the shift a supervisor and his co-worker are counting the produced objects, the objects are approximately the size of a tennis ball. It is their daily routine,the worker counts the objects as he takes it from the production lot and puts it inside a bag. The role of the supervisor is to keep watch so that there is no mistake while counting. One fine day, before starting the counting process, the supervisor looks at the lot and writes down some random three digit number as quantity of the produced items, in short he assumes that the actual quantity would probably match with that number. Now the question is what are the chances of that actual quantity matching exactly with that random number?

I would like to participate in something like this, let them hook me up to the sensors to try to find out more, how could i go about doing this? This message is for Robert from closer to the truth From Mark

"So here I am with very limited ways of knowing the world." What influence does this limitation have on our beliefs? Our assumptions?

planning has to do with time (future) more than energy; maybe time is unconscious in contrast to energy which is conscious?

Is there any common neurological activity to the variety of conscious experiences?

One consciousness experiences various perspectives of reality'

Chemicals and electricity at a bare minimum. We know that part for sure. The central nervous system plays a role. And that might be all there is to it.

Brain like all physical things resides within consciousness, not consciousness within brain.

If you find an answer, please inform the orange thing where to find it

Q. "What Makes Brains Conscious?" A. "Consciousness." Without consciousness, brains are just unconscious matter.

Only one factor triggers the wonderous brain, that is the living breath- I say living because it's this function (the living breath) that allows me to post this comment too -Science need to delve deeper into this aspect, to understand further, hitherto deeper regions of the brain- Emotions can be studied in-depth by observing breathing patterns, that dog us each moment of our lives Consciousness!! Let's just say forget it,this may just be the catalyst for a #ConsciousAwakening

I would say that conciousness use over 98% of our sensors when we are deep reading someone else mind

There is only Consciousness.

what happens to energy in brain when conscious or not conscious?

interaction between brain internal to organism and external environment through energy?

We don't know. Next question

complex nervous systems become aware of external environment through energy?

neural correlates of consciousness having energy and probability could link to quantum?

Would emotional experience have subjective awareness?

Non locality of consciousness is most interesting now this is the new frontier

I find that many scientists talking about consciousness are vague or in my opinion wrong in what they consider essential to consciousness. Consciousness is almost inexplicable but most closely we could get I think, is to say that it is a knowing that I know. But not a verbal knowing that says "I know", but the direct experience of it, as if the verbal part were another layer, just like imagery and sensory experiences might be another layer. It's more similar to the idea of the projection screen, where consciousness is the self-aware screen viewing itself, but isn't what is projected on it. Somehow often consciousness gets equated with experiences and I don't agree with that. It is more fundamental, again: imo. I've wondered whether somehow consciousness is weaved into the fabric of reality, just like spacetime. Maybe it's a quality of the universe (not of objects in it, but rather pervading everything). It's not exactly the same as panpsychism as that is always explained as "everything is conscious to some extent", which isn't what I'm saying. I'm wondering whether consciousness is weaved through the universe like spacetime, it's part and parcel, and the individual one-point experience of a human being or another form of life is then experienced as being in that place and being personal consciousness, simply because there are experiences being generated in that location by a brain, which can be 'awared' by all-pervading consciousness. The variety of experiences between human beings and between different animals and creates is just a result of different experiences being generated, but the consciousness that knows all of it is not personal, it just seems that way because the experiences that are being experienced are local.

I believe we're in consciousness and are conscious of it. Similar to how we are in the Soul and have a Spirit. The illuminated man: one who merges Spirit, personality, emotions into one. The world cannot influence this man as he's one with nature. Religion cannot persuade this man because he's true in Spiritual form. You cannot trigger this man emotionally because he has overcome the ego and his senses do not pertain to it. A man of Oneness; the ultimate man. Whereas a scientists looks outside himself for answers, the illuminated man realizes he is the Answer.

Robert said, " emotions are not mysteries they are generated by specific brain structures " I think they are generated by attachment and relationships

These individuals are discussing a scientific model for human consciousness, but what I will be describing here is a functional model of human consciousness: If we consider energy as being fundamental to reality, then human consciousness is the ability to identify different types of energies from another, and specifically human consciousness is the ability to name the energy, to transform the energy into another form of energy (which contains energy relationships to the original energy), then the intention to transmit that into a new form of energy. For example, if there is a blue dog, human consciousness will be able to visually sense and differentiate the energy of a dog, and the energy of the color (blue), then from that visual observation, transform it into language in the mind, (actually calling it a dog, and the color blue), then the individual can transform that energy into another energy form, such as through voice waves (saying the physical words, blue dog), or written (writing the words blue dog), so that the original visual energy image is transformed into either auditory energy or written energy forms. This is what makes human consciousness unique from other animals. So far the scientific community has not fully attempted to describe a functional model of consciousness, because of this lack of a functional model, it will likely slow their progress of a scientific model.

tokes and cheers

You need a soul to make human consciousness. It's that simple. Have faith.

Consciousness is the result of generator loops in the brain. See: www.ruf.dk/trans2.doc This theory was presented at the conference in Copenhagen called "Towards a Science of Consciousness". It has created interest among many scientists including Sir Francis Crick. A generator loop is the result of positive feedback in a collection of neurons. It will be ignited if the conditions are right. When we think, our brain generates a "dance" of generator loops.

I already watched this episode 🤔🙄

Even if my awareness is annihilated when I die, the spark which began my awareness will begin to exist in a baby after my death. Therefore, reincarnation. I am not my thoughts or sensations. I am my awareness. Buddhist monks experience awareness but not thoughts and sensations when they enter a deep state of meditation. Thoughts and sensations occur to awareness. It occurs to me I should wash my car. Thoughts occur to awareness like a ball striking a tree. My experience of awareness will begin to exist in a baby after my death, even if I have no soul. But it is not "my" awareness. Rather, I am the experience of awareness.

Yeah, but what is what we refer at when we say conciousness?

The brain is a filter organ not a consciousness organ. They should realize this already with the understanding of epigenetics.

18:00 minutes. In the same vein as his discussion about memories associated with perceptual inputs. Almost everyone over the age of 50 will remember going to the local drugstore to get an old cigar box to store crayons in at school. There is a specific smell of crayon and old cigar box that has been burned into everyone's memory. All I have to do is smell a crayon and the memories of those days come flooding back. In fact, I'll wager that everyone who had similar experiences just had vivid memories of both the smell and of very specific childhood experiences of that time in their lives. I'll go so far as to say, that each of you who had that memory experience began to think about all sorts of other experiences from that time. We call it nostalgia.

Coffein , ofcourse .

What makes brains think that theyre conscious. :x

Brain is just a tool for consciousness It's the mind that misidentifies with body Our true self is consciousness

1:52 Here we have 2 brains. This one is from Hans Delbrook, the other from Abby-something.

What makes brains conscious? That question can also be, what makes matter conscious? Answer: it isn't, the statement " I am this body " translates to " I am conscious of this body " but as soon as you say that that confirms that there is a subjective reality and no longer how much you could study the atom in detail you would not find any subjective existence within it. The subjective is distinct from the objective and no objective object such as our brain can reveal to us the nature of the subjective reality being the " eternal in the now reality of sameness " that consciousness is.

Inner awareness? I suggest that survival of the fittest rules in all forms of life, including human animals.

From the zygote egg cell that gives life. To all the the rest of the cells that know how you hair grows or hand etc. There most be consciousnesses in all cells not just the neurons or brain. The Automatic Nervous System it’s for us to survive. :) much love

How does subconsciousness fit in with brain activity and consciousness?

Christoph gave the best explanation of this concept I heard yet...