Synaptic clock as a neural substrate of consciousness
arXiv Preprint Archive February 18, 2020 Bartosz Jura
Conscious experience appears to change constantly, yet any content must last for a nonzero duration to be perceived, creating a fundamental conflict. This work argues that this temporal aspect is the most basic property of consciousness, likely inherent to any conceivable form. Taking this perspective offers a way to relate consciousness directly to neural plasticity mechanisms of learning and memory. The authors propose a "synaptic clock" as a content-specific neural substrate of consciousness, where moments of subjective time have different durations proportional to the time units of these clocks, varying across brain regions and species. The work argues for a dynamic view of consciousness, where change is its only dimension.