A First Principles Approach to Subjective Experience.
Frontiers in systems neuroscience January 1, 2022 Brian Key, Oressia Zalucki, Deborah J Brown 9 citations
Subjective experience—conscious awareness—requires a specific neural architecture, not merely activity in higher cortical regions. The authors propose that any system capable of subjective experience must implement stacked forward models that predict the output of neural processing from inputs, enabling prediction, error detection, and feedback control. They call this the hierarchical forward models algorithm. This framework defines a minimal but not sufficient neural architecture necessary for subjective experience. It implies that animals lacking this architecture cannot have subjective experience, regardless of behavior or brain similarities to humans. The approach shifts focus from which brain regions are active to what computations are performed.