Synaptic clock as a neural substrate of consciousness

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.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In this theoretical work the temporal aspect of consciousness is analyzed. We start from the notion that while conscious experience seems to change constantly, yet for any of its contents to be consciously perceived they must last for some non-zero duration of time, which appears to constitute certain conflict. We posit that, in terms of phenomenological analysis of consciousness, the temporal aspect, and this apparent conflict in particular, might be the most basic property, likely inherent to any conceivable form of consciousness. It is then outlined how taking this perspective offers a concrete way of relating the properties of consciousness directly to the neural plasticity mechanisms of learning and memory, and specifying how exactly subjective experience might be related to processes of information integration. In particular, we propose synaptic clock to constitute a content-specific neural substrate of consciousness, explaining how it would correspond to this temporal aspect. Then, we propose a viewpoint, in which moments of subjective time have different durations, depending on the type of information processed, proportional to the time units of corresponding synaptic clocks, and being in principle different for different brain regions and nervous systems in different animal species. Relation and possible contributions of this viewpoint to the extensional model of time consciousness are discussed. Finally, we consider the two alternative views on the structure of consciousness, namely a static and a dynamic one, and argue in favor of the latter, proposing that consciousness can be best understood if change is considered its only dimension.