Table of Contents

Part 1 The world knot: consciousness - philosophical paradox or scientific object?; the special problem of consciousness; everyman's private theatre - ongoing unity, endless variety. Part 2 Consciousness and the brain: building a picture of the brain; consciousness and distributed neural activity; neural activity integrated and differentiated. Part 3 Mechanisms of consciousness - the Darwinian perspective: selectionism; nonrepresentational memory; perception into memory - the remembered present. Part 4 Dealing with plethora - the dynamic core hypothesis: integration and reentry; consciousness and complexity; determining where the knot is tied - the dynamic core hypothesis. Part 5 Untangling the knot: qualia and discrimination; the conscious and the unconscious. Part 6 Observer time: language and the self; thinking; prisoners of description.

About the Author

Nobel Laureate Gerald M Edelman is Director of the Neurosciences Institute and President of the Neurosciences Research Foundation. He lives in California. Giulio Tononi is a Senior Fellow in Theoretical and Experimental Neurobiology at the Neurosciences Institute.

Reviews

"Praise for Gerald Edelman: "The new Darwin...His theory is an enrichment of life itself" - Oliver Sacks, The Times"