How Phantom Limbs Explain Consciousness - The Atlantic - 0 views
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How Phantom Limbs Explain Consciousness
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Almost all people who have an amputation experience a phantom. Usually the effect fades within days, but in some cases it can remain for a lifetime.
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The brain constructs a model of the self that neuroscientists call the body schema. The body schema is a simulation. It takes in touch, vision, and baseline information about what’s connected to what, and builds a virtual model of your body.
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Attention is the selective enhancement of some signals over others, such that the brain’s resources are strategically deployed.
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In control theory, if a machine is to control something optimally, it needs a working model of whatever it’s controlling. The brain certainly follows this principle in controlling the body.
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Just as the body schema is a surreal description of the body, so the attention schema would be a surreal description of attention.
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This is called the attention schema theory, a theory that my lab has been developing and testing experimentally for the past five years. It’s a theory of why we insist with such certainty that we have subjective experience. Attention is fundamental.