Nobody perceives or experiences the world like you do. You are an ever-changing, unique collection of perceptions, memories and expectations, of which you are constantly aware. The sense that you know your own mind is your consciousness at work.
Yet despite thousands of years of inquiry by philosophers and scientists, the origins of consciousness have never been truly understood. How does a physical thing, the brain, generate a subjective experience, such as delight in the beauty of autumn? We have some clues: disease, stroke or injury candamage it; we fleetingly surrender it during sleep or while anaesthetised. But the exact neurological or physiological structures that conspire to produceconsciousness remain elusive.
Now, a $20m effort will pit competing theories against each other. The project, by the Templeton World Charity Foundation, was announced last week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Illinois and reported in the journal Science.