Climbing Brain Levels of Organisation from Genes to Consciousness

Publication date: Available online 1 February 2017
Source:Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Author(s): Jean-Pierre Changeux
Given the tremendous complexity of brain organisation, here I propose a strategy that dynamically links stages of brain organisation from genes to consciousness, at four privileged structural levels: genes; transcription factors (TFs)–gene networks; synaptic epigenesis; and long-range connectivity. These structures are viewed as nested and reciprocally inter-regulated, with a hierarchical organisation that proceeds on different timescales during the course of evolution and development. Interlevel bridging mechanisms include intrinsic variation-selection mechanisms, which offer a community of bottom-up and top-down models linking genes to consciousness in a stepwise manner.



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