Consciousness, Representation, Action: The Importance of Being Goal-Directed

Publication date: Available online 7 December 2017
Source:Trends in Cognitive Sciences
Author(s): Cyriel M.A. Pennartz
Recent years have witnessed fierce debates on the dependence of consciousness on interactions between a subject and the environment. Reviewing neuroscientific, computational, and clinical evidence, I will address three questions. First, does conscious experience necessarily depend on acute interactions between a subject and the environment? Second, does it depend on specific perception–action loops in the longer run? Third, which types of action does consciousness cohere with, if not with all of them? I argue that conscious contents do not necessarily depend on acute or long-term brain–environment interactions. Instead, consciousness is proposed to be specifically associated with, and subserve, deliberate, goal-directed behavior (GDB). Brain systems implied in conscious representation are highly connected to, but distinct from, neural substrates mediating GDB and declarative memory.



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