Where does the conscious mind live in the brain? 

Consciousness is known as “the hard problem” in science. Everyone from philosophers to priests to psychologists have grappled with it for centuries.

One reason it’s so hard to describe is we rely on our lived experience of being conscious of our own mind + our description of that experience. Sometimes personal descriptions & experience are impossible, e.g. coma patients or in newborn babies ~ are they conscious if they can’t tell us? 

Neuroscientists tend to set aside spiritual explanations & make the assumption consciousness arises from the brain. More precisely, from the networks of communication &

conversations taking place between different brain & nervous system networks 

We base that assumption on the following:

 brain damage alters consciousness

 psychoactive drugs alter consciousness

 different neural signals (brain waves) are associated with different levels of consciousness e.g. light/deep sleep, anaesthesia, coma.

Others reconcile their beliefs by arguing the brain is a “signal receiver” for some type of “universal consciousness”. In much the same way the retina detects light & the cochlea detects sound. Universal consciousness exists, even without a brain to detect & experience it. 

We get seduced by the idea the sub-conscious mind is a mystical self-help machine we can visit to change ourselves. In reality, most of our brain is busy working on subconscious tasks : monitoring digestion + energy expenditure + navigation + locomotion + habits + reading body language + visual processing + hearing etc etc. But all these tasks can be brought into our conscious mind at will. Usually, our brain likes to give us cognitive space to think!

Conversations around consciousness are complex & slightly confronting. Especially if science asks you to set aside spiritual belief