Surfing the Consciousness Wave

acid andy writes:

Researchers for the Human Brain Project have published a theory about how we become conscious of a sensory stimulus, which has been likened to a surfer timing when to catch a wave.

When a sensory stimulus reaches our brain, it doesn't drop in calm waters - brains are always agitated with spontaneous activity. Like a surfer, the stimulus has to catch the right wave of activity at the right time to emerge into consciousness. Right in between two waves is the perfect time to do so, argue Giovanni Rabuffo and Pierpaolo Sorrentino of the Human Brain Project.

We know from extensive experiments that the brain can perceive sensory stimuli even when we are not aware of them: while some information reaches the 'consciousness threshold', other simply does not, even given comparable incoming stimuli.

[...] How come the same stimulus reaches consciousness in certain moments, and fails to do so in others? As this stimulus is the same, it must depend on something changing in the brain.
[...] In recent years, neuroimaging has shown that 'becoming aware of a stimulus' comes with a burst of activations that spread across the brain. However, similar such bursts spontaneously stretch across the brain at all times, even in the absence of stimuli. These bursts are often referred to as 'neuronal avalanches'', borrowing the concept of avalanches from statistical mechanics. And we experience these spontaneous avalanches during rest, while we are typically conscious. Is there a way to unify conscious perception, spontaneous brain activity, and neuronal avalanches?

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