Consciousness and the Social Brain

signal (a top-down bias). As a winning signal emerges and suppresses competing signals, as it shouts louder and causes the competition to hush, it gains a larger influence over other processing in the brain and, therefore, over behavior. Attending to an apple means that the neuronal representation of the apple grows stronger, wins the competition of the moment, and suppresses the representations of other stimuli. The apple representation can then more easily influence behavior. This description of attention is based on an account worked out by Desimone and colleagues, called the “biased competition model of attention.” 6 – 8 It also has some similarity to a classic account proposed by Selfridge in the 1950s called the “pandemonium model.” 9

    FIGURE 2.5
Attention as a data-handling method. Here visual attention is illustrated. Visual stimuli are represented by patterns of activity in the visual system. The many representations in the visual system are in constant competition. At any moment, one representation wins the competition, gains in signal strength, and suppresses other representations. The winning representation tends to dominate processing in the brain and thus behavior. A similar data-handling method is thought to occur in other brain systems outside the visual system.

    Attention is not data encoded in the brain; it is a data-handling method. It is an act. It is something the brain does, a procedure, an emergent process. Signals compete with each other and a winner emerges—like bubbles rising up out of water. As circumstances shift, a new winner emerges. There is no reason for the brain to have any explicit knowledge about the process or dynamics of attention. Water boils but has no knowledge of how it does it. A car can move but has no knowledge of how it does it. I am suggesting, however, that in addition to
doing
attention, the brain also constructs a
description
of attention, a quick sketch of it so to speak, and awareness is that description.
    A schema is a coherent set of information that, in a simplified but useful way, represents something more complex. In the present theory, awareness is an attention schema. It is not attention but rather a simplified, useful description of attention. Awareness allows the brain to understand attention, its dynamics, and its consequences.
    Consider the apple in Figure 2.4 . The brain constructs chunks of information to describe the color of the apple, the shape of the apple, and the motion of the apple. These features are bound together to form a larger description of the apple. According to the present theory, the brain also constructs a chunk of information to describe one’s own attention being focused on the apple.
    In this theory, awareness is handled by the brain like color. Awareness and color are computed features. They are representations. They represent something physically real—wavelength in the case of color, attention in the case of awareness.
    The awareness feature can be bound to color and to many other features as the brain constructs an overarching representation of an object. If the object is a green apple, its representation in thebrain could be diagrammed as
V
+
A
, where
V
stands for visual features (roundness, greenness, movement) and
A
stands for the chunk of information that depicts awareness. Cognitive access to that bound description allows the brain to conclude and report not only that the object has this shape and that color, this motion and that location, but that these properties come with awareness fused to them.
    If the hypothesis is correct, if awareness is a schema that describes attention, then we should be able to find similarities between awareness and attention. These similarities have been noted before by many scientists. 10 – 13 Here I am suggesting a specific reason why awareness and attention are so similar to each other: the one is the brain’s schematic description of the other. Awareness is a sketch of attention. Below I list eight key similarities.

    1. Both involve a target. You attend
to
something. You are aware
of
something.
    2. Both involve an agent. Attention is performed by a brain. Awareness implies an “I” who is aware.
    3. Both are selective. Only a small fraction of available information is attended at any one time. Awareness is selective in the same way. You are aware of only a tiny amount of the information impinging on your senses at any one time.
    4. Both are graded. Attention