[CodeDiver]

The claustrum is suspected to be a key junction that ties together different systems, making coordination between systems possible. This possibility is suggested by the claustrum's seemingly unique anatomical situation--so many other regions run into it like no other.

If the claustrum is a junction connecting myriad systems, enabling coordinated forms of mental life, possibly consciousness, then in a sense, it could really be a key to consciousness.

Calling this critical juncture key to consciousness is not saying the claustrum is a theater where a homunculus watches everything come together, or that consciousness happens in the claustrum.

Consciousness is a state of the brain where disparate systems interact, and the claustrum may be key to explaining that coordination in consciousness.

Borrowing the car analogy in the article, the ignition system isn't where a car "runs". Nonetheless, the ignition is key to explaining how everything that comes together to put the car in a running state. I think people are misreading what the investigator meant when he suggests the claustrum might be key to explaining the conscious state.

Am I wrong here? Somebody quote me the passage I'm missing where the investigators say the claustrum is where consciousness happens, rather than just saying that the claustrum may be key to understanding how consciousness happens.

[wpietri]

The sentence in the article that reminded me of Dennett was this one: "Crick was working on a paper that suggested our consciousness needs something akin to an orchestra conductor to bind all of our different external and internal perceptions together."

[CodeDiver]

Thanks for sourcing. I guess it's not your fault for reading the author's anthropomorphized metaphor and thinking "homunculus", particularly if you have no familiarity with Crick and Koch's project. In any case, while relating one anthropomorphic metaphor to another is not bad analogy making, the analogy doesn't correspond in fact to what Crick and Koch are looking for. They do believe consciousness has a unified quality, where the input of disparate system form a gestalt. The problem is explaining how all input from so many systems coordinate together. Functionally, there must be a juncture to make coordination--hence the "conductor" metaphor--but how, where? As it happens, there is a piece of anatomy that looks like a physical nexus--the claustrum.