Since the very advent of psychology, a scientific explanation for the phenomena of self-awareness that we know as consciousness, has been something of a Holy Grail. Many different theorists have offered their own explanations, and the hunt rages for ‘NCC’s; the acronym stands for ‘Neural Correlates of Consciousness’, and literary means the physical manifestation of subjective experience.

Even now, there is no conclusive evidence to suggest exactly what happens in the human brain in relation to enable conscious awareness. Historically, many leading theorists have suggested the existence of a ‘seat of consciousness’, one particular part of the brain in which all of our self-aware conscious thought is based. Other arguments call for an ‘attentional spotlight’, or ‘Cartesian Theatre’; the idea that consciousness can move between different modules of the brain, depending on which particular faculty we are currently paying attention to.

There is yet to be seen any concrete evidence in favour of one argument or the other, but within the last decade there have been a number of observations that bring us a little closer to understanding the nature of consciousness. One of the contemporary techniques for studying temporal lobe epilepsy involves implanting a series of metal probes into different regions of the brain, in order to monitor the electrical charge across the cortex. While a patient is already prepared in this manner however, it has been observed that the firing of neurons in completely separate regions of the brain (indicated by short bursts of electrical charge known as ‘action potentials’) is more likely to occur ‘in sync’ during periods of conscious effort. That is to say, while we are thinking or feeling, parts of our brain that would otherwise have no business communicating with one another, seem to working in time; it is as if the whole brain is rhythmically pulsing with electrical waves, much like the steady beating of a heart.
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