Seven years after they started, neuroscientists have published the results of a landmark study that was designed to determine which theory of human consciousness came closest to the mark — and those results are decidedly mixed.
The bad news is that neither of the leading theories held a clear advantage in explaining how consciousness arises. The good news is that researchers picked up new clues about where to look.
One of the leaders of the effort — Christof Koch, a meritorious investigator at the Seattle-based Allen Institute — said he was heartened by the state of the debate.
“Adversarial collaboration fits within the Allen Institute’s mission of team science, open science and big science, in service of one of the biggest, and most long-standing, intellectual challenges of humanity: the Mind-Body Problem,” Koch said in a news release. “Unraveling this mystery is the passion of my entire life.”
