title: Phenomenology of consciousness from apprehension to judgment.
abstract: We explore two different moments of human cognition, namely apprehension (A), whereby a coherent perception emerges by recruitment of large neuron groups and judgment (B), whereby memory retrieval of different (A) units coded in a suitable language and comparison of them leads to the formulation of a judgment. The first one has a duration around 1 sec (from 0.5 to 3 sec), it appears as an a-temporal present and its neural correlate is a wide synchronization in the EEG gamma band. It may be described as an interpretation of sensorial stimuli in terms of some stored algorithm, via a Bayes procedure. The second one entails the comparison of two apprehensions acquired at different times, coded in a given language, and retrieved by memory. It lasts around 3 sec and requires self-consciousness, as the judging agent must be well aware that he/she is the same one who faces the two coded apprehensions under scrutiny in order to extract a mutual relation. At variance with (A), (B) does not presuppose an algorithm, but it rather builds a new behavioural model by an inverse Bayes procedure. It will be shown how this build up of a novel model is related to creativity and free will.
authors.affiliation: University of Firenze and CNR-INO, Largo, Firenze, Italy. tito.arecchi@inoa.it
authors.forename: F Tito
authors.initials: FT
authors.lastname: Arecchi
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001364:Awareness / Q000502:physiology*; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D003344:Cortical Synchronization; D004569:Electroencephalography; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment / Q000502:physiology*; D007802:Language; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology; D009474:Neurons / Q000502:physiology; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D010465:Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D011999:Recruitment, Neurophysiological / Q000502:physiology