A neuroscientific hypothesis on the physical nature of consciousness

This study addresses a central question in neuroscience: What is the physical nature of consciousness? Taking a neuroscientific approach, the study first establishes working definitions for its principal terms—qualia, consciousness, and information—to specify clearly the entities under investigation. It then analyzes the essential features of these defined terms. Information, in particular, is examined in detail across several aspects, including its carrier, nature, effects, interpretations, and meanings. The study next investigates the essential properties of consciousness and identifies potential entities that could underlie it. Candidate entities are drawn from two groups: physically established non-material entities in the brain, such as electrical fields, magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves, and neural information, and physically unestablished non-material entities proposed in various theoretical models. Each candidate is assessed for whether it can satisfy the required properties of consciousness. The analysis finds that the entity that most parsimoniously meets these criteria, without invoking new forces or physical laws, is neural information. Accordingly, the study proposes the hypothesis that consciousness is a form of neural information, specifically information encoded in the spatiotemporal patterns of electrochemical signaling within certain neural circuits. It presents empirically verifiable predictions derived from this hypothesis, making the hypothesis falsifiable. Further, it identifies a neural mechanism by which some information can manifest phenomenally as consciousness, enabling the occurrence of consciousness in the brain, and another mechanism underlying why this manifestation occurs only from the first-person perspective of some neural circuits. The study then compares its hypothesis and proposed mechanisms with existing theories of consciousness, clarifying how it differs in focus, explanatory scope, and thesis. Broader implications for neuroscience, clinical research, and the possibility of artificial consciousness are discussed, along with limitations of the present framework. Overall, because its evidence and arguments lie entirely within established neuroscience, with no novel entities, forces, or physical laws posited, this study advances a parsimonious and neuroscientifically grounded hypothesis on the physical nature of consciousness.