The ‘correlates’ in neural correlates of consciousness
Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews June 5, 2011 Tom A. de Graaf, Po‐jang Hsieh, Alexander T. Sack 273 citations
The concept of 'consciousness' in the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is problematic, and the term 'correlates' is also confused. Brain events that covary with conscious experience can be neural substrates of the experience, but they can also be neural prerequisites or neural consequences. This work disentangles these different sorts of brain processes conceptually and proposes a concrete multi-pronged research program to distinguish them empirically in near-future consciousness research.