Physical Foundations of Consciousness: Brain Organisation: The Role of Synapses

Our brains' 100 billion neurons communicate across tiny gaps called synapses, and their precise spacing may hold the key to consciousness itself. New findings in q-bio.NC reveal that synaptic gaps aren't fixed - they dynamically expand and contract throughout our daily wake-sleep cycle. This physical reorganization appears to act like a master switch, controlling our transitions between conscious and unconscious states.

Study at a glance

Abstract

We have analysed the many facets of Consciousness into two distinct categories. First: the organisational state of the neural networks at any one time, which determines whether a person is conscious - awake, or unconscious - asleep. Second: the processes that underlie the traffic of electrical signals across these networks that accounts for all the experiences of conscious awareness. This paper addresses the former; namely, how the state of the billions of neural networks and the trillions of additional axons, dendrites and synapses varies over the daily cycle - what physically changes when we go to sleep - what happens when we wake up. We submit that the widths of synaptic clefts are not fixed, but are variable, and that this variable tension across the synapses is the neural correlate of consciousness.