Crazy Human Consciousness Theories

With so many researches and studies about brain we still don't know what consciousness exactly is .

If someone asked you to explain consciousness, could you do it? Very, very smart people have spent their entire careers trying to understand the answer to that question. It is surprising that something we all experience is so hard to explain. The difficulty comes in describing the “what it’s likeness” that characterizes consciousness. There’s something it’s like to experience the color red, to taste chocolate, to feel happy or sad. Philosophers call this phenomenology. Unlike other worldly stuff, it isn’t something we can point to or hold in our hand. It’s not something we’ve been able to calculate. And we’ve yet to find a rigorous method of measuring it .

When I was researching on this topic I found some really crazy explanations and theories ..and I'm writing below some of them which blew my mind .

1.The Human Brain Is A Quantum Computer

In the mid-1990s, researchers put forth a theory of “orchestrated objective reduction” (“Orch OR”), which was immediately roundly criticized. The theory states that “microtubules” inside brain cells are home to quantum vibrational computations “orchestrated” by synaptic inputs and that the brain processes information in much the same way as a quantum computer. The criticism came from the belief that the brain was simply too “warm, wet and noisy” a place for these delicate processes to take place in.

A Japanese team lent heavy corroboration to this theory 20 years later by discovering warm-temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules residing in brain neurons. Orch OR was further bolstered by a study which indicated that clinical anesthesia may work by acting directly on these microtubules, allowing nonconscious brain activity while effectively negating consciousness.

This prompted the originators of the Orch OR theory to undertake a renewed defense of their controversial work.

2.The Brain’s Electrical Activity Produces Consciousness

Conscious Electro-Magnetic Information theory argues that the dynamics of the brain’s electromagnetic field could correlate with consciousness. In fact, it might even be the underlying physical process of consciousness.

The EM field itself isn’t our consciousness, but its transmission of information to individual neurons and regulation of their activity constitutes it. Our conscious will is basically our experience of the brain’s electromagnetic field. This property of the brain evolved, as evolution would not have selected for consciousness unless it had an advantageous evolutionary function.

The theory has come under fire for largely failing to address the concept of free will. It assumes the functions of the brain to be entirely deterministic, a closed system leaving little room for randomness, thought to be a necessary element for free will to emerge.

3.Consciousness Is Passive

Passive Frame Theory suggests that—no pun intended—everyone is overthinking the whole consciousness thing. The theory states that what we perceive isn’t created or even reacted to by conscious processes. Consciousness is more of a middleman or interpreter, simply presenting information with no say in, or control over, our reactions.

We perceive our thoughts, feelings and actions as being dictated or controlled by our consciousness, when we are actually giving it too much credit. Consciousness is like the Internet: It can be used to do a great many things, but it has no free will of its own, being dependent on the user to carry out tasks.

4.Every Brain Cell Is Conscious

The so-called “binding problem” is one of the great hurdles on the path to discovering the true nature of consciousness. While we perceive many different sensory elements individually, our subjective experience is of all of these elements bound together into a single experience. This binding is problematic, as there is simply no explanation for how it happens.

The single neuron theory asserts that each individual neuron actually has some level of consciousness of its own. It suggests that much like people, neurons are capable of receiving and relaying information in a conscious manner but are unable to pool information among a group. It is this neuronal intercommunication that results in a single, unified sensory output.

The notion that neurons are able to essentially communicate with each other despite having no physical means to do so is also highly suggestive of quantum entanglement, a known quantum mechanical function in which the states of two connected particles will always match each other, even when separated.

5.We Perceive The World In Slices Of Time

Scientists have been unable to agree whether perception of our surroundings flows unimpeded like water or is perceived incrementally, like images in a flip book. Researchers have developed a model which posits that it is a little of both.

In their aptly named Time Slice Theory, perception is said to be a two-stage process, the first of which is an unconscious processing of our surroundings in broad strokes, like the shape or color of surrounding objects. This first stage occurs in incredibly brief “slices” of time of up to 400 milliseconds. The brain then consolidates and processes the input in the second stage.

While this model focuses heavily on visual processing, the implication is that the feeling of “consciousness” is basically an illusion, a series of snapshots cohered into a whole with the help of other cognitive processes like memory.

Human brain never fails to surprise no matter how many times I read about it .It's way more complex than we think of it .And the only thing which we can say about it at present moment with 100% surety is ..We just know how to use it but  we don't know what it really IS.