A few whimsical thoughts on consciousness:

-Evidence suggests that consciousness is integral to the resolution of conflicting motor commands (think how intensely aware you are when you have to hold on to a burning plate, or when you’re pulling off a band-aid, or any other time you have to fight a reflex)

-Consciousness seems to be tied in with executive function (they’re both located near and around the frontal cortex), which is also important to the regulation of conflicting motor commands.

-Various parts of the brain have been mapped specifically to restraint. The ACC is often associated with ‘conflict monitoring’, and the DLPFC is associated with sorting out conflicting information. When we’re asleep, the DLPFC is shut down, which is why we cannot notice the ridiculous dreamworld generated for us while we sleep. Another brain area, the DFMC, shows activation when an action is inhibited.

-Frontal lobe damage results in a loss of impulse control, and children (who have less developed frontal lobes) tend to be notoriously impulsive.

-The frontal cortex is likely the last brain area to have evolved (as it is the last brain area to grow in babies). It was likely added on to an already adequately functioning brain, one that was simply following basic emotional scripts. Conscious thought is a slow process, and in times of stress we rely on the quick judgments of our emotional system instead.

-The infamous Benjamin Libet experiments show we’re not conscious of an action until we’ve already decided to do it.

All the evidence points to consciousness serving an inhibitory function, essentially neurological veto power. This is interesting enough by itself, but what really intrigues me is how this function might relate to how the brain learns (specifically, how it approximates Bayesian updating and/or hypothesis and test).