Wandering thoughts about consciousness, the brain, and the commentary system of Larry Weiskrantz

Wandering thoughts about consciousness, the brain, and the commentary system of Larry Weiskrantz. Giovanni Berlucchi. Neuropsychologia, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.10.011

Highlights
•    Importance of Weiskrantz's work for a neuroscientific understanding of consciousness
•    Subjective commentaries in parallel to behavior as markers of consciousness
•    Commentaries in animals as proofs of animal consciousness
•    Conscious human beings unable to provide verbal commentaries: the locked-in syndrome
•    The midpontine pretrigeminal cat as a possible animal model of the locked-in syndrome

Abstract: Larry Weiskrantz has always pursued a keen interest in consciousness in humans and other animals by performing clever experiments and proposing clever ideas. In this rather idiosyncratic essay I selectively review some old and new evidence on real and apparent losses of consciousness in humans, new means that allow the human brain to expose its conscious awareness directly, and experiments on animals that may bridge their consciousness with that of humans.

Keywords: human consciousness; animal consciousness; brainstem sections hippocampus; locked-in syndrome

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locked-in patients are not particularly distressed by their huge behavioral limitations [...] the emotional balance is shifted toward positive emotions