Interesting story: Where does human consciousness come from?

I have seen people ask why elements have no consciousness, but living things, as a combination of elements, have consciousness? Where does consciousness come from? Why does consciousness disappear after the death of living things, so that living things return to elements? Today, I will introduce the origin of consciousness from the perspective of evolution, which may help you understand.

01. About consciousness

In fact, consciousness is not something that came out of nowhere, but a very basic biological function that has evolved gradually, and this function has the most basic physical and chemical basis.

In a word: Cellular irritability → Specialized cells (nerve cells) that are responsible for irritability → Specialized cell combinations (nerve tissue) that are responsible for irritability → Organs (brain) that are responsible for irritability

In this evolutionary process, you can see a large number of organisms at every step, such as single-celled organisms, brainless organisms, and organisms with brains. The following is a detailed explanation of the process from stress to the brain.

02. The process of stress reaching the brain

First of all, elements are not static; they also undergo changes, such as electronic transitions.

Then, after the elements form molecules, the reactions will become more diverse. The emergence of molecules is a miracle of nature. You will find that molecules are not monotonous, they will have various reactions.

Inorganic reactions: For example, oxidation reaction, iron turns into red iron ore.

Organic reactions: Going one step further, more advanced molecules have better performance, such as enzymes. Enzymes can catalyze molecular reactions. For example, a classic molecular structure is ATP synthase. You see, this structure is so complex, and it can rotate to achieve many functions.

Of course, the more advanced enzyme is the one that can replicate itself, which is the legendary replicator.

03. Replicator

Regarding replicators, I will give you two examples. These two may be the earliest sources of life on Earth. You can judge for yourself which one it is.

1. Prions. Prions are not living things, but pure proteins. However, they can make the proteins they come into contact with become exactly the same as themselves.

If you have seen The Matrix, you will know that this is how a virus in the Matrix replicates itself.

2. RNA ribozyme. RNA ribozyme is another magical existence, which subverts the definition that enzymes are just proteins. Although there are not many studies on ribozymes today, ribozymes are just RNA and can play a catalytic role.

When these molecules meet another molecule, it is like a golden wind and jade dew meeting, which is better than countless things in the world. That is: membrane.

With the membrane, natural reactions can take place in a limited space, thus avoiding various external interferences and maintaining the system more focused.

So, from this day on, life was officially born!

04. The Nature of Consciousness

Life refers to an organism composed of cells. (Viruses are not life, but biologically active organisms.) One of the most basic requirements for life is stress response. When it is hot, go to a cold place; when it is cold, go to a hot place. When you are hungry, look for food; when you are thirsty, look for water. This is the basic chemical driving process.

And these reactions are further strengthened, which is what we call consciousness.

The essence of consciousness is also signal, which is transmitted through chemical reactions of neurons.

A large number of studies have shown that consciousness itself is a connection signal between human nerve cells. Each connection in a network represents a consciousness, for example, connection A represents blinking, connection B represents liking, and connection C represents seeing (this is too exaggerated, it is much more detailed than this)

The picture below is a connection between a person with stroke and a normal person, mainly showing the hemianopsia caused by stroke

The left picture shows the average distribution of the brain network of the control group; the right picture shows the average distribution of the brain network of the hemianopsia patient. The size of the dots is marked according to the actual proportion. The significantly improved network connections of the patients have been highlighted, and the newly formed connections and the original strengthened connections are marked in green and blue respectively.

In fact, the interpretation of brain neural signals has reached a very high level. For example, Japanese scientists have discovered some contents of the dream process by interpreting neural signals, and thus interpret dreams.

To obtain the results, the research team first put three experimental participants into a sleep state, and after a few minutes they were awakened and asked to describe the content of their dreams. At this point, the researchers compared the recorded brain activity patterns with the participants' descriptions. The experiment has been conducted more than 200 times. Then, the participants watched pictures from 20 different categories, including cars and animals, while awake, and then further analyzed the brain activity. Comparing this data with brain activity during sleep, the researchers found that they could predict some dreams with an accuracy of more than 70%.

At present, research on the brain is still very superficial, but it is believed that human consciousness has a material basis, that is, different electrical signals in the brain represent different ideas. When your consciousness moves, the brain will react accordingly. Because of this, the brain is the most energy-consuming organ in the human body, accounting for more than 20% of the body's energy consumption.

05. Consciousness and Metaphysics

Finally, if you think consciousness is metaphysics, then there is no need for discussion.

Some people use the example that software has no material basis, are you kidding? Do you really think that there is no basic material basis for 01 change?

Our current interpretation of the brain is similar to this very primitive interpretation. We match the interpretation of brain signals with human consciousness, which is a bit like directly matching the operation of a software with 0/1 changes. This correspondence is time-consuming and troublesome, but there is no better way.

Now, many countries have launched brain project research, such as the United States, Japan, Europe, and my country has also carried out corresponding research, led by Academician Pu Muming of the Shanghai Institute of Neuroscience of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of the important goals is to interpret brain signals in detail. However, the future is not optimistic, and it may require very delicate operations and take decades.

However, I firmly oppose treating consciousness as something like metaphysics. Someone even gave the example of emotions, and I wanted to secretly ask him, have you heard of neurological drugs? If consciousness is metaphysics, how do neurological drugs work?