Koch's Book On Consciousness

I was pleasantly surprised to find this book.  I have been following the work of Guilio Tononi for some time and that involves reading articles co-authored by Christof Koch as one his main collaborators.  There also have several excellent videos available on YouTube where they discuss consciousness and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness.  In this book we learn about Koch's personal and professional trajectory in the field and several of his influences.  He is currently the President and Chief Scientific Officer of the Allen Institute for Brain Science and a Professor of Biology and Engineering at Caltech.  His academic credentials are available at the link to his web page and they are reviewed in this book as a backdrop to how he came to the field of consciousness studies.     

The layout of the book is 10 chapters over 166 pages.  It is well written in that it contains technical terms but they are well explained for the novice.  On the other hand there are also higher level concepts pertaining to consciousness that will probably not be obvious to many readers that are well explained and worthwhile reading for anyone who is not an expert in the field.  The text reminds me of a slim guide to neuropathology that one of my med school professors claimed was the only book he studied to pass his subspecialty boards exams.  In other words, the more you bring to a book like this, the more you may take away.  At the same time it is interesting reading for a novice.   

A typical chapter is organized around clinical and scientific observations, associated philosophy and the personal experience and meaning to the author.  I thought about characterizing the writing as a very good blog, but this writing by one of the top neuroscientists of our time is several levels above that.  Koch writes from the perspective of admiration of some of the best scientists in the world when it is clear that he is among them.  He adds a unique perspective referencing his training, his family and social life, and the relationships he has with colleagues and mentors.  In the final chapter he describes how his career and experience has impacted on his belief system and personal philosophy.

I will touch on a couple of examples of what he covers and the relevance to consciousness.  Chapter 5: Consciousness in the Clinic is a chapter that is most accessible to clinicians specializing in the brain.  He briefly summarizes achromatopsia and prosopagnosia or face-blindness.  He discusses prosopagnosia from the perspective of clinical findings and associated disability, but also consciousness.  For example, patients with this lesion do not recognize faces but they do have autonomic responses (galvanic skin resistance) when viewing faces that they know (family or famous people) relative to unknown people.  This is evidence of processing that occurs at an unconscious level that he develops in a subsequent chapter.  He describes the Capgras delusion - as the "flip-side" of prosopagnosia in that they face is recognized but the patient believes the original person has been replaced by an impostor.  In this case the expected increase in galvanic skin resistant is lacking because there is no autonomic response to unconscious processing.

In the same chapter he details the problem of patients in a coma,  persistent vegetative state (PVS) and minimally conscious state (MCS) and how some new developments in consciousness theory and testing may be useful. From a consciousness perspective coma represent and absence of consciousness - no arousals and no sleep transitions.  Persistent vegetative state result in some arousals and sleep-awake transitions.  In the minimally conscious state there are awakenings and purposeful movements. The minimally conscious person may be able to communicate during the brief arousals.  At the clinical level being able to distinguish between the persistent vegetative state and the minimally conscious state is important from both a clinical and medico-legal perspective. He discusses the use of fMRI in the case of apparently unresponsive patients who are able to follow direction to think about very specific tasks and produce the same brain pattern of activation seen in controls.  In a subsequent chapter Tononi and Massimini use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) and electroencephalography (EEG) for the same purpose.  This technique is considered proof of IIT as well as a clinical test to differentiate PVS from a minimally conscious state.  In normal awake volunteers the TMS impulse results in brief but clear pattern of reverberating activation that spreads from the original stimulation site to surrounding frontal and parietal cortex.  The pattern can be viewed in this online paper (see figure 1).  In the patient who is in non-REM sleep there is no cortical spread from this impulse and the total impulse duration is less, illustrating a lack of cortical integration required for a conscious state.  When applied to PVS versus MCS patients, the MCS patients show the expected TMS/EEG response that would be seen in conscious patients.  The PVS patients do not.  He describes the TMS/EEG method as a "crude consciousness meter" but obviously one that probably has a lot more potential than traditional clinical methods.

There are many other clinical, philosophical and scientific issues relevant to consciousness that are discussed in this book that I won't go into.  I will touch on a recurring theme in the book that gets back to the title and that is science and reductionism.  Philosophical perspectives are covered as well as the idea that the origin of consciousness may not be knowable by scientific methods. Koch's opinion is that most everything is knowable by science and that science generally has a better track record of determining what is knowable.  That is certainly my bias and I am on record as being an unapologetic reductionist rather than a romantic one.                           

This is a book that should be read by psychiatrists and residents.  These concepts will hopefully be some of the the mainstays of 21st century psychiatry.  It can be read at several levels.  I was interested in the development of Koch's ideas about consciousness.  I wanted to learn about his relationship with collaborators.  I was pleasantly surprised to learn that we had similar thoughts about popular media, philosophy, and and psychodynamic psychiatry.  I have had career long involvement in neuropsychiatry and behavioral neurology so the description of cortical localization and clinical syndromes was second nature to me.  But even against that background, he makes it very clear where consciousness comes in to play.  One of my concerns about psychiatric training is that there is not enough emphasis on neuroscience and consciousness.  Condensed into this small book there are number of jumping off points.  Each chapter has a collection of annotations and there is a list of about 100 scientific references at the end.  It may take some work, but this book is a brief syllabus on how to get up to speed in this important area and greatly extend your knowledge of how the brain works.


George Dawson, MD, DFAPA


Reference:

Christof Koch.  Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist.  First MIT Press Paperback.  Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2017.  Copyright 2012.   

Attribution:

Figure 1 above used with permission of the publisher.  The complete reference is:

1:  Massimini M, Ferrarelli F, Sarasso S, Tononi G. Cortical mechanisms of loss of consciousness: insight from TMS/EEG studies. Arch Ital Biol. 2012 Jun-Sep;150(2-3):44-55. doi: 10.4449/aib.v150i2.1361. Review. PubMed PMID: 23165870.  Open Access Free Text.

Blade Runner 2049

In keeping with the previous two posts - I did get out to see Blade Runner 2049 last Saturday.  It was clearly a first rate science fiction film and I guess some viewers not used to the genre might also call it a thriller.  Visually I thought it was less stunning that the first due to the lack of street level scenes and the hectic activity on the street.  It has critical acclaim but because of the high cost is being described by some critics as a "box office bomb".  In this film replicants (bioengineered androids) have become Blade Runners.  In some reviews of the film they are referred to as bioengineered humans and that is not a trivial difference since the main plot theme is whether or not the androids can reproduce.  The focus is on K (Ryan Gosling) who is the main protagonist.   We seem him interacting with and dispatching another replicant in the initial scene.  That replicant asks for mercy on the basis that they "are the same kind" and that there is a higher calling based on the miracle that he has witnessed.  When K returns to the station (LAPD) he undergoes a rapid debriefing protocol, test questions with monitoring of various anthropometric and physiological parameters.  The meaning of the test questions is not clear but the implication is that it determines if he has stayed at his baseline or his status had been perturbed in some way.   The test is also being administered for a very different reason than the Voight-Kampff protocol since the test subject is a known replicant.

There are three generations of replicants in the film starting with K - a Nexus 9 series, to the Nexus 8 replicant he retires in the original scene, the the Nexus 7 series that dates back to Rachael in the original Blade Runner film.  Over the course of that time frame the replicant population has become less subservient and more interested in equality or autonomy.  There is a rebellious faction.  We learn later in the film based on a series of events that the common "miracle" that the replicant population refers to is the birth of a child by Rachael in the original film.  In that film in the final scene she was leaving with Deckard (Harrison Ford).  There were implications that Rachael was a specially modified replicant and in retrospect the question is whether she was modified to reproduce.   

The competing forces in the film were threefold.  First, the LAPD is invoked as the police force determined to suppress any replicant rebellion.  K is a detective for the LAPD and after discovering Rachael's remains buried at the site where he encounters the initial replicant and there is evidence that she gave birth to a child..  Second, Tyrell corporation has been replaced by the potentially more evil Wallace Corporation header by Niander Wallace.  Wallace is very explicit about the need for replicant reproduction since he does not believe that manufacturing capacity can ever meet the need for replicants in service of his corporation and its off world needs.  And finally there is the role of K as a free agent in all of this.  Does he do the bidding of his boss at LAPD or not?  His boss emphasizes the importance of killing any story that replicants have reproduced - she sees it as a game changer for civilization as they know it.  She assigns him to find and kill the child.  He is later assigned to kill Deckard for the same reason.

I will leave the plot specifics to the various reviews and descriptions already out there and concentrate on the main issues that have to do with consciousness in the film.  At one point K is asked about childhood memories and recalls being bullied by a group of boys who wanted a small hand carved horse that he was carrying.  We see him escaping the boys and burying the toy in a pile of ashes in the bottom of an old furnace.  Later he consults with an expert to determine if the memory is real or not.  She confirms that it is a real memory and that leads him to believe he may be the child of Deckard and Rachael.  I asked myself at that point if K's interest in the memory was even possible if he was a replicant.  By definition in Tononi Koch theory, this experience requires consciousness and even perfectly engineered system mimicking the human brain could not generate the human experience associated with the memory much less the integrated emotions associated with this scene.  When K finally finds Deckard he is in a state of emotional turmoil related to information that Deckard provides him about his origins.  In a shootout Deckard is captured by Wallace Corp and is in the process of being tortured to find out information about the location of his and Rachael's child.  He is both rescued by K and united with his child by K.  In both Blade Runner movies Deckard is rescued in the end by a replicant.

My summary may not match up well with other reviews about specifics.  I did not view the protocol being given to K as the Voight-Kampff protocol, since it did not seem like it was an updated version.  Keeping Tononi Koch theory in mind it would be totally unnecessary even if he was really a highly sophisticated bioengineered replicant.  It would only be necessary to place a transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) coil close to his brain and observe the high density electroencephalogram (EEG) pattern.  If consciousness exists the theory predicts a pattern of widespread activation and deactivation.  It should also be possible to observe the characteristic sleep EEG pattern of transitioning from consciousness to unconscious dreamless sleep and back.  Of course these androids would need to be flawlessly engineered to protect circuitry from magnetic and electrical fields that occur with these measurements. 

In summary, I thought that Blade Runner 2049 was an excellent film just based on the plot and artistry.  I can always see the distinction between real science and science fiction.  If Tononi Koch theory is accurate, it is hard to imagine that a replicant would not be obvious to conscious humans.  I guess we will need to either wait until that day comes or until the theory has more widespread acceptance and proof.  The other parallel aspect of this film is bioengineered human reproduction.  It is difficult to see how that could ever be done, especially through human sexual contact with machines.  Sexual contact with bioengineered androids is a more frequent science fiction theme these days than in the past.  It is probably easier to see how that might happen from the human side.

There is currently not enough information about human sexual consciousness to imagine how it could be built or programmed into an android.     


George Dawson, MD, DFAPA               

Tononi Koch Test for Machine Consciousness

In follow up to my previous post and before I saw Blade Runner 2049, I wanted to post a more modern take on the Turing Test based on a coherent theory of consciousness  by Tononi and Koch - both experts in the neuroscience of consciousness.  Their theory is the Integrated information Theory (IIT) of consciousness.  I have included the reference (1) and a graphic from their public access paper on the theory and there are also several very useful videos available to listen to the verbal descriptions of the theory.  I have been following consciousness research for at least the past 20 years including the two main listservs on this topic until they shut them down.  When a topic is so specialized, barring any breakthroughs the arguments become repetitive and a lot of time is spent bringing novices up to speed.  The videos fill a useful gap that these listservs previously addressed although I must admit  that I am always biased toward the written rather than the spoken word because it is a much more efficient information transfer for me.  The videos listed at the bottom of this page also serve another useful purpose.  The viewer is able to see how researchers in this area define consciousness and describe their theories.  I think that it is possible to notice that some of the definitions and descriptions are so vague as to have limited utility.

That is one of the reasons that I like the approach by Koch and Tonini.  I will also also say from the outset that I am not sure whether they view the theory as a joint venture or not.  As an example of what I mean looking at this specific search on consciousness finds that Tononi has been working in this area for at least 20 years.  A similar search on Koch goes back even 8 years earlier.  I don't know either of the authors but based on reading this paper it seems like a joint effort and that seems to come across in  the available videos of their presentations. (see addendum).

In the paper, that authors outline phenomenological definitions that are more exacting than any that I have seen in the past from other authors.  They are also neuroscience based and that makes a difference to me.  In various venues people often faintly praise but then lament psychiatry's emphasis on biology.  That is obviously not true or at least without reason and it also illustrates the lack of research that people do when it comes to critiquing psychiatry.  Psychiatrists have actively researched practically all forms of social, psychological, and biological etiologies of mental illness since the specialty was founded.  Any cursory review of a general psychiatric text illustrates that point.  So if a psychiatrist is focused on brain biology, it is certainly not without reason.  I previously posted a breakfast that I had with a mentor and after a long career as a psychiatrist he summed it up the way a lot of psychiatrists do: "It is all about the biology."  Critics take that to mean some kind of medical intervention.  They are certainly studied, but every other non-medical intervention has been studied as well.  It is common to read about non-medical interventions (psychotherapy, meditation, etc) altering the brain in some way.  In psychiatry that has been known within the field for at least 70 years.

There are two levels to study the work of Tononi and Koch.  The first is at the purely descriptive level.  That is the level that you will find in the first reference.  The second level is at the level of neuroscience and mathematical theory.  The authors have produced this work as well and reference it in this paper, but for the purpose of this post I am going to stay at the descriptive level and possibly post a more technical article on the advanced theory at a later date.  I will add that there are several competing theories of consciousness that I am not going to mention here.  I have studied several of them and think that they have less to offer than the Integrated information Theory (IIT) of consciousness.  I am admittedly a reductionist seeking to close the explanatory gap between brain biology and how conscious states are generated.  In some of the videos available online where there are panel discussions it is clear that the proponents of the other theories think that their own theories are correct and IIT is wrong. I have been down the rabbit hole with a few of those theories and don't want to take time to criticize them.  Feel free to look them up and form your own opinion.  For now I will focus on IIT.   

If you have never heard of Tononi, Koch, or IIT the first task is to read the paper.  I found it to be very clear in terms of definitions, postulates, and a clearly stated theory.  They point out that every experience will have an associate neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). There is currently an explanatory gap at the level of how conscious experiences are actually produced by the NCC.  They discuss the axioms necessary for a coherent phenomenology of consciousness.  From there they move on to the postulates.  Eventually they discuss how a conceptual structure that is maximally irreducible conceptual structure occurs in the brain.  These states are also known as quale.

They give a couple of examples about how conscious states occur within their theory.  They provide and example of how to calculate the quality and consciousness given a particular state containing elements (Figure 4).  They provide a clear example of the physical substrate of experience (complex), and a set of maximally irreducible cause-effect repertoires (concept), and a maximally irreducible "cause -effect structure in cause-effect space made of concepts..." or conceptual structure (quale)(p. 12).  The quantity of experience or consciousness is specified as Φ^max.  The quality of experience is the form or shape of the conceptual structure. Distinct shapes occur with different experiences.

A more accessible example is discussed on page 9 and that is seeing Jennifer Aniston in a movie.  In that case, the complexes at the neuronal level affects the probability of past and future states. Consistent with neuroanatomy many specialized neurons are firing or not firing in the visual system that are associated with Jennifer Aniston as an invariant concept.  Other neurons are associated with other invariant concepts that allow for a fuller description in terms of appearance, age, etc.  All of the elements of the complex are intrinsic information and do not depend on visual inputs for example if dreaming or imagining the actress.

The authors also briefly review some of the experimental evidence that is consistent with the theory. They find that the theory is predictive in number of experimental paradigms. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) can be applied to to conscious individuals and unconscious (dreamless sleep, general anesthesia) individuals. In the conscious state there is a widespread pattern of activation and deactivation noted with high density EEG.  In the unconscious state cortical response is local or global and stereotypical - integration and information are lost.  A metric called the perturbation complexity index (PCI) a measure of the EEG compressibility from TMS stimulation can be used consciousness and it decreases in states that lack it.   

Tonini has been very explicit about the issue of machine consciousness - it doesn't exist no matter how sophisticated the machine is.  Any machine recognizing inputs that the human nervous system would recognize and producing identical outputs, even if that machine duplicates the structure and function of the human brain - is not conscious.  Tononi uses the consciousness science term zombie to characterize such machines.  By definition a zombie system is one that lacks consciousness and they are described as being subsystems in humans (2) when they are active outside the sphere of conscious recognition.

That brings us back to the ability to detect machines from humans.  If a machine is a perfect human zombie in terms of its input and output, we would not expect an empathy or Turing test to throw it off.   IIT theory acknowledges that what appears to be human input and output can be perfectly simulated.  The original Blade Runner protocol seems more than an empathy test. Specific questions about past memories illustrate an attempt determine if there is continuity between any current and past experiences, even though in the case of Rachael - the memories are false and implanted.

That being said IIT states there there is no Turing test for consciousness.  By now it does seem that fairly basic programs (like self learning neural nets) can replicate a narrowly defined human skill. In that case many people speculate that there is an intelligence or even human consciousness behind it.  On the other hand the perturbation complexity index (PCI) seems like a potentially useful test based on current results.



George Dawson, MD, DFAPA


References:

1: Tononi G, Koch C. Consciousness: here, there and everywhere?  Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2015 May 19;370(1668). pii: 20140167. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0167. Review. PubMed PMID: 25823865; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC4387509.

2:  Koch C, Crick F. The zombie within. Nature. 2001 Jun 21;411(6840):893. PubMed
PMID: 11418835.

Addendum:

I read Christof Koch's book Consciousness - Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist a couple of months after this post.  In it he credits Tononi for Integrated Information Theory:

..."The theory of integrated information, developed by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi, starts with two basic axioms and proceeds to account for the phenomenal in the world." (p. 6)