For generations, researchers have pondered the origins and mechanisms of consciousness in the brain. Professor Ekrem Dere from Ruhr University Bochum in Germany suggests a novel approach to studying conscious cognitive information processing. He proposes defining the phases of conscious cognitive processes through behavioral observations and learning curves.

“Learning is often not a gradual process, but takes place in leaps and bounds; you could say that humans and animals experience sudden epiphanies every now and then,” he says. “It’s likely that these experiences are preceded by conscious processes.” Dere outlines his new approach, which might apply to both humans and animals, in a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.
Different levels of consciousness

Consciousness is not an all-or-nothing process. “There are different levels of consciousness, depending for example on whether we’re sleeping or writing an email,” says Ekrem Dere from the Mental Health Research and Treatment Center in Bochum, who is also a member of the Sorbonne Université in Paris. “At the upper end of this gradation, so to speak, we find conscious cognitive information processing that is required to deal with a complicated problem.”

In order to study the neurobiological correlates of these processes using scientific methods, a human or animal must be presented with an experimental task that can only be solved with conscious cognitive information processing – it’s crucial that there isn’t a preconceived solution. “In the long history of cognitive behavioral psychology, a great many such tasks have been developed,” says Dere. “However, the main difficulty is that a human or animal may not use conscious cognitive information processing throughout the entire processing time.”