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Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal


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Conscious and Unconscious Mental Activity:


Commentary by Benjamin Libet (San Francisco)
Benjamin Libet

Department of Physiology, University of California, San Francisco, 513 Parnassus


Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94143-0444
Published online: 09 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: Benjamin Libet (2000) Conscious and Unconscious Mental Activity: Commentary by Benjamin Libet
(San Francisco), Neuropsychoanalysis: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Psychoanalysis and the Neurosciences, 2:1, 21-24,
DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2000.10773277
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15294145.2000.10773277

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21

Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus

Conscious and Unconscious Mental Activity: Commentary by Benjamin Libet (San Francisco)

Crick and Koch are to be commended for their valiant


attempts to develop an understanding of the neuronal
correlates of consciousness. But some of their treatment of the issues may be reconsidered.

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Awareness
On the question of the fundamental nature of conscious experience Crick and Koch (1998) make the
good "assumption that all the different aspects of consciousness (for example, pain, visual awareness, selfconsciousness, and so on) employ a basic common
mechanism or perhaps a few such mechanisms." But
they do not follow through on this important point.
Libet has proposed that subjective awareness
should be regarded as the fundamental feature of consciousness. The various "forms" or aspects of consciousness are accountable in the different contents
added to the single phenomenon of awareness (e.g.,
Libet, Pearl, et al., 1991; Libet, 1993a). For example,
Crick and Koch "emphasize that it is qualia that are
at the root of the problem." (The hard problem, of
course, refers to the designation by Chalmers [1995]
for the question of how it is that conscious subjective
experience can emerge from the activities of neurons,
even if the neuronal correlates of consciousness were
to be fully discovered.) Qualia are usually taken to
mean the experiences of pain, colors, and other special
qualities of conscious sensations that cannot be described simply by the correlative neuronal activities.
But the hard problem must include all phenomena of
subjective experience, that is, of awareness of anything. It is simpler to think of pain, visual awareness,
and even self-consciousness as specific contents of
awareness. The fundamental hard problem is how to
explain the appearance of subjective awareness per
se. Neuronal correlates of the specific content of an
awareness may differ from those for awareness itself.
There is some direct experimental evidence for
this view (Libet, Pearl, et al. 1991). The subjects were
patients with permanently implanted stimulating electrodes in the ventrobasal (somatosensory) thalamus,
for the self-treatment of intractable pain. As had been
Benjamin Libet is Professor Emeritus, Department of Physiology,
University of California, San Francisco, CA.

found earlier (Libet, Alberts, et aI., 1964; Libet,


Wright, Feinstein, and Pearl, 1979) stimulus pulses
here had to be repeated for about 500 msec (at 72 pps.
in this work) in order to elicit a report of a weak
sensation. In series of trials the train duration of the
stimulus was varied randomly, between 0 and 55
pulses (i.e., 0 to 750 msec train duration). Subjects
indicated the presence of the stimulus, in either of the
two lighted periods in each trial, regardless of whether
or not they felt any sensation. The shorter trains generally produced no conscious sensation at all, while
longer trains produced either an uncertain or a certain
awareness of a sensation. In trials in which the subjects felt nothing and were simply guessing, they correctly detected the presence of the stimulus, at well
above the 50% chance level. Most interestingly, trials
in which there was (correct detection but no awareness) were compared with trials in which there was
(correct detection and even an uncertain awareness of
a sensation). In both cases, the content of the mental
event (correct detection) was the same. But to add
awareness to this content required an additional 400
msec of stimulus train duration! This demonstrated
that awareness is a unique phenomenon with neuronal
requirements quite distinguished from those for the
content of a mental event. It also meant that one must
be careful to distinguish between behavioral detection
of a signal and the conscious awareness of that signal.

Detection vs. Awareness


There is often a failure to distinguish between the detection and the awareness of a sensory signal. Detection can occur unconsciously without any conscious
detection. Evidence for detection comes from a behavioral or functional response to a signal. Evidence for
conscious awareness of a signal requires an introspective report from a human subject. Awareness is a subjective phenomenon; it is accessible only to the
individual who is experiencing it; and it is not reducible to or describable by observations of neuronal activities or behavioral responses, unless a consistent
correlation is first established with the introspective
reports of awareness (see Libet, 1966, 1993a,b).
There is little doubt that non-human animals may
have some kind of conscious experiences. But it seems

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22
virtually impossible to study this, since there is no
assurance that the animal understands our question,
and it cannot give an introspective report (except, perhaps, in the case of a primate, like the gorilla Koko,
who has been taught to communicate by sign language). The purposefulness or complexity of a response cannot be used as valid evidence for conscious
awareness. Indeed human individuals can unconsciously perform purposeful and successful behaviors
even with highly complex mental operations (more
on this below). An introspective report of an actual
experience of conscious awareness is necessary evidence for such events.
Crick and Koch resort to evidence on the visual
system of the macaque monkey to bolster or support
theoretical proposals to explain the neuronal nature
of consciousness and unconscious mental processes.
These proposals include those by Jackendoff, Marr,
Stevens, Freud, and by Crick and Koch themselves.
But experimental studies on monkeys do not, in general, provide valid evidence on the issue of conscious
awareness. Evidence from such studies may be simply
forms of detection which may be unconscious, not
conscious awareness.

Unconscious and Conscious Mental Processes


Crick and Koch develop arguments for the view that
thoughts are unconscious in origin and they "adopt
the idea of the 'unconscious homunculus' as a tentative working hypothesis." "The unconscious homunculus receives information about the world through
the senses and thinks, plans, and executes voluntary
actions." These views stem from proposals by Jackendoff, Lashley, Freud, and others (for the unconscious
nature of thoughts), and by Atteneave (for the homunculus). These theoretical proposals are interesting and
imaginative. But there is very little if any direct experimental evidence to support these views. The "possible experimental approaches" listed by Crick and
Koch deal with studies of neurons in the macaque
monkey. But no amount of information about neuronal
activities in the brain will tell us whether they represent unconscious or subjectively conscious mental
processes, unless this is validated by introspective subjective reports.
Freud presented purely psychological theories of
mind. He is quoted as writing "In psychoanalysis
there is no choice but for us to assert that mental processes are in themselves unconscious ... " Deriving
this view from studies of disturbed patients certainly

Benjamin Libet
provided a proper basis for a working hypothesis, for
which Freud merited commendation. But as Karl Popper has pointed out (see Popper and Eccles, 1977) this
must be followed by a properly designed experimental
test, in which it is possible for the hypothesis to be
falsified. Otherwise, one can propose anything without
fear of ever being contradicted.
In discussing locations of the brain that may mediate a conscious visual experience, Crick and Koch
note that they have excluded the primary visual cortex,
VI, as an area able to produce conscious events. This
was based on a postulate that only those visual areas
that project to frontal brain regions can participate in
producing visual awareness; the primary area VI does
not project directly to the frontal cortex. But Pollen
(1999) has further analyzed this postulate and proposes that the requirement of a direct projection to
frontal executive space may be obviated by the existence of networks of recursive loops. Within such a
framewor k Pollen proposes that VI could play a role
in conscious vision.
Some direct experimental evidence for unconscious mental function is provided by the studies of
Libet and colleagues. They produced strong evidence
for a requirement of cerebral responses lasting for up
to about 500 msec for sensory awareness to appear
(see reviews by Libet [1993a,bD. But many activities
and responses normally appear with much shorter delays, even as little as 50 to 100 msec. These activities
include responses to signals while driving a car, responses in sports like tennis, baseball, etc. This implies
that such activities are initiated and executed unconsciously, before conscious awareness of the signal
could appear.
A similar period of cerebral activities was found
for the appearance of the conscious wish or urge to
perform a voluntary act. Specific electrical activity in
the brain (the "readiness potential") was shown to
begin the voluntary process unconsciously, about 400
msec before the conscious decision to act appeared
(Libet, 1985). This has important implications for the
issue of guilt, if urges to act are unconsciously initiated
urges (Libet, 1999).
A distinguishing difference, in duration of cerebral activity, was demonstrated for unconscious detection vs. conscious awareness of a sensory signal
(Libet, Pearl, et al. 1991). This led to a "time-on"
theory for the transition between unconscious detection and conscious awareness of a sensory signal. Simply by sufficiently increasing the duration ("timeon") of cortical activations, an unconscious mental
process (detection) could acquire conscious awareness

23

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Commentary on the Unconscious Homunculus


of the signal. The time-on theory does not exclude
other additional factors that may distinguish unconscious and conscious functions.
It has been suggested that the longer time-on to
produce reportable awarenesses may be due to requirements for developing a suitable short-term memory of the conscious event (for example, see Dennett
[1993, p. 140] in discussion of Libet [1993a]). However, there is a conclusive piece of evidence against
that requirement. Patients with bilateral lesions in the
temporal lobes can lose all ability to form short-term
memories. Yet these patients appear to be fully aware
of their immediate environment, and even of their own
inability to remember what just happened! The memory processes for retention of an unconscious detection clearly do not lead to awareness.
Brief time-on requirements for unconscious
thoughts would facilitate rapid interactions and progressions of thought, presumably conducive to creative thinking. A final conscious expression of the
result of such thinking would appear only when a sufficiently long time-on of appropriate neuronal activities is engaged.

Modulation of the Content of a Conscious


Experience
It is well known, from psychoanalytical and psychological studies, that the content of what a person experiences consciously may be considerably distorted
from the actual content of the initiating sensory image
or of an endogenous thought initiated unconsciously.
Freud introduced the concept of repression to explain
why an individual does not report awareness of an
emotionally disturbing image; instead he may report
seeing nothing of the image or a distorted version of
that image. Any such modulation of content of an
experience clearly requires some time after the arrival
of the sensory signal at the brain, during which the
brain can (unconsciously) recognize the emotional nature of the signal and then reorganize the experiential
response before awareness appears. The time-on requirement of up to 500 msec for the appearance of
awareness provides a physiological opportunity for the
modulatory processes to develop an altered conscious
experience. This would apply not only to Freudian
repression, but to any unconscious modulatory influence on the content of a conscious experience. Retroactive (backward) masking and retroactive
enhancement of a sensory experience provide an ex-

perimental example of such modulatory changes (see


Libet, Wright, et al. 1992).

How Get Subjective Experience from


Neuronal Activities?
Crick and Koch conclude that the answer to this question is still a complete mystery. However, there have
been solutions proposed. First, one may need to regard
conscious subjective awareness as a phenomenon in a
category separate from all known physically observable phenomena. Awareness cannot be described by
or reduced to the observable physical world, including
the brain. It is accessible only to the individual having
the subjective experience.
Nevertheless, subjective experience is clearly dependent on and tied to an appropriately functioning
brain. One may thus propose that subjective conscious
experience "emerges" from appropriate brain activities. Perhaps this may be analogous to the emergence
of a magnetic field when electric current flows through
a wire.
Libet (1994) has gone a step further and proposed
that the subjective phenomenon appears as a "conscious mental field" (CMF). The eMF would have
the attribute of unifying the subjective experience that
emerges from the multifarious and distributed appropriate neuronal activities. The eMF would also be able
to affect neuronal activities in a way that could account
for a subjectively willed action. This idea is certainly
"far out." But Crick and Koch themselves state that
"radically new ideas may be necessary, and that wellformulated suggestions (even way-out ones) should be
carefully considered." The crucial feature in Libel's
proposal (1994) is its experimental testability. A fully
designed experimental test accompanies the hypothesis. The experiment is a difficult but feasible one. Further, there appears to be no current evidence that
contradicts the possibility that such a eMF can be
demonstrated in the proposed experiment. It is my
hope that a suitable neurosurgery experimental group
will take on this experimental project, as the potential
result would be absolutely fundamental to our views
about subjective experience in relation to the brain.

References
Chalmers, D. (1995), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a
Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University
Press.

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24
Crick, F., & Koch, C. (1998), Consciousness and neuroscience. Cereb. Cortex, 8:97-107.
Libet, B. (1966), Brain stimulation and the threshold of
conscious experience. In: Brain and Conscious Experience, ed. J. C. Eccles. New York: Springer, pp. 165-181.
- - (1985), Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role
of conscious will in voluntary action. Behav. & Brain
Sci., 89:567-615.
- - (1993a), The neural time-factor in conscious and
unconscious events. Experimental and Theoretical Studies of Consciousness, Ciba Foundation Symposium,
174:123-146.
- - (1993b), Neurophysiology of Consciousness. Selected Papers and New Essays by Benjamin Libet. Boston: Birkhauser.
- - (1994), A testable field theory of mind-brain interaction. 1. Consciousness Studies, 1(1):119-126.
- - (1999), Do we have free will? 1. Consciousness
Studies, 6:47-57.
- - Alberts, W., Wright, E., Delattre, L., Levin, G., &
Feinstein, B. (1964), Production of threshold levels of
conscious sensation by electrical stimulation of human
somatosensory cortex. 1. Neurophysiol., 27:546-578.

Jaak Panksepp
--Pearl, D. K., Morledge, D. M., Gleason, C. A., Hosobuchi, Y., & Barbaro, N. M. (1991), Control of the
transition from sensory detection to sensory awareness
in man by duration of a thalamic stimulus. Brain,
114:1731-1757.
- - Wright, E. W., Jr., Feinstein, B., & Pearl, D. K.
(1979), Subjective referral of the timing for a conscious
sensory experience: A functional role for the somatosensory specific projection system in man. Brain,
102:191-222.
- - - - Feinstein, B., & Pearl, D. K. (1992), Retroactive enhancement of a skin sensation by a delayed
cortical stimulus in man: Evidence for a delay of a conscious sensory experience. Consciousness & Cognit.,
1:367-375.
Pollen, D. (1999), On the neural correlates of perception.
Cereb. Cortex, 9:4-19.
Popper, K. R., & Eccles, J. C. (1977), The Self and Its
Brain. Heidelberg: Springer.

Benjamin Libet
Department of Physiology
University of California, San Francisco
513 Pamassus Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94143-0444

The Cradle of Consciousness: A Periconscious Emotional Homunculus?:


Commentary by Jaak Panksepp (Bowling Green)

On the Affective Evolution of Consciousness


Crick and Koch provide a frank and refreshing view
of the current status of consciousness studies: after a
great deal of philosophical debate (Block, Flanagan,
and Guzeldere, 1997) the mystery of consciousness
abides, and the only way to lift the veil is through
novel theoretically oriented neuropsychological inquiries. As Crick and Koch put it: "radically new
ideas may be necessary" and I write this essay with
that perspective in mind. They also follow their own
advice, and toy with the idea that some type of unconscious, neurally instantiated homunculus provides an
essential substrate for the emergence of consciousness
within higher brain activities. I am in deep sympathy
with such an approach (Panksepp, 1998a,b), and
would like to push it further in a direction that Crick
Jaak Panksepp is Distinguished Research Professor of Psychobiology,
Emeritus, Department of Psychology, Bowling Green State University,
Ohio.

and Koch acknowledged but intentionally avoid: the


possibility that some type of emotional "feelings"
may lie at the core of human and animal consciousness. There is much to commend this idea, but it is
radical (at least for the present Zeitgeist), deeply evolutionary, and not accompanied by any established
standards of scientific or philosophic discourse. Thus,
affect remains a most difficult topic to discussldissect
in neuroscientifically, not to mention psychoanalytically, meaningful ways (Panksepp, 1999a; Solms and
Nersessian, 1999a). In other words, by some paradoxical quirk of tradition, since Freud's (1923, 1940) penetrating discussions of the topic ended, emotions have
been ignored in consciousness studies as if they were
some type of vestigial unconscious flotsam as opposed
to one of the foundational issues of mind and its conscious manifestations.
As Crick and Koch note, many others have passingly entertained the idea, but it has not yet emerged
as a frontrunner in brain and consciousness studies. It
is only gradually captivating our attention (panksepp,

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