On the Logic of Measuring Neural Correlates of Consciousness

This paper presents a mathematical analysis of the logic of measuring Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCCs). Starting from the canonical definition of NCCs provided by Crick and Koch (1990) and Chalmers (2000), a series of lemmas and theorems are provided which show how NCCs can be discovered if empirical data about the co-activation of neural states and states of consciousness is available. The result of this analysis is a new method to measure NCCs, which we preliminarily call Co-Activation Analysis (CoAA), that might complement or extend existing methods such as contrastive analysis and decoding. CoAA might be of interest for experiments because it does not require data from near-threshold conditions, is compatible with all major conceptions of states of consciousness (including, e.g., micro-phenomenological notions and global states of consciousness), can be applied to most conceptions of neural or computational states (including, e.g., those provided by Predictive Processing/Active Inference, or those attained in more ecological conditions), and helps alleviate the problem of confounders. Furthermore, we show as a theorem that as far as the logic of measurement is concerned, if applied to data from contrastive analysis studies, CoAA improves upon the result provided by contrastive analysis. The paper is a purely theoretical contribution. It is presented in the hope that the mathematics developed here can support and improve the empirical search for NCCs.