Are the Brain's Electromagnetic Fields the Seat of Consciousness? - Facts So Romantic

Christof Koch is a neuroscientist distinguished by his rock-solid scientific work and romantic yearning to understand consciousness. He recently closed an essay by wondering: "What is it about the brain, the most complex piece of active matter in the known universe, that turns its activity into the feeling of life itself?" No coincidence with that phrasing--The Feeling of Life Itself is his latest book. He argues that consciousness is produced by the brain but that it's also more widespread in nature than we might suppose. His essay described new experimental work, from Stanford neuroscientist Kieran Fox and his colleagues, that explored the effects of electrically stimulating the brain, which revealed an ordering principle.