What Is Consciousness? Self-Awareness May Be A Side Effect Of Brain Trying To Maximize Entropy, Researchers Say

What is consciousness, and how does it emerge from inanimate matter? After all, the atoms that constitute the brain -- the birthplace of consciousness -- are the same as the atoms that make up the chair you are currently sitting on. Why are we sentient and self-aware even though a multitude of inanimate objects around us are not? At what point do physical entities -- neurons, in this case -- give rise to something as abstract as consciousness? These are the questions that have, for the better part of the last two decades, occupied some of the greatest minds in physics, cognitive science and neuroscience. A team of scientists in France and Canada has now come up with an intriguing solution to the problem of consciousness.