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Consciousness and AI-mind claims are everywhere and mostly hand-wavy. This course gives you the actual medical evidence so you're not just repeating philosophy.

Experience the brain’s enormous adaptability by examining definitive evidence in medical science about connectivity, information flow, and the complexities of the living brain.

Cortex is the organ of mind — for both conscious and unconscious aspects.

We now have definitive evidence for that, which has been hard to pin down because the cortex is the most adaptable organ in the body – the most obvious being the dynamic activities that support consciousness, momentary consciousness, your consciousness and mine at this very moment.

In these seminars with Dr. Bernard Baars, you will gain an understanding of some of the most definitive evidence in medical science about the connectivity of cortex, and the complexities of the living brain.

Who is this course for?

This course is for you if you are interested in, or teach, or study any of the following subjects: Psychology, Neuroscience and Education, Cognitive Science, Neurobiology, Health Education, or Philosophy. And anyone working in AI who wants to understand the biological basis of consciousness before assuming machine minds.

Discover what medical evidence shows about the conscious brain.

You will learn the brain’s numerous levels of adaptation to understand major points about well functioning cortex; examine split-brain surgeries and their outcomes; trace neural surf waves and oscillations in the connectome – the brain’s street map, and master its foundational brain regions for conscious experience.

Watch 4 short seminars → Study the case evidence → Earn your certificate

Is Cortex the Organ of Mind?

In these video seminars, psychobiologist Bernard Baars unpacks some of the most definitive medical evidence about how cortex is the most hyper-adaptable region of the brain, and examines evidence reflecting evolutionary, ontogenetic, epigenetic, and consciously-mediated learning and adaptation. The story of conscious cognition is the story of cortex in dialogue with unconscious cortico-thalamic and extra-cortical functions. Watch short preview →

LEARNING OUTCOMES: After completing this course, you will be able to

Recognize Major Points About Healthy, Well Functioning Cortex. The brain has many levels of specialization, down to single neurons, but these multiple levels also work together.
Explain Split-brain Surgeries & Outcomes. One path to understanding the conscious brain is to study split-brain surgeries. These show us the difference between the isolated left and right hemispheres. The intact cortex is highly connected, but it is very revealing to study the hemispheres in isolation as well.
Experience the Brain's Enormous Adaptability. Science deals with the stunning fact that the cortex works well even after injury. Like a human city after an accident, adaptation takes place almost invisibly and in the most surprising ways that are hard to see from outside.
Understand the Information Flow in the Living Brain. The "connectome" gives us the city map of the brain, and modern recording methods give us the traffic flow over that map. Together, the map and the traffic tell us a great deal.
Master the Functions & Activities of Fundamental Regions of the Brain.
Investigate the Detailed Functioning of the Brain Through its Electrical Activity.
Explain How Thalamus & Cortex Interact. The thalamocortical system is viewed as a “unified oscillatory machine” (Steriade, 1999). A city is more than its structures, it is also the human traffic that works to keep the city alive and well.

Trusted by academics

“Baars was just waaaay ahead of everyone else in approaching questions concerning consciousness as scientific questions. He's done vastly more than metaphor-slinging philosophers to make progress. His preference for testable hypotheses as opposed to dead-end thought-experiments have made a major difference in shifting the topic to a secure knowledge base from which real progress can be made.”

“Eyebrows are no longer raised even among neuroscientists when the topic of consciousness is discussed, largely due to authors like Bernard Baars. His works explain many insights of the complex workings of the brain.”

“Bernard Baars is both one of the pioneers of the cognitive study of consciousness and currently one of its most important contributors.”

“Bernard Baars is the leading thinker behind the Global Workspace theory of consciousness that has been recently championed by top neuroscientists, such as Stanislas Dehaene.”