A complex vector space model of single neuronal coding and experience.

ABSTRACT

A model of consciousness is proposed, in which the experience attributable to a single sensory neuron is related to its instantaneous firing rate. In that this can only be quantified within statistical limits from the incidence of spikes across multiple presentations of a stimulus, consciousness remains inaccessible to direct measurement on a single trial. In this way, the model disambiguates subjective experience from objective neural properties. The model adopts a quantum mechanical formalism, in which the state of the neuron is represented as a vector in a complex vector space.