Neural correlate
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The concept of a neural correlate of a mental state is an important concept for materialists, those philosophers who believe that all mental states are equivalent to brain states. According to strict materialists, all properties credited to the mind, including consciousness, emotion, beliefs, and desires have direct neural correlates.
The concept of a neural correlate is a fundamental concept in neuroscience. In recent years, papers have been published on the neural correlates of awareness, emotions, and decisions. Francis Crick wrote a popular book The Astonishing Hypothesis whose thesis is that the neural correlate for consciousness lies in our nerve cells and their associated molecules. Crick and Christof Koch sought to avoid questions of causation and philosophical debates that are associated with the study of consciousness, by emphasizing the search for a "correlation" only.
There is much room for disagreement, for example, many people believe that consciousness requires synchronous spikes of neurons in different regions of the brain (which have been observed), and some think this is merely an epiphenomenon. Others such as David Chalmers maintain that while the neural correlates of some properties of the brain have been discovered, consciousness is not one of them.
References
- Schall, J. "On Building a Bridge Between Brain and Behavior." Annual Reviews in Psychology. Vol 55. Feb 2004. Pp 23-50.
- Template:Anb Crick, Francis (1994), The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. ISBN 0-684-19431-7
- Chalmers, David. (1996). The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511789-1
- Metzinger, T. (Ed.) (2000). The Neural Correlates of Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.