El núcleo neurodinámico de la consciencia y el darwinismo neuronal

Introduction. In the last decades, the scientific study of consciousness in the scope of the cognitive neurosciences can be considered one of the greatest challenges of contemporary science. The Gerald Edelman theory of consciousness is one of the most promissory and controversial perspectives. This theory stands out by its approach to topics usually rejected by other neurophysiologic theories of the consciousness, as the case of the neurophysiologic explanation of qualia. Aim. The goal of this paper is to revise the dynamic core theory of consciousness, presenting the main features of the theory, analyzing the explanation strategies, their empirical extensions, and elaborating some critic considerations about the possibility of the neuroscientific study of qualia. Development. The central and additional theoretical components are analyzed, emphasizing its ontological, restrictive and explanatory assumptions. The properties of the conscious phenomena and its cerebral correlates as advanced by the theory are described, and finally its experiments and empirical extensions are examined. The explanatory strategies of the theory are analyzed, based on conceptual isomorphism between the phenomenological properties and the neurophysiological and mathematical measures. Some criticisms could be raised about the limitations of the dynamic core theory, especially regarding its account of the so-called 'hard problem' of consciousness or qualia.