Climbing Brain Levels of Organisation from Genes to Consciousness.

Jean-Pierre Changeux (1, 2, 3)

1 CNRS UMR3571
2 Institut Pasteur [Paris]
3 CdF (institution) - Collège de France

Given the tremendous complexity of brain organisation, here I propose a strategy that dynamically links stages of brain organisation from genes to consciousness, at four privileged structural levels: genes; transcription factors (TFs)-gene networks; synaptic epigenesis; and long-range connectivity. These structures are viewed as nested and reciprocally inter-regulated, with a hierarchical organisation that proceeds on different timescales during the course of evolution and development. Interlevel bridging mechanisms include intrinsic variation-selection mechanisms, which offer a community of bottom-up and top-down models linking genes to consciousness in a stepwise manner.

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Neurons and Cognition [q-bio.NC]; Cognitive Sciences

Jean-Pierre Changeux. Climbing Brain Levels of Organisation from Genes to Consciousness.. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2017, xx, ⟨10.1016/j.tics.2017.01.004⟩. ⟨pasteur-01476038⟩