A Conscious Universe

[Surgenator]

Because the experience is also highly complex: high- and long- notes, texture, nostalgia, pleasure, etc.

No doubt, but that's not the question. What is the unifying mechanism? What causes all that complexity to be coordinated into a singular experience?

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Short answer: I don't know.

Longer answer: I'm making the assumption that brain states are mental states which isn't a big assumption. We can view brain activity via fMRI and deduce (on order of magnitude) how many neurons are involved when having a single expericence or thought. The high number of neurons involved is likely due to the difficulty of the task when working with limited processing speed. There also can be some redundancy built in that might be correlated to the intensity of the experience.

Right, that's what I'm getting at. It seems to me each brain area has a separate task. So does each area have an "output" that is sent to a coordinating unit? And if not, why would redness in part A, apple-taste in part B, and "crunch sound" in part C be experienced as a single experience, rather than having 3 homunculi, each doing its own specialized task? What is the principle, or mechanism, of unity?

I agree that certain parts of the brain are dedicated to specific tasks. I haven't heard of a "coordinating unit" in the brain. So maybe. The spacial and temporal resolutions of fMRI aren't that good, and there is also a lot of noise.

While researching the "coordinating unit", I did stumble on an interested finding that is somewhat related. These guys were able to predict brain activation patterns for nouns.