Biographical
Information
Christof Koch
was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1956 and studied physics
and philosophy at the University of Tübingen in West
Germany. He was awarded his Ph.D. in biophysics from the
Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen
in 1982 (under Profs. Valentin Braitenberg and Tomaso Poggio).
He worked until 1986 at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
before joining the "Computation and Neural Systems" program
at the California Institute of Technology where he is now
a Full Professor of Computation and Neural Systems.
Professor Koch's
research focuses on understanding the biophysical mechanisms
underlying information storage and processing in single
neurons, in particular the computations underlying motion
and visual attention in cortical networks in the mammalian
visual system. His laboratory builds neuromorphic, analog,
smart vision chips to solve a host of applied vision problems.
Together with Dr. Francis Crick, he works on the neuronal
basis of visual awareness and consciousness.
Professor Koch
has published three books, well over one hundred technical
articles and has numerous patents in the area of analog
VLSI vision chips (smart vision chips).
Neuronal Correlates
of Consciousness
What is the relationship
between visual perception and the underlying neuronal activity
in the visual cortical system? We (Crick and Koch, 1995)
base our framework on the plausible hypothesis that the
function of visual awareness is to produce the best current
interpretation of the visual scene, in the light of past
experience, and to make it available, for a sufficient time,
to the parts of the brain that contemplate, plan, and execute
voluntary motor outputs (of one sort or another). This suggests
that the neurons that express the neural correlate of consciousness
(NCC) must project from visual cortices to the frontal lobe.
This hypothesis, combined with the neuroanatomy of the macaque
monkey, suggests that primates are not directly aware of
neural activity in primary visual cortex, although they
may be aware of such activity in extrastriate cortical areas
(Crick & Koch, 1995). In this lecture, I will discuss
electrophysiological, clinical as well as psychophysical
evidence that directly supports this hypothesis. I will
argue that the neuronal correlate of consciousness is very
likely to be found in a subpopulation of unique cells (characterized
by their location, connectivity, morphology and biophysics)
in different cortical areas.
