Cognition and Consciousness Entwined
Humans experience internal sensations in response to the external world: we don’t just think or process – we experience. These sensations range from emotions, such as love, anxiety, embarrassment; to more subtle experiences, known as ‘qualia’. Qualia include the pain of a headache, the response to a sunset, or to stroking pets. Humans’ inner mental life poses the hard problem of consciousness: understanding how and why we have such internal sensations. Neuroscience explores how brains process sensory information to make inferences and analyse external situations. This is called cognition, and it may result in actions. Consciousness refers to our inner sensations.
