Purposes of pleasure and pain? Our conscious experience makes up our lives, often through positive pleasure: I feel the warm sun on my skin, I hear the singing of birds, I enjoy the moment. Yet we ...

Consciousness is the ultimate question of existence. Nothing is more essential than our experience. Yet we have no consensus, and perhaps no clue, about what it actually is. The trouble, in part, is ...

The origin of consciousness has teased the minds of philosophers and scientists for centuries. In the last decade, neuroscientists have begun to piece together its neural underpinnings—that is, how ...