Sources: 1. On Intelligence: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507... 2. https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-have-a-150-IQ-Is-life... 3. Some article shared in the MENSA group years ago I'd have to dig in to find.

You should read the book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. Pay attention to Chapter 6, "How the cortex works". Our "consciousness" is derived of the same stuff in all animals, we just have more cortical layers. We also have fuzzy algorithms which allow the brain to recognize patterns, and associate x with y.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

I think to postulate that there's a yet undiscovered subatomic elementary particle that gives rise to consciousness is hogwash. "Consciousness" or awareness of self has been shown in other animals. Humans are distinct in their ability to couple self-awareness and toolmaking.

There is no "human energy" it's the same material as in all other animals, we just have more of it. The "human energy" could be classified as distinct fuzzy algorithms found in humans which aid pattern recognition.

There's nothing about the idea of physical consciousness that says it has to be a continuum -- there could just be some critical mass or qualitative attribute of brains that puts us "over the threshold", so to speak. Nobody can give any kind of a definitive answer. For ideas about a "continuum" of consciousness, you might read Phi:

http://www.amazon.com/Phi-A-Voyage-Brain-Soul-ebook/dp/B0078...

Or for other views, you might check out V.S Ramachandran (neuroscience): http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Human-Consciousness-Imposto...

Jeff Hawkins (computer science): http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Hofstadter (mathematics, cognitive science): http://www.amazon.com/G%C3%B6del-Escher-Bach-Eternal-Golden/...

Those are some of my favorite popular-press books on the subject.

If you're interested, you should read On Intelligence[1] by Jeff Hawkins (inventor of the Palm Pilot). In it, Hawkins presents a compelling theory of how the human brain works and how we can finally build intelligent machines. In fact, Andrew Ng's Deep Learning research is built on Hawkin's "one algorithm" hypothesis.

[1]: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Memory is a funny thing. You don't recall a snap shot of all the details at once. You start telling a story and during the playback of the memories you'll be able to recall deep details.

Reading On Intelligence really solidified my thoughts on how memory (probably) works.

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Actually, there's a growing amount of evidence that there's a single, general-purpose algorithm in the human brain that gives rise to intelligence. For one, there's the fact that every part of the brain looks and behaves the same. There's also the fact that the brain is very plastic in what it learns – the auditory cortex can learn to "see" if we were to rewire the signals from the eyes from the visual cortex to the auditory cortex. It's very unlikely that our brain is hard-wired to recognize faces, for instance, but rather that it learns to do so using this generic learning algorithm.

I urge you to watch Andrew Ng's talk that I linked to in the post, and read On Intelligence (http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...) by Jeff Hawkins, a book that totally changed the way I look at intelligent behavior.

Quick link to Jeff Hawkins book On Intelligence which describes the theory:

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-ebook/dp/B003J4VE5Y/

There is a very quick reference to the person who inspired him, Jeff Hawkins, whose book is worth a read:

http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

Edit: update link

Yes, that's a closer description than what I recall. My understanding is based on a book I read several years ago: http://www.amazon.com/On-Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507...

On Intelligence By Jeff Hawkins.

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507853...

Hawkins was the founder of both Palm and Handspring, but comes from an academic background where he studied neuropsychology (how the brain works). The book is a thorough look at how the brain experiences the world, with the goal being the creation of artificially intelligent machines.

It'll change the way you perceive perception (if that makes any sense).

I just finished listening to the audio book format of On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins:

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507853...

(Hopefully I get this right... was pretty sleep deprived while listening to it.) In the book he describes the core part of intelligence as prediction - our brain is constantly making predictions from sensory inputs. While our brains do take in huge amounts of data, Hawkins' theory suggests that it is being operated on in massive parallelism - with different predictions happening simultaneously. Thus it isn't so much that all that data is being thrown away, as it is all being checked against known patterns from previous memories. He lays out reasoning for how intelligence, creativity, etc. are formed on top of this prediction model. It is a very interesting read.

For a good read on the subject of AI and how humans think check out the book OnIntelligence by Jeff Hawkins. It covers some about the previous attempts at AI and why they failed.

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp/080507456...