Does the Corollary Discharger of Attention Exist?

Abstract

The CODAM model was introduced as a model of conscious experience in 1999/2000 (Taylor JG. Race for consciousness. Bradford Book, Cambridge, MA, 1999; ibid 2000) and developed subsequently over that decade in a series of papers (see references and those in Taylor (Scholarpedia 2(11):1598, 2007)) with applications to various well-studied experimental paradigms on attention (Taylor JG, Rogers M. Neural Netw 15:309–326, 2002; Taylor JG, Fragopanagos N. Simulations of attention control models in sensory and motor paradigms. In: Wunsch II DC, Hasselmo M, Venayagamoorthy, Wang D (ed) Proceedings of the international conference on artificial neural networks (ICANN2003), pp 298–303, IEEE Press, Los Angeles, 2003; Fragopanagos N, Kockelkoren S, Taylor JG. Cogn Brain Res 24:568–586, 2005; Korsten N, Fragopanagos N, Hartley M, Taylor N, Taylor JG. Neural Netw 19(9):1408–1421, 2006; Fragopanagos N, Taylor JG. Neural Netw 20(9):993–1003, Neural Netw Special Issue on Brain and Attention (to appear), 2007); it was also applied to explain a range of meditation and related experiences (Taylor JG. Trends Cogn Sci 6(5):206–210, 2002a; Taylor JG. J Consciousness Stud 6:3–22, 2002b). Most recently it has been developed in more detail in terms of underpinning neuro-modulators (in particular dopamine and acetylcholine) for explaining the experiences of schizophrenics across the four main symptoms of prodromal, positive, negative and disordered (Taylor JG. Schizophr Bull (in press), 2010), as we will discuss in Chap. 10. We have already discussed aspects of CODAM, from its basis in the nature of attention control (in Chaps. 5 and 6) to its ability to provide an experience of ‘ownership’ to the subject (in Chap. 7), although the question of the evidence for that ownership was questioned (in Chap. 8). However the basic problem of CODAM over the last decade has been lack of clear experimental evidence for the existence of the basic corollary discharge of attention movement on which the CODAM model was founded. Some initial evidence was claimed from EEG results with the attentional blink (Sergent C, Baillet S, Dehaene S. Nat Neurosci 8:1391–1400, 2005), but that was only the first sighting and needs further data to be able to support the thesis that the corollary discharge of attention movement does exist. The further details of its dynamics is only then to be determined in detail, possibly in combination with an underlying more detailed model of such a corollary discharge as can be supported by more detailed investigations of attention.