Something You Should Know SYSK TRENDING - Why Your Consciousness is Unique
May 12, 2026
Anil Seth, professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience and author of Being You, explores how your brain constructs reality and the sense of self. He discusses why two people can perceive the same scene so differently. He covers sleep, psychedelics, time perception with aging, and why consciousness seems to end with brain activity.
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Consciousness Is Any Kind Of Experience
- Consciousness equals any kind of experience and is what disappears under anesthesia or dreamless sleep.
- Anil Seth emphasizes there's 'something it is like' to be an organism, framing consciousness as experiential rather than metaphysical.
Same Scene Can Yield Different Inner Worlds
- People can literally perceive the same stimulus differently, shown by the viral dress that some saw as blue-black and others white-gold.
- Seth uses that example to highlight vast unexplored diversity in inner experiences.
Color Is A Brain Construction
- The brain constructs color and other perceptual qualities rather than passively recording them from the world.
- Seth explains surfaces reflect light but our brains create 'redness' as a tracking mechanism, so color requires a mind.
