That time plays an important role in the so-called NCC (Neural Correlate of Consciousness) has been suspected for long time, both because synchrony appeared to be critical for the binding of the various features building a conscious representation, and from the experimental observation of stronger oscillations of the electric field associated with the performance of a cognitive task when performed in a conscious way.
Nevertheless, although probably 'in the air' for more than a decade, the simple theory claiming that consciousness is characterized by the encoding of its content into a purely temporal pattern, irrespectively of the identity of the neurons involved, has been either ignored or rejected, although having been the subject of 3 recent works (Helekar 1999, Durup and Sanejouand 2000, John 2001).
We shall show that the combination of largely accepted experimental data with insights from evolution theory allows us to give a demonstration of the above-stated theory, on the basis of the immense ratio between the capacities of non-conscious vs conscious processing.
Important differences between the models which have been developed within this theory will be discussed: (i) is the code universal or individual ? (ii) are the relevant neural computations performed with bits or with qubits ?
Finally, and in an unrelated way, we will show that a well-known aspect of consciousness, namely its limited entropy, allows us to give an elegant answer to the old philosophical problem: free will or determinism ?