Connectionists: Preprint, four-loop architecture as the necessary neural substrate for consciousness

[arthur.stewart@neuravexium.com arthur.stewart@neuravexium.com]

Hello all,
 
The premise of the preprint is that consciousness, defined operationally as the capacity to produce contingent, accurate reports of currently presented information, requires four distinct operations performed in sequence within a 50 to 150 ms window, with each operation a necessary condition for the next. The operations are gating (does an arriving signal cross threshold into the processing cycle?), contextualization (is the admitted signal placed within the globally broadcast representation of prior completed cycles?), resolution (is the deviation between prior expectation and arriving signal computed into one definite weighted state?), and commitment (is the resolved state converted into voluntary output drive, with an efference copy configuring the gating conditions the next cycle will inherit?). A report is the observable signature of all four operations completing through a channel a clinician can read. Any neural substrate for consciousness must implement all four oper!
 ations, s
 ynchronized within the window. The architecture the preprint proposes identifies where these four operations are instantiated in cortex.
 
The four neural loops and the operation each is proposed to implement.
 
    * Loop 1, Layer 5 pyramidal recurrent, gating via apical-basal coincidence detection (Suzuki and Larkum, 2020; N. Takahashi et al., 2016, 2020)
    * Loop 2, central lateral thalamocortical, contextualization via matrix-type calbindin-positive projections to supragranular cortex (Tasserie et al., 2022; Whyte et al., 2024)
    * Loop 3, VTA-cortical dopaminergic, resolution via phasic deviation-from-expectation encoding, and the only loop receiving input from all three others simultaneously (Schultz et al., 1997; Gardner, Schoenbaum, and Gershman, 2018; Costa et al., 2025)
    * Loop 4, ACC-mediodorsal thalamic, commitment and generation of the efference copy that configures the next cycle's gating conditions (Gehring et al., 1993)
The necessity of each operation and the sequence between them generate the principal predictions of the architecture, that single-loop disruption produces loop-characteristic altered states rather than eliminating consciousness, that reliable elimination of consciousness requires simultaneous disruption of all four functions, and that structures outside these four loops (including the hippocampal memory system) are neither necessary nor sufficient for consciousness regardless of cognitive importance. The paper grounds each loop in primary empirical evidence from anesthesia, disorders of consciousness, dopaminergic prediction error work, and voluntary action monitoring, and generates thirteen discriminating predictions in total (eight from disrupting the loops directly, five from the subconscious systems that feed the loops and receive their output).
 
The architecture is offered as an extension of Thalamocortical Loop theory, a correction to the anatomical specification of Global Neuronal Workspace consistent with preregistered adversarial collaboration evidence, and an operationalization of Integrated Information Theory's integration criterion that replaces phi with a testable synchronization requirement.
 
    * Consciousness Requires Four Neural Loops, Architecture, Mechanism, and Necessity, 10.5281/zenodo.19602857 https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19602857
 
Best regards,
 
Arthur
 
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