What is "Mind?"

There’s a part of your brain devoted entirely to recognizing animals
Biologically speaking, humans are pretty much just another animal, and it's actually hard to come up with any clear explanation for what sets us apart. But we have a hard time accepting this ... and the reason we're in denial about our animal status may be hardwired into our brains.
It seems as though we humans really should be exceptional somehow, but so many of the things that make us unique — complex societies, tool use, even language and self-awareness — can be found to one degree or another in other species as well. But it's hard to shake the notion that we're special somehow, and that's not exactly surprising. Partially that's because so much of the history of human philosophy has been spent conceptualizing ourselves as fundamentally different from all other life — for a quick example of that, check out the Great Chain of Being.

The roots of human exceptionalism might go even deeper than that, right down to some of the deepest functions of our brains. That's the finding of researchers from Caltech, who asked 41 epilepsy patients to look at 100 different images of animals, people, objects, and landmarks. Because the patients were about to undergo surgery, they'd had electrodes implanted in their brains, allowing the researchers to monitor the neural responses to the different images precisely.

The researchers studied the activity of nearly 1,500 different neurons, and one area of the brain in particular stuck out: the right amygdala. Some of the neurons in that section of the amygdala — the part of the brain that process emotional reaction — responded specifically to pictures of animals, and nothing else. Crucially, these neurons did not fire when photos of humans were shown, regardless of whether the photo was of a famous celebrity or a random stranger. It also didn't matter from what angle or distance the photos were taken.

Even more intriguingly, the neurons showed no preference for which animals were displayed. They didn't fire more strongly in response to, say, a potential predator or a cute lolcat. That suggests this neural response isn't a specific evolutionary response to possible threats - it's more basic than that. If anything, it suggests that we're hard-wired to respond to the presence of animals, any animals...as long as they're not humans.

So then, if you're still looking for a way to distinguish humans from all other animals, we now have a straightforward definition: humans are the only species that doesn't register a response in certain neurons of the right amygdala of the human brain. It doesn't have quite the same ring to it as "we're the only truly intelligent species" or something like that, but it does have the added value of actually meaning something concrete.

Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter, like mass or charge. It only manifests itself in structures of considerable complexity, i.e. brains. Evolution is development of more elaborate brains and concomitant higher consciousness.

Largo: ...like how does matter become experience, and where, exactly, in the causal chain, does this happen, and how. Of course the claim that experience is “what the meat brain does,” will never do owing to the vast qualitative differences between subjective experience (beyond neural “output”) and atomic activity.

The neural substrates of conscious color perception demonstrated using fMRI

It is well established that seeing color activates the ventral occipital cortex, including the fusiform and lingual gyri, but less is known about whether the region directly relates to conscious color perception. We investigated the neural correlates of conscious color perception in the ventral occipital cortex. To vary conscious color perception with the stimuli-remaining constant, we took advantage of the McCollough effect, an illusory color effect that is contingent on the orientation of grating stimuli. Subjects were exposed to a specific combination of chromatic grating patterns for 10 min to induce the McCollough effect. We compared brain activities measured while the subjects viewed achromatic grating stimuli before (PRE) and after the induction of the McCollough effect (POST) using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). There were two groups: one group was informed that they would perceive illusory color during the session (INFORMED group), whereas the other group was not informed (UNINFORMED group). The successful induction of the McCollough effect was confirmed in all subjects after the fMRI experiment; nevertheless, only approximately half of the UNINFORMED subjects had been aware of the color during the POST session, while the other half had not. The left anterior portion of the color-selective area in the ventral occipital cortex, presumably V4α, was significantly active in subjects who had consciously perceived the color during MR scan. This study demonstrates the activity in a subregion of the color-selective area in the ventral occipital cortex directly related to conscious color perception.

Since a strict computational model can be summarily ruled out, and a “brain is consciousness” model is insisting that an apple is an orange, and religious explanations are equally unsatisfactory, one wonders what direction is needed to wrestle this one down.

Re - the direct, first person experience of hanging 2,500 up the Shield on El Capitan, in boardshorts, in a lightning storm, is a different “thing” than a milk shake or a cockroach.

Ingestion of Lactobacillus strain regulates emotional behavior and central GABA receptor expression in a mouse via the vagus nerve

There is increasing, but largely indirect, evidence pointing to an effect of commensal gut microbiota on the central nervous system (CNS). However, it is unknown whether lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus rhamnosus could have a direct effect on neurotransmitter receptors in the CNS in normal, healthy animals. GABA is the main CNS inhibitory neurotransmitter and is significantly involved in regulating many physiological and psychological processes. Alterations in central GABA receptor expression are implicated in the pathogenesis of anxiety and depression, which are highly comorbid with functional bowel disorders. In this work, we show that chronic treatment with L. rhamnosus (JB-1) induced region-dependent alterations in GABAB1b mRNA in the brain with increases in cortical regions (cingulate and prelimbic) and concomitant reductions in expression in the hippocampus, amygdala, and locus coeruleus, in comparison with control-fed mice. In addition, L. rhamnosus (JB-1) reduced GABAAα2 mRNA expression in the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, but increased GABAAα2 in the hippocampus. Importantly, L. rhamnosus (JB-1) reduced stress-induced corticosterone and anxiety- and depression-related behavior. Moreover, the neurochemical and behavioral effects were not found in vagotomized mice, identifying the vagus as a major modulatory constitutive communication pathway between the bacteria exposed to the gut and the brain. Together, these findings highlight the important role of bacteria in the bidirectional communication of the gut–brain axis and suggest that certain organisms may prove to be useful therapeutic adjuncts in stress-related disorders such as anxiety and depression.