Thousands of species of animals probably have consciousness

The Amygdaloids sound like one of the aliens-of-the-week from “Star Trek”. In fact, they are a rock band from New York University (NYU), whose singer, lead guitarist and moving spirit is Joseph LeDoux. Dr LeDoux is one of the world’s top authorities on the amygdalas, a pair of almond-shaped structures in the brain that are responsible, among other things, for generating fear in response to threats. But he is also president of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC), which held its 26th meeting at NYU between June 22nd and 25th.

The Amygdaloids were merely the warm-up act. Top of the bill was the announcement of the result of a so-called “adversarial collaboration” between proponents of two hypotheses about the nature of consciousness. This involved running a series of experiments, begun in 2020, to determine which (if either) of them is correct.