Consciousness and intelligence are two great mysteries of the brain. One is involved with our application of knowledge and skills whilst the other is the embodiment of all our memories and our personality traits. Both factors seem to have the greatest effect on our lives, yet we don't fully understand either of them. Intelligence can be formally defined but the nature of it is quite puzzling and we have only a rough idea of how it may function. Consciousness is even more mysterious, as we have very little idea of what it is or how it even works to begin with.
While we don't yet have the answers, there is a lot we can do and infer with the information provided. By analyzing what we know, we can get a sense of how these enigmatic qualities may function, and perhaps learn new things that we weren't aware of before.
Intelligence is a biological mechanism for solving problems, most importantly staying alive. We know it isn't a single thing, as it comes to form in a wide variety of behaviors. It can be better understood as a sort of toolbox for humanity. The tools of intelligence work together to gather information from the five senses, save it, and then use it to learn as well as apply it in real life situations. This is crucial for living things as it allows them to gather information on the state of their own bodies, which allows them to monitor their hunger, thirst, fatigue, and other problems. Often, the more complex a problem is, the more tools it will require.
The four basic tools of the intelligence are memory, learning, creativity, and planning. Memory is the tool that allows an organism to keep track of and save information, so that it doesn't need to start all over when it perceives something of importance to them. Memory can save information about events, places, associations, and behaviors. Learning is the process of putting together a sequence of thoughts or actions. It is used by organisms to understand new concepts which they have obtained from their five senses. This understanding of the new concept is then saved using memory.
Creativity is the third tool and it involves producing something new and valuable from seemingly unrelated things/concepts. In terms of neuroscience and anatomy, creativity involves the creation of new and unusual synaptic connections. Planning is the final tool and it regards considering what is needed to achieve a certain goal and in what sequence it is needed, followed by putting those activities together in such a sequence that it becomes a plan. When new problems come up, they need to be assessed in order to identify whether they match the plan or not. A very advanced form of planning is strategizing against competitors because it requires that an organism be aware that there are others like them that are after the same thing.
Consciousness is what allows us to be aware of our surroundings and of our own state. While we do not know much about its nature, we do know that this trait likely evolved through natural selection. It can be inferred that the original goal of consciousness was likely to direct organisms towards a fresh supply of food. For life on the smaller scales, consciousness isn’t necessary to obtain energy since food came easily for simple organisms who could be very easily nourished with small quantities. The first step towards the development of consciousness was most likely when living things began to move themselves towards energy sources and away from predators.
The next step towards the development of consciousness was to add some sort of perception beyond smelling or hearing which worked at a distance. This sense is commonly known today as vision. Vision adds depth and context to our world, giving us a sense of the environment we live in, adding to our awareness of the things around us. The third step towards consciousness was an organism's constant awareness of their goals and needs through the use of a previously mentioned tool, memory. Having the tool of memory meant that an organism could retain information about what was beneficial to them, what didn't affect them, and what was harmful for them. A related phenomenon is known as object permanence. This is the awareness that an object continues to exist even when we are unable to see it. It is a skill that human babies develop around the age of eight months. The skill suggests, at the very least, a basic sense of time, which is another big step towards consciousness. It may also enable organisms to anticipate the future.
Delayed gratification is rewarding greater amounts of something desired for, having waited some amount of time. It indicates the ability to perceive a reward which exists only in the future. Language and words enable us to create our own hypotheses about the world, put together detailed plans, and to communicate them with others. Words give us the ability to think about ourselves and our place in the universe. They even enable us to think about our own consciousnesses. Science doesn’t have an answer to consciousness, let alone an approach to finding that answer. However, we are learning a lot about the mechanisms associated with consciousness, and our understanding is only growing.
The only real approach that we can take to understanding consciousness is analyzing the strange disorders which involves it. One of these disorders is Anosognosia. This disorder is characterized by the loss of movement in a limb, however when patients with the disorder are asked to move the limb, they agree to and when asked why they didn't, they will make up an excuse as to why they did not move the limb. Even stranger is hemispatial neglect, a disorder which is characterized by the loss of sensation in one side of the body. A study conducted on a patient named P.S. involved presenting two different pictures of the same house, with one obvious difference, that being the first one was on fire. Because the fire was only noticeable on one side of the house, P.S. claimed that there was no difference between the houses. However, when P.S. was asked which house they would rather live in, they picked the second one (without the fire), not once, but again and again for apparently no reason. What was happening was that even though they consciously felt no sensation in the left side of their body, their brain was unconsciously registering the part of the house that was on fire, leading them to instinctively choose the second house every time.
Lastly, Anton-Babinski syndrome is characterized by cortical blindness. However, patients with the syndrome will claim to be able to see. When asked a question involving their visual sense, they will simply guess and when told they are wrong, they will make up an excuse to explain their inaccuracy. Anosognosia and Anton-Babinski syndrome are the result of a disconnect between what the patients experience and their conscious awareness of that experience. In the case of both of these disorders, the patients don't know that they are unable to move their disabled limb or that they are blind because the part of the brain that monitors sensory information is not telling them that they are unable to move the limb or that they are unable to see anything. In fact, it isn't telling them anything due to that part of the brain being damaged in such a way. This effectively forces the rest of the brain to simply make up an excuse.