The CODAM (Corollary Discharge of Attention Movement) Model was proposed in 2000 to develop a model of the creation of conscious experience based on an engineering control approach to attention. The model will be decsribed, starting with a brief overview of control models and their highly succesful development and application to motor control by the brain. These are extended by developing a basic control model for attention, and then its further extension to inclusion of an observer or predictor. The introduction of suitable sensory and efference copy buffers leads to a model of attention possessing the ultimate in efficiency in driving the movement of attention as rapidly as possible. This is CODAM.
The CODAM model will be analysed to explain how the sense of 'what it is like to be' or ipseity can be explained, being the early activation of the corollary discharge buffer, before activation of the sensory buffer by the attention-amplified input. This will be explored both for the siting of the various components in the brain as well as for its explanation of the range of experiences in schizphrenia (especially that of hyper-reflexivity).
The application of CODAM to the various pieces of objective data will then be considered, using results from recent simulation of the Posner benefit paradigm and the attentional blink, as well as others. The evidence of the CODAM signal (activation of the corollary discharge buffer) as being the P2/N2 complex will be discussed.
The nature of extension of CODAM to motor control will then be described. This leads to a full theory of the highest-order control circuitry of the brain, involving various predictors and monitors at various levels of conscious control. The question of separate motor awareness will be discussed in terms of CODAM.
Finally a program for future work to explore CODAM in various experimental areas, and the numerous open question raised by CODAM, will be decribed.
Taylor JG (2000) Attentional Movement: The Control Basis for Consciousness. Neuroscience Abstracts 26, 231 #839.3
Taylor JG (2003) Paying Attention to Consciousness (submitted to Progress in Neurobiology)
Taylor JG (2003) The CODAM Model and Deficits of Consciousness I: CODAM, KES (Oxford) to appear.
The Codam model and Deficits of Cosnciousness II: Schoxphrenia and Neglect/Extinction. KES (Oxford) to appear.
Taylor JG & Fragopanagos N (2003) Simulations of Attention Control Models in Sensory and Motor Paradigms. IJCNN2003 to appear.