Consciousness and Human Brain Organoids: A Conceptual Mapping of Ethical and Philosophical Literature

"Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) with 14 CMs emphasizes that the nature of consciousness is access consciousness (Owen et al. 2024). The predicted structure for consciousness would be a workspace in the cerebral cortex, consisting of a network of long-range cortical neurons, that stores information and makes it globally available to all specialized systems throughout the brain, including memory, attention, and perception (Kreitmair 2023; Montoya and Montoya 2023; Owen et al. 2024). A state is conscious if and only if it is present in the global neuronal workspace (Kreitmair 2023; Owen et al. 2024). Like IIT, GNWT states that consciousness can exist in the absence of interaction with the environment (Lavazza 2020; Zilio and Lavazza 2023). Consequently, for an HBO, developing a global workspace that receives and stores information and specialized systems that deliver the information might be sufficient (Owen et al. 2024). This means that if an HBO grows in such a way as to resemble long-range patterns of cortico-cortical interactions and sufficient functional and anatomical differentiation, it could acquire an initial form of consciousness (Zilio and Lavazza 2023). However, current HBOs are only a few millimeters, which means that these centimeter-long connections cannot be present (Lavazza 2020)."

Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT), p. 7

GNWT links consciousness to globally integrated, fronto-parietal information sharing and predicts that if HBOs achieved sufficient long-range integration they might support access-like consciousness, directly mapping to Information Integration in brain and AI systems .

"An example of a frequently discussed empirical metric of IIT is the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI), which is inspired by the main postulate of IIT and measures the internal complexity of brain networks (Lavazza 2021a; Lavazza and Massimini 2018b). To calculate the PCI, the cerebral cortex is locally perturbed via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and the complexity of the electrical response of the rest of the brain is measured via electroencephalography (EEG) (Ankeny and Wolvetang 2021; Croxford and Bayne 2024; Gaillard 2024; Jeziorski et al. 2023; Kreitmair 2023; Lavazza 2020, 2021a, 2021b; Lavazza and Massimini 2018a, 2018b; Lavazza and Pizzetti 2020; Milford, Shaw, and Starke 2023; Owen et al. 2024; Sawai et al. 2022). Research indicates that the PCI reliably distinguishes between different levels of consciousness in patients who are wakeful, asleep, or under anesthesia, as well as those emerging from a coma or regaining a minimal level of consciousness (Lavazza and Massimini 2018a, 2018b; Milford, Shaw, and Starke 2023)."

Integrated Information Theory (IIT), p. 6

Because PCI changes the system via targeted perturbation and reads out global effects, it is a paradigmatic example of Causal Control relevant to assessing consciousness and could be adapted for HBOs .

"However, debates persist regarding how to define and detect consciousness, as existing theories and methods often yield conflicting predications. For example, while irregular low-amplitude electroencephalography (EEG) patterns in the 20–70 Hz range and gamma synchrony are strongly associated with consciousness in humans, it is unclear whether such indicators can be applied to HBOs (Ankeny and Wolvetang 2021; Jeziorski et al. 2023)."

Detecting Consciousness, p. 9

This links human temporal coordination markers (20–70 Hz dynamics and gamma synchrony) to consciousness while warning that such timing-based signatures may not straightforwardly apply to organoids, clarifying the role of Temporal Coordination across systems .

"Although HBOs lack pain receptors, some authors suggest that an isolated HBO may theoretically experience pain or discomfort (Koplin and Savulescu 2019; Lavazza 2020). This claim is based on analogies with phenomena such as phantom pain, where pain is experienced in the absence of a physical body part or sensory nerve fibers (Lavazza 2020). Furthermore, unlike animals, HBOs might not suffer from the deprivation of typical behaviors but could instead experience pain and discomfort akin to that reported in patients with altered states of consciousness (Lavazza and Massimini 2018b)."

Pain and Suffering, p. 9

These arguments highlight potential negative affective states in HBOs, directly relevant to Valence & Welfare considerations in consciousness research and AI analogies to aversive states and suffering .

"Memory (CM = 6) is mentioned as an example of phenomenological consciousness. According to the Cell Assembly Hypothesis, it is characterized by a synchronized and spontaneous neural activity that has already been discovered in cortical organoids (Lavazza 2021a; Lavazza and Pizzetti 2020; Sawai et al. 2019)."

Consciousness Terminology, p. 11

This connects representational content (memory) to synchronized population activity observed in cortical organoids, aligning with Representational Structure in both brains and engineered systems .