The universe, not the brain, may be responsible for consciousness: What Christof Koch’s radical idea says

Have you ever stopped and wondered how our brain perceives an emotion or how we actually experience what we feel? Scientists believe that our thoughts and our sense of self come from the neurons inside our skull. But neuroscientist Christof Koch of the Allen Institute in Seattle argues that this might not be entirely true.

In his paper, he challenges what we believe about consciousness. Even today, researchers have not been able to fully explain why our brain activity gives rise to our inner experience. Here’s what Christof Koch thinks consciousness might actually come from.

Does our brain create consciousness, or does it come from somewhere else? In an interview, he shared that there might be species out there with technology on a very different level, and they might even be on higher levels of self-consciousness. He further adds, “We are complete strangers to this universe, and it’s all meaningless, or is there something more?”

He also shared his ideas at the Bial Foundation's 'Behind and Beyond the Brain' symposium in Porto, Portugal, in April 2026, as well as in work published in Nature Reviews Neuroscience in 2016.

We know which part of our brain circuit lights up when we feel any emotion. But we still don’t know why any of that turns it into an experience. Koch shared that science had not made enough progress to clearly explain consciousness in the brain.

He also described an experience he once had on a beach years ago. During this, the line between himself and the world around him seemed to dissolve. He was left with what he calls "a view of Mind-at-Large.” He says it was "the most meaningful of my life" that "flipped my view of reality." Experiences like this shouldn't just get dismissed because they're hard to measure, he added.

In another interview, Koch shared his view of consciousness and reality. He noted, “whatever remained of me became one with the universe,” adding that he now believes that “ultimately what truly exists is not the physical.” 

He further explained that matter, energy, space, time, and information may be “the product of something phenomenal, something mental,” because he felt he had become part of what he called “cosmic consciousness.” “I now believe that when I die, Christof will be gone. Christof will never come again, right?...but my conscious experience will go back to where it came from,” he added.

According to him, making an AI smarter or more powerful does not mean that it will become conscious. If consciousness is more than just complex computing, then a more advanced computer may still not have any real awareness or subjective experience.

This doesn't mean machines can never become conscious. According to Koch, we first need to better understand what consciousness actually is before we can know whether a machine can have it.