Towards the networks of the brain: from brain imaging to consciousness

The manner in which the brain computes in various tasks is being probed at a deep level by modern brain imaging techniques, with an increasing appreciation of the different networks being used to solve these tasks. There is simultaneously developing a neural modelling technology, which attempts to explain the underlying computations being performed by this set of networks. This paper describes results from brain imaging and how they may be related to the underlying neural networks by means of structural modelling. It thereby attempts to give an initial glimpse of the emerging picture of the functionality of brain networks. It concludes with a discussion of the role of consciousness in global processing, and how particular styles of neural processing can attain this.