Short answers, pulled from the story.
The word conscious first appeared in English during the 17th century as a simple adjective applied to inanimate objects. A text from 1643 described conscious Groves using the term figuratively for nature itself.
John Locke defined the modern concept of consciousness in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding published in 1690 as the perception of what passes in a man's own mind. Samuel Johnson included this definition in his celebrated Dictionary released in 1755.
David Chalmers called understanding P-consciousness the hard problem of consciousness. P-consciousness refers to raw experience including moving colored forms sounds sensations emotions and feelings with our bodies at the center.
Researchers identified a small region called rostral dorsolateral pontine tegmentum driving consciousness through functional connectivity with cortical regions in a study conducted in 2016. This region was associated with lesions found in specific brainstem areas linked to coma and vegetative states.
Global workspace theory emerged as a cognitive architecture proposed by Bernard Baars in 1988 using theater metaphors. Baars described conscious processes represented by an illuminated stage integrating inputs from unconscious networks broadcasting them to unlit audiences.