A new San Diego Tribune article summarizes the attempt by the late Francis Crick at solving the mystery of consciousness. Like René Descartes (who believed the pineal gland was the interface of brain and soul) and other philosophers of old, Crick believed there was one special area of the brain from which consciousness sprang, but he died never having found it. More recent thinkers like Dennet and Minsky lean toward the idea that consciousness is distributed across the entire brain and doesn't need any strange phenomena like souls or quantum effects to explain it. The article also describes recent advances by cognitive science that bring us closer to understanding consciousness.