Consciousness

What is consciousness? What are the processes that lead to it coming about? What structures bring it about? Is it merely an illusion or is it the truth?

I think it'll take scientists hundreds of years of research to eventually understand this. Either that or someone genius - on the level of Einstein - will come along and throw back the curtain to reveal it to us. We seem to be short of geniuses in the 20-21st century though. Well, "the wheelchair guy" exists.

Why didn't the nazis use their amoral experimentation and just damage random parts of their test subjects' brains and see how it effected them? Of course its too late for that now.

Are there any humans who have accidentally had part of their brain damaged and seem to act like robots or something? Or their problem solving skills destroyed? Then again, I'm not sure consciousness has to do with problem solving. Even rats and monkeys can problem solve, so that isn't really consciousness. How about humans who act like animals? But actually, the feral kids they've sometimes found don't have any damage at all, its just they lack the social skills and social development that they needed to become civilized. It's sort of hard to define consciousness. Are animals really not conscious? Sure, they act on instinct, but they still make decisions and respond to stimulus in a semi-intelligent manner. (Rats running through mazes faster each time or monkeys who learn to use tools, or that one parrot who was in the news who supposedly actually could make up words and expand its own vocabulary which seemed far beyond the usual mimicking parrot.)