I'm interested the chemical, biophysical, biochemical, and neural basis of consciousness.  This question has been of philosophical and scientific interest for pretty much as long as humanity has been able to pose the question.  The answer may be able to tell us more about who we are, as well as how to create machine and detect nonhuman consciousness.  We have only just begun to be able to look at the problem from a scientific perspective, with advances in imaging technology and computational methods leading the way into a new era of investigations into the fundamental mechanisms underlying consciousness.

Blog

Some links:

Association for the Scientific Studies of Consciousness

"Consciousness" on Wikipedia