Next time you go out like a light during class or a boring meeting, you can blame it on the claustrum
When the area was stimulated with high frequency electrical impulses, the woman lost consciousness. Her breathing slowed down and she stopped responding to visual and auditory stimuli. When the team stopped the electrical impulses, the patient regained consciousness with no memory of what happened. Koubeissis team repeated the experiment for two days, zapping electrical impulses in the same area and the achieved the same result every time.
The claustrum is where it's at
Just days before Cricks death in 2004, he was working on a paper that suggested the claustrum would be the perfect candidate for the job. It receives input and projects back from all areas of the cortex, making it very suitable to acting as a conductor to bring the different parts of the consciousness orchestra together.
See the article here:
Scientists might have just found the brain's 'off switch'