who, what, WHERE, when, why.

For this weeks blog option, I decided to watch a segment of the BBC Horizon,"The Secret You," specifically, the section regarding where consciousness resides. Of the estimated 100 billion neurons, how many are involved in creating consciousness? All of them? What part of the brain actually makes this conscious? I have always been interested in the anatomy/chemical processes that occur in the brain, more so than the results that occur from these happenings.
The human brain has a highly developed cortex, which is presumed to give us the ability to be self aware. In the brain stem, there is the reticular activating system, which is a group of nerve cells that relay upwards to the thalamus, which sends information to all of the areas of the cortex. This continuous activation of the cortex is what is presumed to be the main factor of human consciousness.
Seeing the cortex first-hand in this video was amazing, as it is truly fascinating how that brain was once inside of a human body and contained the goals, wants, and needs of a recent human being. However, the video seemed fairly vague as to where the the individual areas of consciousness reside, since all that was given was the answer of "cortex." I would be interested to hear more on how this area is split into more exact forms of thought and the different processes that occur in order to give us this "constant activation" that is so important in the ability of humans to obtain consciousness.