I have a theory and it stems from the difference between the way our thoughts play out in a dream state vs an awake state. Say you have a group of neurons that encodes a memory of your dogs face. The memory of the way your house looks might share alot of the neurons that make up the memory of your dogs face. When you are dreaming, these overlaps become apparent because in your dream state everything happens illogically, so you might one second see your dog, and the next second see your house, with no logical connection. The difference between dreaming and being awake is that when you are awake your thoughts follow a logical pathway. This logical pathway might be what consciousness is, like a hidden highway network of neurons that lead you from one thought to another in a logical path. This is something that is obviously altered by weed, which makes your mind follow less logical sequences of thoughts, similar to in a schizophrenics mind. Its this highway of connected thought that is out of service when we are dreaming, leading us to have disjointed thoughts. I always looked at consciousness as part of the brain "watching" the other processes in your brain, and it makes sense that the consciousness highway may be whats doing the watching and directing of your thought patterns while awake.
I dont know, just thought id throw this oit there for ns thinkers