I personally like roger penrose's theory (hypothesis?) of orchestrated objective reduction of consciousness (Orch-OR). He stipulates that in evolution of the quantum state of a system the collapse of wave function IS a form of proto-consciousness. Essentially the he is saying that WF collapse is how a system becomes 'aware' of the choice and consciousness emerges from there onwards. A Brain of sufficient/right complexity is a connectionist structure that is responsible for perceiving and/or translating it.

What he's missing is the agent responsible for incorporating in the human/animal brain but some interesting candidates have come forwards like microtubules in neurons. But it is all highly speculative, though, there have been some advances in proving that biology is not too wet-warm-noisy for quantum state to persist without decoehrence for instance.. photosynthesis.