I do not understand why this is about consciousness. My take of this study is that they establish that there are two type of neurons: (i) those recording whether there is a signal ("neurons signalling stimulus intensity" (ii) those recording how to react on the signal based on a rule ("representing the crows' percept").
This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness?
They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.
I don't think it does unfortunately. It's an interesting study but this article — either through the original research or its coverage — is distorting appropriate interpretation. It's common of a lot of neuroscience research. The task, too, taps an ability/process that's thought to be key to intelligence, but isn't that distinctive, and is found in a lot of animals. Again, interesting study, crows are smart, but not exactly what it's being billed as, like you say.
Agreed. I'd be inclined to blame the coverage rather than the researchers for the 'coarse' interpretation (after all, the original title talks about a 'neural correlate' of consciousness)...
This is cool, but what does this to have to do with consciousness? They mention that they're not sure either about "phenomenal consciousness" and "access consciousness", but I wish they elaborated further on this.