Actually, that's also an area where SOME aspects of Chinese philosophy are interesting to me. They tend to distinguish consciousness from thought. In Chinese tradition, thought is a sense, like smell, taste, touch, etc, not an isolated things with its own existence, but a sensory response to stimuli. This is fairly consistent with a lot of research.
Consciousness is seen as a separate thing. Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" is not as convincing in this view, unless restated as "I think, therefore something to observe that thought is", whether it is a self existent "I", or a bundle of synapses also responding to stimuli, I find an interesting question, and so far, it looks like the latter is more likely.