There's a physical basis for most things. A magnetic field forms because you have a bunch of particles with the same quantum spin. A stove burner glows red when you run electricity through it.
I'm not saying the process in the brain is unique. I'm not saying there's only one way to "activate" consciousness. Heck, for all I know, maybe a bolt of lightning experiences consciousness, even if just for a fraction of a second.
Allow me to give you a "physical" example. The brain operates near a critical threshold, that is the edge of chaos. The brain is teetering on the edge of chaos without ever going chaotic. Well, not usually, because when the brain does enter chaos, you get a seizure. But there is growing evidence that this may be a prerequisite for consciousness; when the brain enters a less chaotic state, a person may lose consciousness.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8851554/
Now let's talk about information processing. Most of what our brains do is subconscious. Only a small subset of what our brains do is actually conscious. What makes some information processing more special than others that some of it is conscious and the rest is not? Isn't it more likely that the way the information is processed is what makes the difference? I.e. different at a physical level.