Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
September 17, 2026
T Nakamura, Matthias Michel, Hakwan Lau
Disturbances of conscious experience are central features of many psychiatric and mental health disorders. Experimental studies of conscious perception are therefore increasingly cited in clinical and translational work under the assumption that they identify neural mechanisms specific to subjective experience. Over the past decades, recording and analysis techniques have advanced substantially...
Cerebral Cortex
September 1, 2026
Hakwan Lau, Tomoya Nakamura
Blindsight is a highly informative phenomenon because it dissociates relatively preserved visual function from subjective awareness, unlike other common experimental paradigms that often confound unawareness with weak or near-absence of perception. We assess recent evidence for early post-lesional blindsight-like behavior in macaques and wonder if reduced saccade rates may alternatively reflect...
Neuron
June 17, 2026
Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel, Jun Seo Hwang, Hakwan Lau et al.
Rising media attention regarding consciousness in animals, fetuses, organoids, and AI has led to some rather strong statements. Most of these claims are based on "markers" of consciousness that track the general capacity for information processing rather than subjective experience per se. Accordingly, their relevance for theory arbitration may actually be limited.
Acta Psychologica
February 13, 2026
Hina Kawaguchi, Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel, Hakwan Lau et al.
Story reading is often accompanied with mental visualization of the described scenes and events. Recent findings indicate that individuals who report not experiencing any visual imagery (a condition called aphantasia), also report being less absorbed and engaged when reading stories. In the present study, we explored how aphantasics (n = 8) and controls (n = 20) read imagery-rich stories. We...
bioRxiv
January 24, 2026
Karen J. Tian, Brian Maniscalco, Michael L. Epstein et al.
preprint
Visual experience can sometimes depart from visual performance, providing a powerful lens into the mechanisms generating conscious perception. In one proposed dissociation—subjective inflation—unattended locations in the periphery appear stronger than attended ones despite equated performance. Subjective inflation has played a central role in motivating theories of consciousness that reject the...
PsyArXiv
March 15, 2024
Hakwan Lau
preprint
Here I respond to Anil Seth’s recent article on the Worth of Wild Ideas (2023). The debate on whether the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness is pseudoscience continues, involving many authors on both sides. Here, instead of focusing on the theory, I highlight a deeper philosophical divide within the science of consciousness.
Neurosciences research
January 31, 2024
Rebecca Keogh, Hakwan Lau
Examining subjective experience has been an important yet challenging endeavour of philosophers, psychologists
September 17, 2023
Hakwan Lau
5 citations
preprint
Some colleagues have questioned about our recent joint statement (Fleming et al 2023), so I try to address them here, as well as to provide some background. I also discuss what I think really went wrong with the recent adversarial collaboration on testing theories of consciousness (ARC-Cogitate), which has in part led to the statement. In a previous open review I already discussed the...
PsyArXiv
September 16, 2023
Stephen M Fleming, Chris Frith, Mel Goodale et al.
preprint
The media, including news articles in both Nature and Science, have recently celebrated the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) as a ‘leading’ and empirically tested theory of consciousness. We are writing as researchers with some relevant expertise to express our concerns.
August 18, 2023
Hakwan Lau
8 citations
preprint
The target of this review is the June 26, 2023 version of a recent preprint (1), in which the authors reported the first set of results of a highly publicized project (Cogitate) generously supported by the Templeton World Charity Foundation. The aim of the ongoing project is to empirically arbitrate between two theories of consciousness in the form of an adversarial collaboration. Overall, the...
PsyArXiv
August 15, 2023
Hakwan Lau
preprint
Here I discuss how to study subjective experiences in Alzheimer’s Disease and the related dementias (AD/ADRD), using the rigorous methods of psychophysics. We will borrow some ideas from studies of visual awareness, specifically regarding how impoverished subjective experience is characterized in blindsight patients. I also discuss how understanding the neural correlates of perceptual...
Current Biology
August 1, 2023
Joseph E LeDoux, Jonathan Birch, Kristin Andrews et al.
There is growing interest in the relationship been AI and consciousness. Joseph LeDoux and Jonathan Birch thought it would be a good moment to put some of the big questions in this area to some leading experts. The challenge of addressing the questions they raised was taken up by Kristin Andrews, Nicky Clayton, Nathaniel Daw, Chris Frith, Hakwan Lau, Megan Peters, Susan Schneider, Anil Seth,...
PNAS Nexus
January 23, 2023
Cody A Cushing, Alexei J Dawes, Stefan G Hofmann et al.
The mechanisms underlying the subjective experiences of mental disorders remain poorly understood. This is partly due to long-standing over-emphasis on behavioral and physiological symptoms and a de-emphasis of the patient's subjective experiences when searching for treatments. Here, we provide a new perspective on the subjective experience of mental disorders based on findings in neuroscience...
Cambridge University Press eBooks
September 30, 2022
Jorge Morales, Hakwan Lau
7 citations
Qualitative consciousness is conscious experience marked by the presence of sensory qualities, like the experienced painfulness of having a piano dropped on your foot or the consciousness of seeing the brilliant reds and oranges of a sunset. Over his career, philosopher David Rosenthal has defended an influential theoretical approach to explaining qualitative consciousness. This approach...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 27, 2022
Ka-Yuet Liu, Hakwan Lau
What are the functional roles of subjective experiences? Answering this question amounts to charting a course for the cognitive science of consciousness, where mental processes can be described in terms of their functions. If we strategically focus on mental disorders, preliminary answers may be in sight within 25 years.
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract This chapter argues that the subjective quality of a conscious experience can be understood in terms of how similar it is to all other possible experiences. We discuss how these similarity relationships can be implicitly and conveniently assessed, given the structure of the mammalian sensory cortices. These mechanisms allow the subject to “know”, without effort, what an experience is...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The so-called NCC project started in the 1990s. But as with the whole idea of a “revival” of consciousness science, there too is a long and often neglected history well before that. Not knowing our history is a problem because we are prone to repeating the same mistakes. The trouble is that some conceptual issues are hard to avoid, even when we think we are focusing on...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract Most of us agree that consciousness emerged at some time through our evolutionary history. Many also find probable that it is a relatively recent invention; simple organisms like bacteria are presumably not conscious. However, evolution is a long and complex process. Consciousness could have evolved mostly as a byproduct or for reasons that we do not intuitively expect. So, what good...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The chapter begins by questioning whether the prefrontal cortex plays a causal role in conscious perception. The dorsolateral prefrontal areas and the frontal polar cortex of the prefrontal cortex are identified as important because they seem to have survived the controls for all three kinds of confounders discussed in this volume: stimulus, report, and performance capacity. However,...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The theory of perceptual reality monitoring connects two important notions of consciousness: subjective experience, and our rational grasp of reality. Studies in the social sciences, psychiatry, and clinical psychology have focused on this latter notion of consciousness for over a century. To many, that’s where the concept of consciousness really comes from, or at least that’s what...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: When we don’t pay attention, we don’t perceive many details. But our experience may be subjectively “inflated” beyond what we actually represent in the sensory cortices. This poses troubles for local theorists. At the same time, the inflation account also suggests that the role played by the prefrontal cortex in consciousness isn’t as straightforward as global broadcast. This chapter...
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract This book puts forward a mechanistic account of subjective experience based on a review of the current cognitive neuroscience literature on conscious perception, attention, and metacognition. It is argued that current empirical studies are often misinterpreted. An undue focus has been placed on perceptual capacity rather than subjective experience per se. Null findings are often...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: This book will focus on subjective experience, also known as phenomenal consciousness. But this may also relate to other notions of consciousness such as wakefulness and volitional control (contra automaticity). An important distinction has been made between subjective experience and informational access. However, just because two concepts are distinct does not mean that they are...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: A brief review of the history of the science of consciousness suggests that since the 1990s, important studies from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have been sidelined, to make room for rather speculative metaphysical and physics-centric theorizing. Some arguments are given in favor of restoring this balance. These include some considerations about the longevity and...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The main goal of this chapter is to take stock of what we have reviewed so far, and to assess the broader theoretical implications. The previous chapters already covered the first three issues introduced in Chapter 1: the neural correlates of consciousness, the relationship between attention and consciousness, the functions of consciousness, and whether animals and robots can be...