55 papers in the library · 154 citations · publishing 2008-2026
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...
Cognitive Neuroscience 2021 Matthias Michel, Hakwan Lau
Doerig et al. have set several criteria that theories of consciousness need to fulfill. By these criteria, higher-order theories fare better than most existing theories. But they also argue that higher-order theories may not be able to answer both the 'small network argument' and the 'other systems argument'. In response, we focus on the case of the Perceptual Reality Monitoring theory to...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 13, 2020 Joseph E LeDoux, Matthias Michel, Hakwan Lau
Consciousness is currently a thriving area of research in psychology and neuroscience. While this is often attributed to events that took place in the early 1990s, consciousness studies today are a continuation of research that started in the late 19th century and that continued throughout the 20th century. From the beginning, the effort built on studies of animals to reveal basic principles of...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences September 1, 2019 Richard Brown, Hakwan Lau, Joseph E LeDoux
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for overintellectualizing consciousness. We show that, while...
PsyArXiv June 24, 2019 Hakwan Lau, Matthias Michel preprint
Some proponents of the Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness profess strong views on the Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCC), namely that large swathes of the neocortex, the cerebellum, at least some sensory cortices, and the so-called limbic system are all not essential for any form of conscious experiences. We argue that this connection is not incidental. Conflation...
Nature Human Behaviour February 1, 2019 M. Michel, Diane M Beck, Ned Block et al.
Scientific research on consciousness is critical to multiple scientific, clinical, and ethical issues. The growth of the field could also be beneficial to several areas including neurology and mental health research. To achieve this goal, we need to set funding priorities carefully and address problems such as job creation and potential media misrepresentation.
PsyArXiv January 7, 2019 Richard Brown, Hakwan Lau, Joseph E LeDoux preprint
Critics have often misunderstood the higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness. Here we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models, such as first-order local recurrency theory. The criticism that HOT overintellectualizes conscious experience is inaccurate because in reality the theory assumes...
Frontiers in Psychology November 5, 2018 Matthias Michel, Stephen M Fleming, Hakwan Lau et al.
The scientific study of consciousness emerged as an organized field of research only a few decades ago. As empirical results have begun to enhance our understanding of consciousness, it is important to find out whether other factors, such as funding for consciousness research and status of consciousness scientists, provide a suitable environment for the field to grow and develop sustainably. We...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences September 19, 2018 Brian Odegaard, Min Yu Chang, Hakwan Lau et al.
Do we perceive fine details in the visual periphery? Here, we propose that phenomenology in the visual periphery can be characterized by an inflated sense of perceptual capacity, as observers overestimate the quality of their perceptual inputs. Distinct from the well-known perceptual phenomenon of 'filling-in' where perceptual content is generated or completed endogenously, inflation can be...
Journal of Vision September 1, 2018 JD Knotts, Aurelio Cortese, Mitsuo Kawato et al. 1 citation
Previous studies have shown that spontaneous fluctuations in prestimulus fMRI activity can predict trial-by-trial fluctuations in the perception of identical stimuli (Boly et al., 2007; Hesselmann et al., 2008, 2010; Sadaghiani et al., 2009; Rahnev et al., 2012; Pajani et al., 2015), yet such activity on its own does not seem to lead to conscious perception, even when awareness is carefully...
Current Opinion in Psychology September 1, 2018 JD Knotts, Brian Odegaard, Hakwan Lau et al.
How do we explain the seemingly rich nature of visual phenomenology while accounting for impoverished perception in the periphery? This apparent mismatch has led some to posit that rich phenomenological content overflows cognitive access, whereas others hold that phenomenology is in fact sparse and constrained by cognitive access. Here, we review the Rich vs. Sparse debate as it relates to a...
Current Biology July 1, 2018 JD Knotts, Brian Odegaard, Hakwan Lau
Key theories of consciousness predict that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays important roles, but there has been relatively little causal evidence showing that manipulation of activity in the region can broadly affect conscious experiences. A new study provides crucial findings to help resolve this issue, showing that direct pharmacological stimulation of PFC restores wakefulness in...
Science October 27, 2017 Stanislas Dehaene, Hakwan Lau, Sid Kouider
The controversial question of whether machines may ever be conscious must be based on a careful consideration of how consciousness arises in the only physical system that undoubtedly possesses it: the human brain. We suggest that the word “consciousness” conflates two different types of information-processing computations in the brain: the selection of information for global broadcasting, thus...
Journal of Neuroscience October 4, 2017 Brian Odegaard, Robert T. Knight, Hakwan Lau
Is activity in prefrontal cortex (PFC) critical for conscious perception? Major theories of consciousness make distinct predictions about the role of PFC, providing an opportunity to arbitrate between these views empirically. Here we address three common misconceptions: (1) PFC lesions do not affect subjective perception; (2) PFC activity does not reflect specific perceptual content; and (3)...
Neuroscience of Consciousness May 4, 2017 Hakwan Lau
This is a subjective summary of the recent meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC) in Buenos Aires (2016), with some highlights, as well as reflections on the state of the field in general. I argue that we are likely at a critical point where the field is in the process of transforming itself, and the ASSC meeting is accordingly becoming the premier venue to...
Animal Sentience 2017 Vincent Taschereau-Dumouchel, Piercesare Grimaldi, Hakwan Lau 3 citations
We disagree with Woodruff that we have good neurobiological reasons to think fishes are sentient, because mechanisms for consciousness are controversial even in humans. To the extent that there are consensuses in that literature, they do not support Woodruff's claims.
Neuroscience of Consciousness 2017 Jorge Morales, Yasha Mouradi, Claire Sergent et al.
A recent fMRI study by Webb et al. (Cortical networks involved in visual awareness independent of visual attention, Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2016;113:13923-28) proposes a new method for finding the neural correlates of awareness by matching attention across awareness conditions. The experimental design, however, seems at odds with known features of attention. We highlight logical and...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences October 2016 Nathan Giles, Hakwan Lau, Brian Odegaard
Recent experiments demonstrate that invisible stimulus features can induce binocular rivalry, indicating the phenomenon may be caused by differences in perceptual signal strength rather than conscious selection processes. Here, we clarify binocular rivalry's role in consciousness research by highlighting a critical difference between two distinct types of visual awareness.
Neuroscience of Consciousness 2016 Megan A. K. Peters, T. Ro, Hakwan Lau
Response bias (or criterion) contamination is insidious in studies of consciousness: that observers report they do not see a stimulus may not mean they have absolutely no subjective experience; they may be giving such reports in relative terms in the context of other stimuli. Bias-free signal detection theoretic measures provide an excellent method for avoiding response bias confounds, and many...
Neuroscience of Consciousness January 2016 Brian Maniscalco, Hakwan Lau
What is the relationship between perceptual information processing and subjective perceptual experience? Empirical dissociations between stimulus identification performance and subjective reports of stimulus visibility are crucial for shedding light on this question. We replicated a finding that metacontrast masking can produce such a dissociation (Lau and Passingham, 2006), and report a novel...
Neuroscience of Consciousness 2015 Jorge Morales, Jeffrey Chiang, Hakwan Lau
Studying the neural correlates of conscious awareness depends on a reliable comparison between activations associated with awareness and unawareness. One particularly difficult confound to remove is task performance capacity, i.e. the difference in performance between the conditions of interest. While ideally task performance capacity should be matched across different conditions, this is...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences November 1, 2014 Ned Block, David Carmel, S. Fleming et al.
Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman once remarked that engaging the public about economic theories is hard, partly because everybody feels they are entitled to opine about the economy even if they have no formal training in economics (see: http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/virus.html). Perhaps because we are all conscious, the same sometimes happens in the field of consciousness research. Like Krugman, we...
Neuroimage September 15, 2011 Navindra Persaud, Matthew J Davidson, Brian Maniscalco et al.
Many imaging studies report activity in the prefrontal and parietal cortices when subjects are aware as opposed to unaware of visual stimuli. One possibility is that this activity simply reflects higher signal strength or the superior task performance that is associated with awareness. To find out, we studied the hemianope GY who has unilateral destruction of almost all primary visual cortices....
Journal of Vision February 23, 2011 Hans C Lou, Joshua Skewes, Kristine Rømer Thomsen et al. 83 citations
Liberal acceptance, overconfidence, and increased activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine have been proposed to account for abnormal sensory experiences, for instance, hallucinations in schizophrenia. In normal subjects, increased sensory experience in Yoga Nidra meditation is linked to striatal dopamine release. We therefore hypothesize that the neurotransmitter dopamine may function as a...
WIREs Cognitive Science 2011 Hakwan Lau
AbstractI review the major contenders for the neural correlates of visual awareness. Different views of the neural correlates turn out to support different theories, such as the global workspace theory, local visual processing theories, and the higher‐order representation theory. Therefore, studying the neural correlates of consciousness may prove useful to theoretical development, although...