Integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness claims an identity between its causal structure and phenomenology, aiming to explain consciousness by prioritizing first-person experience. However, this critique argues that IIT's phenomenological analysis is incomplete because it overlooks temporality. The theory takes a non-identical illusionist stance towards experiences of continuity, flow, and extent, and isolates temporal grains to a single timescale, missing the multi-scale nested nature of temporal phenomena. The authors contend that IIT needs an axiom for time to refine its causal structure and account for temporal experiences, proposing such an axiom and discussing potential revisions to the theory.
Long-term concentrative meditation practice alters visual awareness by strengthening attentional control. Using negative color afterimages in a functional MRI study, activity increased in right inferior occipital and inferior frontal cortex, suggesting these brain regions are key to how attention modulates conscious visual experience. The findings indicate that meditation may change the link between attention and conscious experience.
A theoretical framework for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is proposed, integrating endogenous attention, access consciousness, phenomenal awareness, metacognitive consciousness, and a non-referential unified consciousness. The adaptive workspace hypothesis builds on the global workspace model, emphasizing transient resonant neurodynamics and prefrontal cortex function, particularly the anterior prefrontal cortex. Transient dynamic links within an adaptive coding net, involving ongoing intrinsic and long-range signal exchanges between prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain, flexibly regulate the interplay among these processes. Moment-to-moment modulation by body and environment states, along with brain regions associated with interoceptive and exteroceptive self-awareness (as highlighted in open monitoring meditation), play a key modulatory role in adaptive workspace transitions.