Trends in Cognitive Sciences
November 13, 2015
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Melanie Wilke, Stefan Frässle et al.
567 citations
The search for the neural basis of consciousness has been biased by the requirement that subjects report their experiences. Recent no-report paradigms aim to study conscious experience without any report, dissociating neural activity that gives rise to consciousness from activity that enables reporting. The advantages and disadvantages of both report-based and no-report approaches are discussed, and the authors ask how combining these methods can bring us closer to understanding the true neural basis of consciousness.
Journal of Vision
June 26, 2015
Yair Pinto, Simon van Gaal, Floris P De Lange et al.
177 citations
Expectations speed up conscious perception. In four experiments using predictive cueing and continuous flash suppression, expected images entered awareness faster than neutral or unexpected ones. This effect was not due to response priming, stimulus associations, or attentional timing biases. Top-down expectations had a stronger influence when visual input was ambiguous, consistent with predictive processing accounts. The findings support the idea that conscious access depends on verifying perceptual predictions.
Neuropsychology Review
May 12, 2020
Edward H.F. de Haan, Paul M. Corballis, Steven A. Hillyard et al.
86 citations
Cutting the corpus callosum (split-brain) broadly disrupts functional integration across perception and attention, but some processes like action control remain unified. The key unresolved question is whether split-brain patients have split or unified consciousness. Current evidence is insufficient to decide, and future studies may need to consider intermediate conceptualizations beyond a simple yes or no.
Science
January 25, 2018
Olivia Carter, Jakob Hohwy, Jeroen J A Van Boxtel et al.
86 citations
A commentary argues that Dehaene et al.'s review on consciousness and machines asks and answers the wrong questions, implying that their conclusions about not being on the verge of creating conscious machines may be premature or misdirected.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
March 1, 2025
Liad Mudrik, Melanie Boly, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
68 citations
In a structured public debate at the 2022 meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, proponents of five major theories—Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Higher-Order Theories, Integrated Information Theory, Recurrent Processing Theory, and Predictive Processing—clarified their theories' core mechanisms, foundational premises, and what each theory aims to explain. The discussion revealed more controversy than agreement, particularly on the most basic questions: what consciousness is, how to identify conscious states, and what any adequate theory must account for. Addressing these foundational disagreements is essential for advancing the field and enabling meaningful comparison of competing theories.
Journal of Experimental Psychology General
January 30, 2017
Yair Pinto, Annelinde R. E. Vandenbroucke, Marte Otten et al.
23 citations
Change blindness—the failure to notice unattended changes in a visual scene—has been taken as evidence that conscious perception requires spatial attention. However, change blindness tasks introduce visual interference that forces reliance on working memory, which has limited capacity. Before such interference, a larger-capacity store called fragile memory exists. Two experiments show that minimizing spatial attention nearly eliminates visual working memory but leaves fragile memory largely intact. Furthermore, minimally attended fragile memory responses produce accurate metacognition, indicating that conscious memory persists with limited spatial attention. These findings suggest that both visual consciousness and memory can be supported by only minimal attention.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Victor A. F. Lamme
Vision progresses through four stages: fully invisible, subjectively invisible, unattended, and clearly visible. Feature extraction, categorization, and some visual inference occur during full and subjective invisibility. Perceptual organization functions like grouping and figure-ground segregation operate during both inattention and full visibility. Perceptual organization is central to the transition from unconscious to conscious seeing. This has implications for Recurrent Processing Theory, Higher Order Thought Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory.
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
September 19, 2018
Victor A. F. Lamme
The study of consciousness has advanced with promising theories and experimental data, but new challenges persist. A key debate is whether visual consciousness involves the seeing itself (phenomenal consciousness, or P-consciousness) or the knowledge that you see (cognitive access, or A-consciousness), and this controversy appears deadlocked. Additionally, many theories imply panpsychism—the idea that all beings or even lifeless objects have conscious experience—raising the question of whether this should be accepted or whether missing ingredients are needed to set a lower bound on conscious beings. The text discusses these challenges and offers potential solutions.
Cognitive Neuroscience
September 1, 2010
Victor A. F. Lamme
The author argues that the study of consciousness has been misled by relying on introspection and behavior, which give the false impression that we know what we are conscious of. A simple visual-perception experiment shows that we actually do not know the contents of our own conscious experience. The author proposes that instead of introspection or behavior, neuroscience combined with theoretical and ontological reasoning can reveal the true nature of conscious sensation. This approach suggests that we see far more than we think, and that Global Workspace theory describes access to information, not the experience of seeing itself. Ultimately, consciousness is not private and exclusive as commonly believed.