Behavioral and Brain Sciences
2016
Anil K. Seth
4 citations
Can consciousness be understood through an association with voluntary skeletomotor action selection? Although flexible and integrated action selection is a plausible function for consciousness, a narrow focus on skeletomotor control neglects the contributions to conscious selfhood and subjectivity that rest on interoception and autonomic regulation (internal "action"). I consider these issues...
Journal of Vision
June 26, 2015
Yair Pinto, Simon van Gaal, Floris P De Lange et al.
177 citations
How do expectations influence transitions between unconscious and conscious perceptual processing? According to the influential predictive processing framework, perceptual content is determined by predictive models of the causes of sensory signals. On one interpretation, conscious contents arise when predictive models are verified by matching sensory input (minimizing prediction error). On...
Cognitive Neuroscience
April 7, 2015
Anil K. Seth
56 citations
Can perceptual presence be explained by counterfactually-rich predictive models linking perception and action? Considering an unusually rich range of responses to this idea has led me to (1) re-emphasize the core conceptual commitment of "predictive processing of sensorimotor contingencies" (PPSMC) to predictive model-based perception, (2) reconsider the relationship between presence and...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 3, 2014
Cassandra Gould van Praag, Tom Froese, Adam B. Barrett et al.
29 citations
Investigation of synesthesia phenomenology in adults is needed to constrain accounts of developmental trajectories of this trait. We report an extended phenomenological investigation of sequence-space synesthesia in a single case (AB). We used the Elicitation Interview (EI) method to facilitate repeated exploration of AB's synesthetic experience. During an EI the subject's attention is...
Frontiers in Psychology
May 22, 2014
Daniel eBor, Anil K. Seth
Consciousness has of late become a hot topic in neuroscience. Empirical work has centred on identifying potential neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), with a converging view that the prefrontal parietal network (PPN) is closely associated with this process. Theoretical work has primarily sought to explain how informational properties of this cortical network could account for phenomenal...
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 21, 2014
Anil K. Seth
357 citations
Normal perception involves experiencing objects within perceptual scenes as real, as existing in the world. This property of "perceptual presence" has motivated "sensorimotor theories" which understand perception to involve the mastery of sensorimotor contingencies. However, the mechanistic basis of sensorimotor contingencies and their mastery has remained unclear. Sensorimotor theory also...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 12, 2013
Anil K. Seth
1,812 citations
The concept of the brain as a prediction machine has enjoyed a resurgence in the context of the Bayesian brain and predictive coding approaches within cognitive science. To date, this perspective has been applied primarily to exteroceptive perception (e.g., vision, audition), and action. Here, I describe a predictive, inferential perspective on interoception: 'interoceptive inference' conceives...
Neuropsychologia
August 28, 2013
Keisuke Suzuki, Sarah N. Garfinkel, Hugo Critchley et al.
491 citations
Identifying with a body is central to being a conscious self. The now classic "rubber hand illusion" demonstrates that the experience of body-ownership can be modulated by manipulating the timing of exteroceptive (visual and tactile) body-related feedback. Moreover, the strength of this modulation is related to individual differences in sensitivity to internal bodily signals (interoception)....
Frontiers in Psychology
2013
Melanie Boly, Anil K. Seth, Melanie Wilke et al.
295 citations
This joint article reflects the authors' personal views regarding noteworthy advances in the neuroscience of consciousness in the last 10 years, and suggests what we feel may be promising future directions. It is based on a small conference at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, USA, in July of 2012, organized by the Mind Science Foundation of San Antonio, Texas. Here, we summarize recent...
Frontiers in Psychology
2012
Anil K. Seth, Keisuke Suzuki, Hugo Critchley
971 citations
We describe a theoretical model of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying conscious presence and its disturbances. The model is based on interoceptive prediction error and is informed by predictive models of agency, general models of hierarchical predictive coding and dopaminergic signaling in cortex, the role of the anterior insular cortex (AIC) in interoception and emotion, and cognitive...
IEEE Transactions on Haptics
October 27, 2011
Tom Froese, Marek Mcgann, William Bigge et al.
94 citations
The cognitive sciences are increasingly coming to terms with the embodied, embedded, extended, and experiential aspects of the mind. Exemplifying this shift, the enactive approach points to an essential role of goal-directed bodily activity in the generation of meaningful perceptual experience, i.e., sense-making. Here, building on recent insights into the transformative effects of practical...
PLoS Computational Biology
January 20, 2011
Adam B. Barrett, Anil K. Seth
243 citations
A recent measure of 'integrated information', Φ(DM), quantifies the extent to which a system generates more information than the sum of its parts as it transitions between states, possibly reflecting levels of consciousness generated by neural systems. However, Φ(DM) is defined only for discrete Markov systems, which are unusual in biology; as a result, Φ(DM) can rarely be measured in practice....
Cognitive Neuroscience
August 18, 2010
Geraint Rees, Anil K. Seth
11 citations
The past decade has seen an explosion of interest in the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness. Experimental approaches from cognitive neuroscience that emphasize converging evidence from multiple methodologies have changed our understanding of how conscious mental states are associated with patterns of brain activity. In this special issue of Cognitive Neuroscience, we bring together five...
Artificial Life
January 12, 2010
Anil K. Seth
85 citations
Concepts of emergence and autonomy are central to artificial life and related cognitive and behavioral sciences. However, quantitative and easy-to-apply measures of these phenomena are mostly lacking. Here, I describe quantitative and practicable measures for both autonomy and emergence, based on the framework of multivariate autoregression and specifically Granger causality. G-autonomy...
Frontiers in Psychology
2010
Anil K. Seth
34 citations
OPINION article Front. Psychol., 10 March 2010Sec. Consciousness Research Volume 1 - 2010 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00005
International Journal of Machine Consciousness
May 19, 2009
Anil K. Seth
45 citations
Machine (artificial) consciousness can be interpreted in both strong and weak forms, as an instantiation or as a simulation. Here, I argue in favor of weak artificial consciousness, proposing that synthetic models of neural mechanisms potentially underlying consciousness can shed new light on how these mechanisms give rise to the phenomena they do. The approach I advocate involves using...
Artificial intelligence in medicine
October 1, 2008
Robert W. Clowes, Anil K. Seth
Synthetic methods in science can aim at either instantiating a target phenomenon or simulating key mechanisms underlying that phenomenon; 'strong' and 'weak' approaches, respectively. While the former assumes a mature theory, the latter find its value in helping specify such theories. Here, we argue that artificial consciousness is best pursued as a (weak) means of theory development in...
Scholarpedia
2007
Anil K. Seth
78 citations
A model of consciousness is a theoretical description that relates brain properties of consciousness (e.g., fast irregular electrical activity, widespread brain activation) to phenomenal properties of consciousness (e.g., qualia, a first-person-perspective, the unity of a conscious scene). Because of the diverse nature of these properties (Seth et al. 2005), useful models can be either...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
July 5, 2006
Anil K. Seth, Eugene M. Izhikevich, George N. Reeke et al.
327 citations
A recent theoretical emphasis on complex interactions within neural systems underlying consciousness has been accompanied by proposals for the quantitative characterization of these interactions. In this article, we distinguish key aspects of consciousness that are amenable to quantitative measurement from those that are not. We carry out a formal analysis of the strengths and limitations of...
Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science
December 4, 1998
Anil K. Seth, G. Edelman
Conventional approaches to understanding consciousness are generally concerned with the contribution of specific brain areas or groups of neurons. By contrast, it is considered here what kinds of neural processes can account for key properties of conscious experience. Applying measures of neural integration and complexity, together with an analysis of extensive neurological data, leads to a...
Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas, Andrea I. Luppi et al.
10 citations
Abstract Quantifying the complexity of neural activity has provided fundamental insights into cognition, consciousness, and clinical conditions. However, the most widely used approach to estimate the complexity of neural dynamics, Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZ), has fundamental limitations that substantially restrict its domain of applicability. In this article we leverage the information-theoretic...
Anil K. Seth
preprint
Panpsychism is the notion that consciousness is fundamental and ubiquitous in the natural world. Defenders of panpsychism appeal, at least in part, to the apparent implausibility of materialist accounts of consciousness. However, materialist accounts are more resourceful than often assumed by proponents of panpsychism, while panpsychism has insurmountable problems of its own. The real problem...