Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
October 25, 2026
Matthias Gruber
preprint
Is there more to consciousness than computation? This paper answers yes, and locates the extra ingredient in computation itself: a second-order regime in which a system's modelling takes its own modelling as an object, run by a self-model that takes itself for the being it models. The account rests on two claims. The enabling claim is a necessity: consciousness requires free modelling,...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
October 23, 2026
Matthias Gruber
preprint
Proximity to a critical point is increasingly treated as a marker of the conscious brain: cortical dynamics sit closer to criticality in wakefulness than under anaesthesia, in seizures or in disorders of consciousness. Criticality characterises the regime of the substrate, however, and two systems poised at the same statistical edge can differ completely in what they compute. This Viewpoint...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
October 20, 2026
Matthias Gruber
preprint
First-person methods, micro-phenomenology included, cannot establish the structure of the minimal self. The minimal self is defined as pre-reflective: it is lived without being taken as an object. A report about it is a behavioural output, and producing that output requires the reporting system to represent its own state as an object, which is the reflective operation the minimal self is...
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
October 19, 2026
Matthias Gruber
preprint
Zheng et al. (2026) propose recurrency as the implementation-level feature shared by the major theories of consciousness, and leave open where along the continuum of causal closure it becomes sufficient, and by which measure. Central pattern generators time each next state from the circuit's own trajectory, so on the glossary's measure they are deeply closed; the article excludes them because...
Charlotte Murphy, Charan Ranganath, Matthias Gruber
preprint
Abstract: Consistent with the idea that curiosity enhances information seeking, it has been shown that activity within both the dopaminergic circuit and hippocampus supports curiosity-enhanced learning. However, the role of whole-brain mechanisms involved in cognitive control (fronto-parietal network; FPN) and memory integration (default mode network; DMN) that might underpin curiosity states...