Anxiety, sexuality, and dreams are foundational to psychoanalytic models of the mind, but they also have a specific place in neuroscience. Evidence shows anxiety is neurobiologically based in humans and animals, situating it at the intersection of theoretical models. Activation of the HPA axis is the fundamental mechanism generating anxiety, ranging from excessive vigilance to trauma reactions. In psychoanalysis, the concept of anxiety is recognized in neuroscience only when interpreted as signal anxiety. The chapter discusses sexuality and the oneiric, revisiting psychoanalytic theory in light of neuropsychoanalysis and exploring lucid dreaming.
The chapter argues that the vast literature on consciousness since Nagel (1974) makes comprehensive synthesis impractical. It notes that artificial intelligence and artificial agents with neurocircuits have expanded the debate on consciousness's nature, location, and emergence. A discussion of higher order theory and neural correlates leads to the claim that 'experience is impossible without an experiencer', shifting focus to the 'experimenter' as the central subject of inquiry.