PNAS Nexus
March 1, 2026
Lina Jeantin, Pierre Bourdillon, Marc Guenot et al.
Electroencephalography (EEG) signal complexity reflects the richness of brain activity and is considered a marker of consciousness. However, its normative values across physiological conscious states using intracranial EEG (iEEG) across cortical areas remain poorly defined. We aimed at referencing iEEG complexity in the human brain and its links with global states of consciousness. We analyzed...
PLoS Computational Biology
February 1, 2026
Tao Xia, Chuan-Peng Hu, Başak Türker et al.
Sleep has traditionally been conceptualized as a state of cognitive disconnection, yet emerging evidence indicates that decision-making capacities persist across sleep stages. Here, we elucidate the computational mechanisms underlying real-time lexical decision-making during polysomnographically-verified sleep, using facial electromyography and hierarchical drift diffusion modeling in both...
PLoS One
2026
Matilda Gibbons, Ethan G McBride, Raghuram Holenarasipura Venkatasubbaiah et al.
Identifying the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) is widely regarded as imperative to our understanding of consciousness. Although several scientific theories of consciousness make predictions about the NCC, they often differ in their level of detail, making direct comparison through experimental findings difficult. Here, we report an adversarial collaboration protocol in which unbiased...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
December 30, 2025
Esteban Munoz-Musat, Arthur Le Coz, Andrew W. Corcoran et al.
5 citations
Does being awake necessarily mean being conscious of something? This study investigates the phenomenon of mind blanking (MB), characterized by an "emptiness of mind," comparing it with mind wandering (MW) and on-task (ON) states. Using a sustained attention task and electroencephalogram monitoring, behavioral, and neurophysiological signatures of MB were examined in 62 participants. MB...
Scientific Reports
July 9, 2025
Aude Sangare, Cécile Eymond, Lise Jodaitis et al.
1 citation
Retinal illumination primarily determines pupil size, yet extra-retinal factors like subjective brightness also influence pupillary responses. Previous works reported that in healthy individuals, stimuli whose semantic content evokes brightness cause greater pupillary constriction than control stimuli of similar luminance. This study adapted this approach and tested a passive task to assess...
PNAS Nexus
December 1, 2024
Emilia Fló, Laouen Belloli, Álvaro Cabana et al.
10 citations
Attention shapes our consciousness content and perception by increasing the probability of becoming aware and/or better encoding a selection of the incoming inner or outer sensory world. Engaging interoceptive and exteroceptive attention should elicit distinctive neural responses to visceral and external stimuli and could be useful in detecting covert command-following in unresponsive patients....
Communications Biology
September 19, 2024
Iván Mindlin, Rubén Herzog, Laouen Belloli et al.
18 citations
Disorders of consciousness (DoC) represent a challenging and complex group of neurological conditions characterised by profound disturbances in consciousness. The current range of treatments for DoC is limited. This has sparked growing interest in developing new treatments, including the use of psychedelic drugs. Nevertheless, clinical investigations and the mechanisms behind them are...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
July 12, 2024
P. Pérez, Dragana Manasova, B. Hermann et al.
Abstract Identifying the neuronal markers of consciousness is key to supporting the different scientific theories of consciousness. Neuronal markers of consciousness can be defined to reflect either the brain signatures underlying specific conscious content or those supporting different states of consciousness, two aspects traditionally studied separately. In this paper, we introduce a...
Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience
May 20, 2024
Lionel Naccache, Esteban Munoz-Musat
Abstract We introduce here a general model of Functional Neurological Disorders based on the following hypothesis: a Functional Neurological Disorder could correspond to a consciously initiated voluntary top-down process causing involuntary lasting consequences that are consciously experienced and subjectively interpreted by the patient as involuntary. We develop this central hypothesis...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
December 29, 2023
Iván Mindlin, Rubén Herzog, Laouen Belloli et al.
7 citations
preprint
Disorders of consciousness (DoC) are a challenging and complex group of neurological conditions characterised by absent or impaired awareness. The current range of therapeutic options for DoC patients is limited, offering few non-invasive pharmacological alternatives. This situation has sprung a growing interest in the development of novel treatments, such as the proposal to study the efficacy...
Communications Biology
June 29, 2022
Anira Escrichs, Yonatan Sanz Perl, Carme Uribe et al.
67 citations
Significant advances have been made by identifying the levels of synchrony of the underlying dynamics of a given brain state. This research has demonstrated that non-conscious dynamics tend to be more synchronous than in conscious states, which are more asynchronous. Here we go beyond this dichotomy to demonstrate that different brain states are underpinned by dissociable spatiotemporal...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
December 1, 2021
B. Hermann, Aude Sangare, Esteban Munoz-Musat et al.
Abstract The clinical and fundamental exploration of patients suffering from disorders of consciousness (DoC) is commonly used by researchers both to test some of their key theoretical predictions and to serve as a unique source of empirical knowledge about possible dissociations between consciousness and cognitive and/or neural processes. For instance, the existence of states of vigilance free...
Journal of Consciousness Studies
November 20, 2021
Lionel Naccache
In this commentary, I discuss my main points of convergence and divergence with Mark Solms' conception of consciousness presented in his very stimulating opus, The Hidden Spring, and then frame two proposals to integrate some of his key concepts into the global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT) of consciousness.
Science Advances
February 1, 2019
Athena Demertzi, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
545 citations
Adopting the framework of brain dynamics as a cornerstone of human consciousness, we determined whether dynamic signal coordination provides specific and generalizable patterns pertaining to conscious and unconscious states after brain damage. A dynamic pattern of coordinated and anticoordinated functional magnetic resonance imaging signals characterized healthy individuals and minimally...
Nature Human Behaviour
February 1, 2019
M. Michel, Diane M Beck, Ned Block et al.
Scientific research on consciousness is critical to multiple scientific, clinical, and ethical issues. The growth of the field could also be beneficial to several areas including neurology and mental health research. To achieve this goal, we need to set funding priorities carefully and address problems such as job creation and potential media misrepresentation.
Scientific Reports
October 4, 2018
Marion Quirins, Clémence Marois, Melanie Valente et al.
Pupil dilation has been reliably identified as a physiological marker of consciously reportable mental effort. This classical finding raises the question of whether or not pupil dilation could be a specific somatic signature of conscious processing. In order to explore this possibility, we engaged healthy volunteers in the 'local global' auditory paradigm we previously designed to disentangle...
Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences
September 19, 2018
Lionel Naccache
138 citations
According to a popular distinction proposed by the philosopher Ned Block in 1995, our conscious experience would overflow the very limited set of what we can consciously report to ourselves and to others. He proposed to coin this limited consciousness 'Access Consciousness' (A-Cs) and to define 'Phenomenal Consciousness' as a much richer subjective experience that is not accessed but that would...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
April 21, 2015
Aaron Schurger, Ioannis Sarigiannidis, Lionel Naccache et al.
According to recent evidence, stimulus-tuned neurons in the cerebral cortex exhibit reduced variability in firing rate across trials, after the onset of a stimulus. However, in order for a reduction in variability to be directly relevant to perception and behavior, it must be realized within trial--the pattern of activity must be relatively stable. Stability is characteristic of decision states...
Neuroimage
December 1, 2013
J R King, F Faugeras, A Gramfort et al.
Detecting residual consciousness in unresponsive patients is a major clinical concern and a challenge for theoretical neuroscience. To tackle this issue, we recently designed a paradigm that dissociates two electro-encephalographic (EEG) responses to auditory novelty. Whereas a local change in pitch automatically elicits a mismatch negativity (MMN), a change in global sound sequence leads to a...
Behavioural Neurology
March 29, 2011
F. Bartolomei, Lionel Naccache
The global workspace (GW) theory proposes that conscious processing results from coherent neuronal activity between widely distributed brain regions, with fronto-parietal associative cortices as key elements. In this model, transition between conscious and non conscious states are predicted to be caused by abrupt non-linear massive changes of the level of coherence within this distributed...
Brain : a journal of neurology
August 2009
Marie Arthuis, Luc Valton, Jean Régis et al.
Loss of consciousness (LOC) is a dramatic clinical manifestation of temporal lobe seizures. Its underlying mechanism could involve altered coordinated neuronal activity between the brain regions that support conscious information processing. The consciousness access hypothesis assumes the existence of a global workspace in which information becomes available via synchronized activity within...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
February 3, 2009
Tristan A Bekinschtein, Stanislas Dehaene, Benjamin Rohaut et al.
Can conscious processing be inferred from neurophysiological measurements? Some models stipulate that the active maintenance of perceptual representations across time requires consciousness. Capitalizing on this assumption, we designed an auditory paradigm that evaluates cerebral responses to violations of temporal regularities that are either local in time or global across several seconds....
Behavioral and Brain Sciences
December 1, 2007
Lionel Naccache, Stanislas Dehaene
AbstractCan we ever experimentally disentangle phenomenal consciousness from the cognitive accessibility inherent to conscious reports? In this commentary, we suggest that (1) Block's notion of phenomenal consciousness remains intractably entangled with the need to obtain subjective reports about it; and (2) many experimental paradigms suggest that the intuitive notion of a rich but...
Progress in Brain Research
2005
Lionel Naccache
13 citations
The scientific study of the cerebral substrate of consciousness has been marked by significant recent achievements, resulting partially from an interaction between the exploration of cognition in both brain-damaged patients and healthy subjects. Several neuropsychological syndromes contain marked dissociations that permit the identification of principles related to the neurophysiology of...
Revue neurologique
April 1, 2004
Lionel Naccache
Since the last thirty Years, scientific study of the cerebral substrate of consciousness has been marked by significant achievements, resulting in part from a rich interaction between the exploration of cognition in both brain-damaged patients and healthy subjects. Several neuropsychological syndromes contain spectacular dissociations which permit to identify principles related to the...