Mindfulness
August 1, 2026
Kevin Berryman, Linda Barclay, Craig Hassed et al.
Abstract Recent concerns about meditation-related adverse effects (MRAEs) have led to calls for more rigorous informed consent in mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). This paper examines whether consent procedures are warranted, and under what circumstances, and of what kind, across the diverse settings in which mindfulness is delivered. Drawing on bioethics and the informed consent...
European Journal of Psychotraumatology
March 19, 2026
Philip Gerrans, Hugh McGovern, Jakob Hohwy et al.
Background: Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) is a trauma-related condition characterized by pervasive disturbances in affect regulation, self-concept, and interpersonal functioning that extend beyond the symptom profile of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). While neurobiological studies have implicated limbic, salience, and prefrontal systems in C-PTSD, mechanistic accounts...
Physics of Life Reviews
March 1, 2026
Christopher J. Whyte, Andrew W. Corcoran, Jonathan Robinson et al.
5 citations
The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness and construct a theory around the relevant empirical paradigms and findings. Theories of consciousness are, therefore, often difficult to compare; indeed,...
Mindfulness
February 24, 2026
Larissa Bartlett, Rohan Puri, Amanda L. Neil et al.
Abstract Objectives To offer another lens to study how mindfulness influences behaviours and social relationships, this paper reports the creation of the Observed Mindful Behaviours (OMB) scale. The OMB responds to limitations in current evidence in mindfulness research, including the reliance on self-report data. Method Refinements to an existing 9-item scale were tested in two samples ( n =...
Artificial General Intelligence
2026
Ruben Laukkonen, Fionn Inglis, Shamil Chandaria et al.
1 citation
As artificial intelligence (AI) improves, current alignment strategies may falter in the face of unpredictable self-improvement and the sheer complexity of AI. Rather than trying to control behavior, we show how four principles from contemplative traditions can help intrinsically align (super) intelligence. First, mindfulness enables self-monitoring and recalibration of emergent subgoals....
PLoS One
2026
Clement Abbatecola, Bernard Marius ’t Hart, Belén M. Montabes De la Cruz et al.
We investigate the subjective experience of space around the visual blind spot area, the cortical representation of which is missing feedforward connectivity from one eye. We performed these experiments as part of an adversarial collaboration to test contrasting theories of consciousness; Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Predictive Processing Active Inference (AI), and Predictive Processing...
PLoS One
December 4, 2025
Jonathan Robinson, Andrew W. Corcoran, Christopher J. Whyte et al.
1 citation
Active inference, a first-principles framework for modelling the behaviour of sentient agents, is beginning to be applied in consciousness research. One hypothesis arising from the framework is that active inference is necessary for changes in conscious content. As one component of an extensive adversarial collaboration among competing theories of consciousness, active inference will be...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
July 2, 2025
Neil W. Bailey, Aron T. Hill, Kate Godfrey et al.
4 citations
Mindfulness meditation involves training attention, commonly toward sensory experiences, with nonjudgmental awareness. Theoretical perspectives propose that meditation increases the precision of sensory processing and reduces the generation/elaboration of top-down expectations. Research suggests forward traveling cortical alpha waves may reflect bottom-up inhibition to enhance signal-to-noise...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Lars Sandved-Smith, Juan Diego Bogotá, Jakob Hohwy et al.
10 citations
The context for our paper comes from the neurophenomenology (NPh) research programme initiated by Francisco Varela at the end of the 1990s. Varela's working hypothesis was that, to be successful, a consciousness research programme must progress by relating first-person phenomenological accounts of the structure of experience and their third-person counterparts in neuroscience through "mutual...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Anikó Kusztor, Nirmitee Mulay, Makiko Yamada et al.
During an acute episode of depersonalization/derealization (DP/DR), people report a complex and idiosyncratic change in their perceptual experience. Specifically, derealisation describes the experience of detachment from the external world and altered visual perception in which the surroundings look faded, foggy, or dream-like. Whilst some have argued that there may not be genuine perceptual...
Translational Psychiatry
September 30, 2024
Elizabeth L. Fisher, Ryan Smith, Kyna Conn et al.
14 citations
Psilocybin has shown promise as a novel pharmacological intervention for treatment of depression, where post-acute effects of psilocybin treatment have been associated with increased positive mood and decreased pessimism. Although psilocybin is proving to be effective in clinical trials for treatment of psychiatric disorders, the information processing mechanisms affected by psilocybin are not...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
May 17, 2024
Elizabeth L. Fisher, Ryan Smith, Andrew W. Corcoran et al.
2 citations
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin has shown promise as a novel pharmacological intervention for treatment of depression, where post-acute effects of psilocybin treatment have been associated with increased positive mood and decreased pessimism. Although psilocybin is proving to be effective in clinical trials for treatment of psychiatric disorders, the information processing mechanisms affected by psilocybin...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2023
Kevin Berryman, Sara W. Lazar, Jakob Hohwy
11 citations
Contemplative practices are a staple of modern life and have historically been intertwined with morality. However, do these practices in fact improve our morality? The answer remains unclear because the science of contemplative practices has focused on unidimensional aspects of morality, which do not align with the type of interdependent moral functioning these practices aspire to cultivate....
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 7, 2022
Neil W. Bailey, Harry Geddes, Isabella Zannettino et al.
5 citations
preprint
Objectives Mindfulness meditation is associated with better attention function. Performance monitoring and error-processing are important aspects of attention. We investigated whether experienced meditators showed different neural activity related to performance monitoring and error-processing. Previous research has produced inconsistent results. This study used more rigorous analyses and a...
Mindfulness
May 1, 2022
Tess Guthrie, Julian R. Matthews, Richard Chambers et al.
AbstractObjectivesThe objective was to examine the impact of state and trait mindfulness cultivated through body scan meditation, on bodily multisensory integration, in order to explore effects of increased non-judgmental/accepting attention to ambiguous bodily sensations.MethodsMultisensory integration was operationalised through the rubber hand illusion, which was measured through subjective...
Scientific Reports
March 10, 2022
Anna Ciaunica, Luke McEllin, Julian Kiverstein et al.
Depersonalisation is a common dissociative experience characterised by distressing feelings of being detached or 'estranged' from one's self and body and/or the world. The COVID-19 pandemic forcing millions of people to socially distance themselves from others and to change their lifestyle habits. We have conducted an online study of 622 participants worldwide to investigate the relationship...
Current Research in Neurobiology
2022
Christopher J. Whyte, Jakob Hohwy, Ryan Smith
21 citations
Cognitive theories of consciousness, such as global workspace theory and higher-order theories, posit that frontoparietal circuits play a crucial role in conscious access. However, recent studies using no-report paradigms have posed a challenge to cognitive theories by demonstrating conscious accessibility in the apparent absence of prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation. To address this challenge,...
Cognitive Neuroscience
2021
Anil K. Seth, Jakob Hohwy
The theories of consciousness discussed by Doerig and colleagues tend to monolithically identify consciousness with some other phenomenon, process, or mechanism. But by treating consciousness as singular explanatory target, such theories will struggle to account for the diverse properties that conscious experiences exhibit. We propose that progress in consciousness science will best be achieved...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
December 30, 2020
Jakob Hohwy, Anil K. Seth
162 citations
The search for the neural correlates of consciousness is in need of a systematic, principled foundation that can endow putative neural correlates with greater predictive and explanatory value. Here, we propose the predictive processing framework for brain function as a promising candidate for providing this systematic foundation. The proposal is motivated by that framework’s ability to address...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
December 30, 2020
C. Klein, Jakob Hohwy, Tim Bayne
54 citations
At present, the science of consciousness is structured around the search for the neural correlates of consciousness (the NCCs). One of the alleged advantages of the NCCs framework is its metaphysical neutrality—the fact that it begs no contested questions with respect to debates about the fundamental nature of consciousness. Here, we argue that even if the NCC framework is metaphysically...
The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition
October 9, 2018
Jakob Hohwy
26 citations
Abstract Prediction may be a central concept for understanding perceptual and cognitive processing. Contemporary theoretical neuroscience formalizes the role of prediction in terms of probabilistic inference. Perception, action, attention, and learning may then be unified as aspects of predictive processing in the brain. This chapter first explains the sense in which predictive processing is...
Science
January 25, 2018
Olivia Carter, Jakob Hohwy, Jeroen J A Van Boxtel et al.
86 citations
In their Review “What is consciousness, and could machines have it?” (27 October 2017, p. [486][1]), S. Dehaene et al. argue that the science of consciousness indicates that we are not on the verge of creating conscious machines. However, Dehaene et al. ask and answer the wrong questions. To
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 22, 2016
Tim Bayne, Jakob Hohwy, Adrian M. Owen
443 citations
The notion of a level of consciousness is a key construct in the science of consciousness. Not only is the term employed to describe the global states of consciousness that are associated with post-comatose disorders, epileptic absence seizures, anaesthesia, and sleep, it plays an increasingly influential role in theoretical and methodological contexts. However, it is far from clear what...
June 15, 2015
Jakob Hohwy, Tim Bayne
This chapter develops a framework for addressing the neural correlates of consciousness. We begin by distinguishing the kinds of neural correlates that are of central interest to the science of consciousness (what we call ‘NCCs’) from the kinds of neural correlates that are more peripheral to consciousness science and which are typically regarded as confounds from the perspective of...
WIREs Cognitive Science
March 1, 2014
Tim Bayne, Jakob Hohwy
In recent decades there has been a great deal of interest in global disorders of consciousness, such as the vegetative state, the minimally conscious state, and epileptic absence seizures. Global disorders of consciousness pose significant challenges to consciousness science in that the ordinary pretheoretical criteria for the ascription of consciousness are not easily applied in such contexts,...