Journal of Consciousness Studies
August 1, 2026
Tim Bayne
Is the problem of artificial consciousness a fundamentally scientific problem, one that we should attempt to address by means of scientific discovery? Although a positive answer to this question is widely assumed, there has been surprisingly little explicit discussion of this question. That neglect is unfortunate, for the issue is central to how we approach the challenge of artificial...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2026
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Tim Bayne et al.
Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need for rigorous methods to assess AI systems for consciousness, but significant uncertainty about relevant issues in consciousness science. We present a method for assessing AI systems for consciousness that involves exploring what follows from...
PLoS Biology
October 1, 2025
Michele Angelo Colombo, Jacopo Favaro, Ezequiel Mikulan et al.
7 citations
Hemispherotomy is a neurosurgical procedure for treating refractory epilepsy, which entails disconnecting a significant portion of the cortex, potentially encompassing an entire hemisphere, from its cortical and subcortical connections. While this intervention prevents the spread of seizures, it raises important questions. Given the complete isolation from sensory-motor pathways, it remains...
Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992)
February 1, 2025
Joel Frohlich, Tim Bayne
3 citations
As recently as the 1980s, it was not uncommon for paediatric surgeons to operate on infants without anaesthesia. Today, the same omission would be considered criminal malpractice, and there is an increased concern with the possibility of consciousness in the earliest stage of human infancy. This concern reflects a more general trend that has characterised science since the early 1990s of taking...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2024
Tim Bayne, Anil K. Seth, Marcello Massimini et al.
Which systems/organisms are conscious? New tests for consciousness ('C-tests') are urgently needed. There is persisting uncertainty about when consciousness arises in human development, when it is lost due to neurological disorders and brain injury, and how it is distributed in nonhuman species. This need is amplified by recent and rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI), neural...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2023
Tim Bayne, Joel Frohlich, Rhodri Cusack et al.
Highlights The study of infant (and fetal) consciousness is emerging as a distinctive research focus in the science of consciousness. Converging evidence from studies of functional network connectivity, attention, multimodal integration, and cortical responses to global oddballs suggests that consciousness is likely to be in place in early infancy and may even occur before birth. Recent...
Neuroimage
June 1, 2023
Joel Frohlich, Tim Bayne, Julia S Crone et al.
When does the mind begin? Infant psychology is mysterious in part because we cannot remember our first months of life, nor can we directly communicate with infants. Even more speculative is the possibility of mental life prior to birth. The question of when consciousness, or subjective experience, begins in human development thus remains incompletely answered, though boundaries can be set using...
Nature reviews. Neuroscience
July 1, 2022
Anil K. Seth, Tim Bayne
836 citations
Recent years have seen a blossoming of theories about the biological and physical basis of consciousness. Good theories guide empirical research, allowing us to interpret data, develop new experimental techniques and expand our capacity to manipulate the phenomenon of interest. Indeed, it is only when couched in terms of a theory that empirical discoveries can ultimately deliver a satisfying...
Neuropsychologia
September 17, 2021
Elizabeth Schechter, Tim Bayne
11 citations
In a recent series of experiments, Pinto and colleagues found that the split-brain patient D.D.C. was able to respond accurately to stimuli in either visual field, whether using his right hand, his left hand, or verbally. Pinto and colleagues argue that this demonstrates that a split-brain patient remains a unitary agent and thus continues to possess a unified consciousness. This paper provides...
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 the Philosophy of Consciousness
July 9, 2020
Tim Bayne
2 citations
Conscious thought has been neglected, but it has not been entirely overlooked. Discussion of the topic has focused on three sets of questions. The first set of questions focuses on the kinds of states (events, episodes) that qualify as forms of conscious thought. What might a taxonomy of conscious thought look like? A second set of questions concerns the kind(s) of consciousness that...
Neuropsychology Review
May 12, 2020
Edward H.F. de Haan, Paul M. Corballis, Steven A. Hillyard et al.
86 citations
Recently, the discussion regarding the consequences of cutting the corpus callosum ("split-brain") has regained momentum (Corballis, Corballis, Berlucchi, & Marzi, Brain, 141(6), e46, 2018; Pinto et al., Brain, 140(5), 1231-1237, 2017a; Pinto, Lamme, & de Haan, Brain, 140(11), e68, 2017; Volz & Gazzaniga, Brain, 140(7), 2051-2060, 2017; Volz, Hillyard, Miller, & Gazzaniga, Brain, 141(3), e15,...
Trends in Neurosciences
December 10, 2019
Tim Bayne, Anil K. Seth, Marcello Massimini
146 citations
Awareness may persist in fully disconnected cortical islands.We identify both natural and artificial examples of potential islands of awareness.Detecting islands of awareness poses difficult but often addressable challenges.The possibility of islands of awareness raises important ethical and legal issues.The discovery of islands of awareness would have important implications for debates about...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2018
Tim Bayne, Olivia Carter
153 citations
It has often been suggested in the popular and academic literature that the psychedelic state qualifies as a higher state of consciousness relative to the state of normal waking awareness. This article subjects this proposal to critical scrutiny, focusing on the question of what it would mean for a state of consciousness to be 'higher'. We begin by considering the contrast between conscious...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2018
Tim Bayne
The integrated information theory (IIT) is one of the most influential scientific theories of consciousness. It functions as a guiding framework for a great deal of research into the neural basis of consciousness and for attempts to develop a consciousness meter. In light of these developments, it is important to examine whether its foundations are secure. This article does just that by...
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,...
Oxford Handbooks Online
September 5, 2013
Tim Bayne
It is often said that the normal unity of consciousness fragments, and perhaps even breaks down entirely, in psychiatric disorders. This chapter examines ways in which the unity-or, better, unities-of consciousness might be lost in the context of psychiatric disorders, such as multiple personality disorder, schizophrenia, and depersonalization.
Behavioural Neurology
2011
Tim Bayne
10 citations
This paper examines three respects in which the study of epileptic absence seizures promises to inform our understanding of consciousness. Firstly, it has the potential to bear on debates concerning the behavioural and cognitive functions associated with consciousness. Secondly, it has the potential to illuminate the relationship between background states (or ‘levels’) of consciousness and the...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 28, 2010
Tim Bayne
This chapter examines three disorders of consciousness that are frequently said to involve breakdowns in the unity of consciousness: anosognosia, schizophrenia and Dissociative Identity Disorder (‘mulitiplicity’). There is some truth in such claims for in each of these conditions certain aspects of the unity of consciousness are impaired: in anosognosia we see a breakdown in the normal unity...
Oxford University Press eBooks
October 28, 2010
Tim Bayne
The chapter examines an account of phenomenal unity that appeals to the closure of phenomenal content under conjunction—‘closure,’ for short. The chapter begins by locating closure within the context of representational treatments of phenomenal consciousness. Four objections to closure are then examined. A first objection involves the claim that inconsistent states can be phenomenally unified....
Hypnosis and Conscious States: The Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective
January 18, 2007
Tim Bayne
Abstract Hypnosis appears to generate unusual—and sometimes even astonishing—changes in the contents of consciousness. Hypnotic subjects report perceiving things that are not there, they report not perceiving things that are there, and they report unusual alterations in the phenomenology of agency. In addition to apparent alterations in the contents of consciousness, hypnosis also appears to...
Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science
January 15, 2006
Tim Bayne
AbstractConsciousness is unified in various ways, but the nature and basis of its unity remains a matter of intense debate. This debate promises to illuminate the nature of experience, the self, and various pathologies of consciousness.