Who or what is conscious? Because subjective experience is directly accessible only in the first person, judgments about consciousness in other entities depend partly on analogy. Historically, such inferences have focused on nonhuman animals, but advances in artificial intelligence have raised the possibility of conscious AI. Here we develop a causal framework for evaluating such evidential...
Abstract Altered states of consciousness (ASC) refer to states that differ markedly from normal waking consciousness. ASC may occur spontaneously, such as in dreaming, or through consciousness modifying techniques, from meditation, to cannabis and psychedelics. The etymology behind the term psychedelic, meaning mind-manifesting, is based on the hypothesis that certain substances, including...
Recent work in the structural approach to consciousness has shown great promise as a research paradigm for the formal and empirical study of the phenomenal qualities of experience, i.e., qualia. In this paradigm, qualia are characterized by modeling the internal organization of parts within an experience, or by modeling external relations between instances of experience. A major next step for...
Despite extensive discussions, a consensus is lacking on whether out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and lucid dreams (LDs) should be considered as distinct categories of experience, and if so, what differentiates them. To address this issue, we first discussed the implications of OBEs and LDs as the same type of phenomenon. We then compiled a comprehensive list of experiential features associated...
Abstract Understanding disorders of consciousness (DOC) remains one of the most challenging problems in neuroscience, hindered by the lack of experimental models for probing mechanisms or testing interventions. To address this, we introduce a generative adversarial AI framework that pits deep neural networks—trained to detect consciousness across over 680,000 neuroelectrophysiology samples and...
Consciousness is thought to be regulated by bidirectional information transfer between the cortex and thalamus, but the nature of this bidirectional communication - and its possible disruption in unconsciousness - remains poorly understood. Here, we present two main findings elucidating mechanisms of corticothalamic information transfer during conscious states. First, we identify a highly...
Mounting evidence suggests that during conscious states, the electrodynamics of the cortex are poised near a critical point or phase transition and that this near-critical behavior supports the vast flow of information through cortical networks during conscious states. Here, we empirically identify a mathematically specific critical point near which waking cortical oscillatory dynamics operate,...
Mounting evidence suggests that during conscious states, the electrodynamics of the cortex are poised near a critical point or phase transition, and that this near-critical behavior supports the vast flow of information through cortical networks during conscious states. Here, for the first time, we empirically identify the specific critical point near which conscious cortical dynamics operate...
Abstract A common observation in EEG research is that consciousness vanishes with the appearance of delta (1–4 Hz) waves, particularly when those waves are high amplitude. High amplitude delta oscillations are frequently observed in states of diminished consciousness, including slow wave sleep, anaesthesia, generalized epileptic seizures, and disorders of consciousness, such as coma and the...
Abstract: Abundant evidence from slow wave sleep, anesthesia, coma, and epileptic seizures links high-voltage, slow electroencephalogram (EEG) activity to loss of consciousness. This well-established correlation is challenged by the observation that children with Angelman syndrome (AS), while fully awake and displaying volitional behavior, display a hypersynchronous delta (1–4 Hz) frequency EEG...
Numerous theories link consciousness to informationally rich, complex neural dynamics. This idea is challenged by the observation that children with Angelman syndrome (AS), while fully conscious, display a hypersynchronous electroencephalogram (EEG) phenotype typical of information-poor dynamics associated with unconsciousness. If informational complexity theories are correct, then sufficiently...
Theoretical advances in the science of consciousness have proposed that it is concomitant with balanced cortical integration and differentiation, enabled by efficient networks of information transfer across multiple scales. Here, we apply graph theory to compare key signatures of such networks in high-density electroencephalographic data from 32 patients with chronic disorders of consciousness,...