27 papers in the library · 920 citations · publishing 1991-2026
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences March 23, 2026 Evan Thompson
This article contains my response to the commentaries by Mazviita Chirimuuta, Tom Froese, Miriam Kyselo, and Claudia E. Vanney on The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience (Frank et al., 2024 ).
Neuroscience of Consciousness 2026 Sneha K S Sheth, Mike Doswell, Kalina Christoff Hadjiilieva et al.
The pursuit of a scientific theory of consciousness has gained momentum in neuroscience over the past 25 years. While much research has centered on perceptual consciousness, the dynamic experience of the stream of thought, proposed by William James over a century ago, has remained relatively underexplored. The Dynamic Framework of Thought (DFT) introduced a taxonomy of thought dynamics,...
November 13, 2025 S. Sheth, Matthew L. Dixon, Lawrence M Ward et al. 1 citation preprint
One of the most striking features of human consciousness is its ability to foster an ongoing, seemingly continuous stream of thought. Prior studies have provided valuable insights into the neural correlates of the content of thought (e.g., whether it is task related or not). However, independent of its content, the stream of thought can also be characterized by its dynamics—how it changes over...
Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith June 1, 2025 Adam Frank, M. Gleiser, Evan Thompson
THE BLIND SPOT: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank, Marcelo Gleiser, and Evan Thompson. MIT Press, 2024. xvii + 328 pages. Hardcover; $29.95. ISBN: 9780262048804. *Is it possible for a doctor to correctly diagnose a problem but fail to provide a useful cure? That is how I felt as I read this book. *The authors are respected scholars: two astrophysicists--one a Templeton...
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences April 4, 2024 E. O. Lawson, Evan Thompson 9 citations
Research on the specific features of daydreaming compared with mind-wandering and night dreaming is a neglected topic in the philosophy of mind and the cognitive neuroscience of spontaneous thought. The extant research either conflates daydreaming with mind-wandering (whether understood as task-unrelated thought, unguided attention, or disunified thought), characterizes daydreaming as opposed...
Casting Light on the Dark Side of Brain Imaging 2019 Michael Lifshitz, Evan Thompson
Abstract Meditation is trending right now. From classrooms and hospitals to business meetings and phone apps, our culture is enthralled by meditation as a powerful tool to train our brains and shape our private mental lives—to make us happier, more productive, and more peaceful on the inside. But meditation is not just about training our brains. It’s a deeply social—and fundamentally...
Oxford Handbooks Online April 5, 2018 Zachary C. Irving, Evan Thompson
This chapter provides an introduction to the philosophy of mind-wandering. It begins with a philosophical critique of the standard psychological definitions of mind-wandering as task-unrelated thought or stimulus-independent thought. Although these definitions have helped bring mind-wandering research onto center stage in psychology and cognitive neuroscience, they have substantial limitations....
November 15, 2017 Evan Thompson
This paper is a commentary on Dan Arnold's book, Brains, Buddhas, and Believing: The Problem of Intentionality in Classical Buddhist and Cognitive-Scientific Philosophy of Mind, presented at the Toshide Numata Book Prize Symposium, "Taking Buddhist Philosophy of Mind Seriously," University of California, Berkeley, November 15, 2013.
November 6, 2017 Jelena Markovic, Evan Thompson 1 citation
A necessary first step in collaboration between hypnosis research and meditation research is clarification of key concepts. The authors propose that such clarification is best advanced by neurophenomenological investigations that integrate neuroscience methods with phenomenological models based on first-person reports of hypnotic versus meditative experiences. Focusing on absorption, the...
Oxford Scholarship Online October 19, 2017 Evan Thompson
Cognitive neuroscience tends to conceptualize mindfulness meditation as inner observation of a private mental realm of thoughts, feelings, and body sensations, and tries to model mindfulness as instantiated in neural networks visible through brain imaging tools such as EEG and fMRI. This approach confuses the biological conditions for mindfulness with mindfulness itself, which, as classically...
The Embodied Mind January 13, 2017 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch 1 citation
This chapter explains embodied action. The term embodied highlights two points: first, that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context. The term action emphasizes that...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences December 1, 2016 Jennifer Windt, Tore Nielsen, Evan Thompson
Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep. We introduce a novel...
Neuroimage April 30, 2016 Melissa Ellamil, Kieran C. R. Fox, Matthew L. Dixon et al. 150 citations
Thoughts arise spontaneously in our minds with remarkable frequency, but tracking the brain systems associated with the early inception of a thought has proved challenging. Here we addressed this issue by taking advantage of the heightened introspective ability of experienced mindfulness practitioners to observe the onset of their spontaneously arising thoughts. We found subtle differences in...
Current Opinion in Neurobiology April 1, 2015 Sina Fazelpour, Evan Thompson 64 citations
Current research on spontaneous, self-generated brain rhythms and dynamic neural network coordination cast new light on Immanuel Kant's idea of the 'spontaneity' of cognition, that is, the mind's capacity to organize and synthesize sensory stimuli in novel, unprecedented ways. Nevertheless, determining the precise nature of the brain-cognition mapping remains an outstanding challenge....
2015 Evan Thompson, Jennifer Windt 17 citations
One of the major debates in classical Indian philosophy concerned whether consciousness is present or absent in dreamless sleep. The philosophical schools of Advaita Vedānta and Yoga maintained that consciousness is present in dreamless sleep, whereas the Nyāya school maintained that it is absent. Consideration of this debate, especially the reasoning used by Advaita Vedānta to rebut the Nyāya...
2015 Jake H. Davis, Evan Thompson
The study of consciousness was banished from respectable science with the rise of behaviorism in the early 20th century. Beginning in the 1980s, however, researchers in cognitive science began to return to the topic (e.g., Baars, 1988; Chalmers, 1996; Crick & Koch, 1990; Dennett, 1991), In recent decades, there has been an explosion of research on the neurophysiological processes underlying...
Neuroimage November 1, 2013 K. Garrison, Dustin Scheinost, Patrick D. Worhunsky et al.
Recent advances in brain imaging have improved the measure of neural processes related to perceptual, cognitive and affective functions, yet the relation between brain activity and subjective experience remains poorly characterized. In part, it is a challenge to obtain reliable accounts of participant's experience in such studies. Here we addressed this limitation by utilizing experienced...
PLoS One September 25, 2012 Kieran C. R. Fox, Pierre Zakarauskas, Matthew L. Dixon et al. 194 citations
The accuracy of subjective reports, especially those involving introspection of one's own internal processes, remains unclear, and research has demonstrated large individual differences in introspective accuracy. It has been hypothesized that introspective accuracy may be heightened in persons who engage in meditation practices, due to the highly introspective nature of such practices. We...
March 1, 2009 Evan Thompson, M. Stapleton
This paper explores some of the differences between the enactive approach in cognitive science and the extended mind thesis. We review the key enactive concepts of autonomy and sense-making. We then focus on the following issues: (1) the debate between internalism and externalism about cognitive processes; (2) the relation between cognition and emotion; (3) the status of the body; and (4) the...
Canadian Journal of Philosophy Supplementary Volume 2003 Robert Hanna, Evan Thompson 48 citations
Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable (Nagel1980, p. 150). My reading of the situation is that our inability to come up with an intelligible conception of the relation between mind and body is a sign of the inadequacy of our present concepts, and that some development is needed (Nagel1998, p. 338). Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable...
The Behavioral and brain sciences December 1, 1998 L Pessoa, Evan Thompson, Alva Noë 435 citations
In visual science the term filling-in is used in different ways, which often leads to confusion. This target article presents a taxonomy of perceptual completion phenomena to organize and clarify theoretical and empirical discussion. Examples of boundary completion (illusory contours) and featural completion (color, brightness, motion, texture, and depth) are examined, and single-cell studies...
1991 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, Eleanor Rosch
Part 1 The departing ground: a fundamental circularity - in the mind of the reflective scientist - an already-given condition, what is cognitive science?, cognitive science within the circle, the theme of this book what do we mean "Human Experience"? - science and the phenomenological tradition, the breakdown of phenomenology, a non-western philosophical tradition, examining experience with a...
This chapter provides an overview of neurophenomenology, its importance for investigating contemplative experience, and its relevance to considerations about science and religion.
Michael Lifshitz, Evan Thompson
Meditation is trending right now. From classrooms and hospitals to business meetings and phone apps, our culture is enthralled by meditation as a powerful tool to train our brains and shape our private mental lives—to make us happier, more productive, and more peaceful on the inside. But meditation is not just about training our brains. It’s a deeply social—and fundamentally embodied—collection...
This chapter presents a methodological approach to volitional consciousness for cognitive neuroscience based on studying the voluntary self-generation and self-regulation of mental states in meditation. Called contemplative neuroscience, this approach views attention, awareness, and emotion regulation as flexible and trainable skills, and works with experimental participants who have undergone...