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Maarten Vergucht

2 papers in the library · publishing 2026

Papers

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scintillating scotoma: when the cortex fails, brilliant inner white light appears

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) April 6, 2026 Maarten Vergucht

This paper investigates a fundamental paradox within neuroscience and the philosophy of consciousness: why does a failing visual cortex during a migraine aura produce not darkness, but a brilliant, structured, and luminous scotoma? The conventional materialist explanation holds that Cortical Spreading Depression (CSD) generates this light through spontaneous excitation. This paper demonstrates,...

How Consciousness Introduces Presentism into an Eternalist Spacetime: ego-dissolution as presentism-dissolution.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) March 23, 2026 Maarten Vergucht

How Consciousness Introduces Presentism into an Eternalist Spacetime: Ego Dissolution as Presentism-Dissolution The special theory of relativity strongly suggests that the default ontological structure of the universe is eternalist: a four-dimensional block spacetime in which past, present, and future coexist. Yet our lived experience is overwhelmingly presentist. We experience time as a...