Reliably detecting consciousness in unresponsive patients remains an urgent ethical and clinical challenge, as no behavior-independent marker is currently accepted in clinical practice. We characterize consciousness as linked to a representation of the embodied subject of experience, mediated by multisensory integration within the peripersonal space (PPS) system. We test whether a neural marker...
Neural evidence suggests that mechanisms associated with conscious access (i.e., the ability to report on a conscious state) are "all-or-none". Upon crossing some threshold, neural signals are globally broadcast throughout the brain and allow conscious reports. However, whether subjective experience (phenomenal consciousness) is categorical (i.e., transitioning abruptly from unconscious to...