If consciousness can operate under quantum principles, then the boundaries between life, death, and cognition are far more permeable than current science allows. In the first large-scale, randomized, double-blind, multicenter trial to test this possibility, conducted across 13 hospitals in the UK and Spain, we investigated whether the human mind can access information during clinical death—but...
For an ‘evolutionary thinker’, storytelling may be considered a shared derived trait (synapomorphy) of the human lineage. Once we began to tell stories, they became a key trait shaping our subsequent evolution. Furthermore, whether the ‘centre of narrative gravity’ is cosmological (as in creation myths) or focused on an individual character, the form of narrative is itself evolutionary,...
Consciousness lies at the heart of our existence and experience. To probe how perceptual consciousness emerges in the brain, we recorded brain-wide intracranial electroencephalography signals from human patients while their perceptual consciousness was effectively manipulated using the continuous flash suppression paradigm. We observed substantial differences in brain activities when visual...