Because dream experiences are largely accessible only through retrospective reports after awakening, estimates of dream affect may depend on who evaluates the report. We compared dreamers' self-ratings with ratings made by independent external judges to examine how rating method influences estimates of the presence, valence, and intensity of dream affect. The dataset comprised 1,946 home dream...
Theoretical accounts posit that mindfulness and metacognition are closely linked. We therefore tested the hypothesis that mindfulness training improves metacognitive sensitivity in value-based decision making as well as the (metacognition-dependent) ability to anticipate preference reversals. In a pre-registered study following a pre-test/post-test design, healthy participants performed tasks...
An objective measure of conscious and unconscious brain states is highly needed in the diagnosis of disorders of consciousness and in advancing the science of consciousness. However, its measurement based on the physical mechanism underlying its occurrence is still challenging. Our study aimed to quantify the electroencephalography (EEG) recording data under conscious state (awake, baseline and...
We consider two recent arguments concerning the question of empirical falsifiability of consciousness theories: the Unfolding Argument (UA) against causal structure theories and the Substitution Argument (SA) according to which if prediction of experience and inference from behaviour are independent, any non-behavioural theory of consciousness is a priori falsified. We argue that the UA is...
The question raised in this study was: when and why does the feeling of a change in the passage of time arise? Participants were instructed to press a button as soon as they perceived a change in the speed of the passage of time. After each detection, they indicated whether they felt that time was "speeding up" and "slowing down", and rated the intensity of this feeling. They also rated their...
Research on the continuity and discontinuity between the waking and dreaming minds has largely focused on similarities and differences in waking and dream content. The present study expands this debate by examining another dimension: the relationship between the dream self and the waking self at the phenomenal level. Specifically, it investigates how bodily and affective dimensions of dream...
Depersonalization (DP) and derealization (DR) are dissociative experiences involving altered bodily self-experience and diminished felt reality of the external world. Although various paradigms have been used to induce transient DP-/DR-like experiences experimentally, their relative induction profiles remain unclear. The present study compared Mirror Gazing Task (MGT) with a closely matched...
Whether consciousness serves a biological and psychological function is a topic of intense interest. We reexamine this issue by first focussing on an objection against consciousness having a function raised amongst others by Jaegwon Kim. His argument targets a form of non-reductive physicalism stating that consciousness has causative power beyond that of the physical substrate. In contrast, we...
Philosophical discussions of the "hard problem" often invoke "problem intuitions", as consciousness intuitions and consciousness are believed to be "closely connected" (Chalmers, 2018). Here, I challenge this assumption. In two experiments, I demonstrate that consciousness intuitions are illusory-they shift across different "problem intuitions", akin to perceptual illusions. When presented with...
Understanding whether prefrontal cortex is necessary for conscious experience remains central to ongoing debates between global workspace and recurrent processing theories of consciousness. To dissociate neural processes underlying perceptual awareness from those related to report and access, we combined report and no-report visual masking paradigms with magnetoencephalography (MEG) to...
Emotional stimuli can influence behavior across varying levels of conscious awareness, yet the extent to which different social signals gain access to awareness remains unclear. Although unconscious processing has been extensively investigated for threat-related expressions, less is known about the awareness dynamics of socio-emotional signals such as laughter. The present study examined...
Flow, an experience of deep immersion and smooth, effortless performance, is frequently linked to creativity. However, its specific relationship with the core cognitive mechanisms of creative ideation remains unclear. This study (n = 400) investigated how the smooth and immersive dimensions of flow relate to divergent thinking, measured using the Alternate Uses Task (AUT), and how they relate...
Converging operations allow one to home in on a construct, be this an altered state of consciousness (ASC), or trait and/or state impulsivity. Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately), measures that should provide converging operations for such a construct sometimes present with diverging results. Three cases are considered here: trait impulsivity, which should be positively correlated with...
Abstract During lucid dreaming, the dreamer is aware that they are dreaming. In past years, numerous studies have explored the characteristics of lucid dreams, which link lucid dreams to vivid visual perception, positive emotions, and wake-like metacognition and executive functions. To determine brain network activity associated with the conscious experience during lucid dreaming, we analyzed...
The aim of this paper is to make and defend three simple propositions about what can and cannot be conscious in the human brain and to elucidate their implications for research and theory on consciousness. The first proposition is that the fact that some information is conscious should be, but often is not, distinguished from the information itself. The second proposition is that, treating the...
This study investigated the intraindividual stability and reliability of the three core aspects of the Selfhood triumvirate ('Self', 'Me', and 'I') as well as their mutual relationship (the Selfhood triumvirate configuration/pattern) by measuring the within-subjects reproducibility of functional integrity within three operational modules (OMs) of the brain's self-referential network (SRN), each...
Unusual bodily experiences (UBEs) are illusory bodily perceptions that are not coherent with typical wakeful experiences, including flying or floating sensations, body distortions, and out-of-body experiences. This study examines UBEs in a controlled sleep laboratory using meditation and light stimulation to facilitate their occurrence. A total of N = 35 healthy participants underwent...
Our aim is to explore neural network mechanisms for phenomenal binding, i.e. combining micro-units of information into the macro-scale conscious experience common in human phenomenology. Such experiential complexity is a key feature that aspiring theories of phenomenal consciousness must account for. We motivate phenomenal binding in a way that aids translation to computational neuroscience,...
Memory is a fundamental brain function relying on complex neurological mechanisms that involve the processes of experiencing, encoding, consolidating and retrieving. A disorder primarily characterized by the loss of (autobiographical) memory owing to stressful or traumatic events is dissociative amnesia, the underlying mechanisms of which are poorly understood and further research is warranted....
This study presents the first comprehensive psychometric comparison of Greyson's (1983) 16-item Near-Death Experience Scale (NDE Scale) and Martial et al.'s (2020) 20-item Near-Death Experience Content Scale (NDE-C) using Rasch modeling and differential item functioning (or response bias) analyses. A total of 705 self-identified "near-death experiencers" (64% women) completed both measures,...
Hallucinations (HAs), the perceptual experiences that occur without external stimuli, are classically associated with psychiatric disorders, but also occur in the general population. Involuntary mental imagery (IMI), the spontaneous occurrence of visual or auditory mental content, shares several features with HAs. The continuum hypothesis suggests that these phenomena exist on a spectrum...
We developed and validated the Nature of Mind Scale (NOMS), a 24-item measure assessing lay beliefs about eight distinct philosophical positions on the mind-body relationship. Given the limitations of existing measures and the theoretical diversity of mind-body positions, our goal was to develop a comprehensive yet practical scale that could capture the full range of philosophical stances...
Spontaneous thoughts and experiences, including mind wandering and dreaming, make up a significant proportion of our conscious mental lives. An influential proposal posits that dreaming and mind wandering exist on a continuum of spontaneous thought, in which dreaming is intensified compared to mind wandering. Yet the precise relationship between dreaming and mind wandering is only beginning to...
The human brain constructs a boundary between self and world by distinguishing self-generated sensory events from external ones. For events that are self-initiated, the brain attenuates its response, what is known as the sensory suppression effect. This effect is regarded as a proxy of the sense of agency, i.e., our feeling of being subjective agents controlling our actions and ensuing events...
The successful execution of time-based prospective memory (TBPM) tasks demands self-initiation attentional resources. Mindfulness meditation can enhance attention, which may promote TBPM performance. This study investigates whether mindfulness meditation can facilitate TBPM via the improvement of attentional resources and whether such facilitation is modulated by time-monitoring conditions. The...