Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2009
John Beeckmans
1 citation
The core neural bases for visual phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness may reside in anatomically separate regions, with phenomenal consciousness located early in the visual cortex where detailed chromatic information is available. During perception, cognitive access to this rich chromatic information is mediated through mereologically superordinate concepts that characterize integrated semantic and quantitative properties of complex visual percepts. These concepts contain much less information than the particulars they characterize, implying that the information in phenomenal consciousness greatly exceeds that in accompanying access consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
July 3, 2026
Shun Sasaki, Tokiko Harada, Hideki Ohira
Depersonalization and derealization are dissociative experiences that alter bodily self-awareness and the sense of reality. This study compared the Mirror Gazing Task, where participants looked at their own face, with a Fixed Attention Task, where they stared at a dot on a wall, to see which better induces transient depersonalization- and derealization-like states in 54 non-clinical adults. Both tasks increased depersonalization and derealization ratings compared to baseline, a break, and a follow-up. Depersonalization was higher after the Mirror Gazing Task than after the Fixed Attention Task, but derealization did not clearly differ between tasks. The findings suggest that derealization-like experiences arise from features common to both tasks, while depersonalization-like experiences may be more linked to mirror-based self-focus.
Consciousness and Cognition
June 14, 2026
Cyriel M A Pennartz, Micha Engeser
Conscious experiences are not accidental byproducts but serve a specific biological function: they provide a multimodal, situational survey of the brain's environment (including the body) that enables deliberate, planned behaviors. This argument is grounded in a neurorepresentationalist position that rejects the separation of phenomenal consciousness from its neural substrate, treating them as one functional entity. The function is illustrated by perceptual phenomena such as seeing the world upright, multisensory integration, and spatial object constancy. Pathological cases like Anton and Bonnet syndrome, where misrepresentation of reality severely impairs behavior, further support this view. The position is contrasted with other proposals, particularly those emphasizing a learning function of consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
June 1, 2026
Liang He, Zhige Zhang, Yuetan Wang et al.
The neural basis of conscious visual experience was investigated by combining magnetoencephalography with report and no-report masking paradigms. Early and sustained neural responses in occipital and temporal cortices began at about 60-70 milliseconds after a stimulus appeared, encoding stimulus presence and category regardless of whether participants reported what they saw. These posterior regions also showed enhanced alpha-band recurrent coupling for visible stimuli. Prefrontal cortex activity emerged only when explicit report was required, starting at about 100 milliseconds, and did not represent categorical content when reporting was absent. Long-range fronto-posterior connectivity increased selectively during report. The findings indicate that posterior cortical dynamics are sufficient to support perceptual awareness, while prefrontal cortex contributes to report-related access and global integration, supporting posterior-centered accounts of phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
April 13, 2026
Xinlin Wang, Emma Peters, Johannes Strelen et al.
During lucid dreaming, the dreamer is aware they are dreaming. To identify brain network activity linked to this conscious experience, 39 sleep recordings (lucid vs. non-lucid REM sleep) from 8 lucid dreamers were analyzed using EEG microstate analysis. Microstates A and G dominated during lucid REM, while microstates B, C, and D dominated during non-lucid REM. These microstates were associated with emotional processing (A), visual processing (B), salience network activity (C), executive functions (D), and the default mode network (G). Results suggest lucidity involves increased self-visualization, metacognition, and executive processing, with decreased emotional processing and default mode network activity, indicating distinct network dynamics in lucid REM sleep.
Consciousness and Cognition
March 1, 2026
Alexander A Fingelkurts, Andrew A Fingelkurts
The three core aspects of selfhood—'Self', 'Me', and 'I'—show moderate-to-high stability within individuals over time, measured by the functional integrity of brain networks on repeat quantitative EEG testing. Their overall configuration, or relative expression pattern, is exceptionally reliable. The duration between assessments, participants' age, and the presence of somatic or psychopathological conditions did not affect these stability measures. The results suggest that these aspects of selfhood and their configuration exhibit trait-like properties, remaining stable across time, age, and health conditions.
Consciousness and Cognition
March 1, 2026
Peter A White
Consciousness is not a property of brain processes themselves, only of the information those processes handle. The paper argues three points: first, the fact that information is conscious must be kept separate from the content of that information; second, in an information-processing brain, only information—not the operations on it—can be conscious, as illustrated by voluntary actions like verbal reports; third, access consciousness is merely access, and adding 'consciousness' to it changes nothing—a system identical to the human brain but lacking conscious information would function identically. Conscious experience requires a generative mechanism, but none has been proposed.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 11, 2026
Teresa Campillo-Ferrer, Antonella Iadarola, Ramona Cordani et al.
Unusual bodily experiences (UBEs)—illusory perceptions such as floating, body distortions, or out-of-body sensations—can occur during meditation and sleep. In a controlled sleep laboratory, 20 of 35 healthy participants reported 36 UBEs, primarily during meditation (wakefulness) but also during arousals, REM sleep, and non-REM sleep. Electroencephalography (EEG) analyses revealed that UBEs emerge during intermediate states of consciousness that combine features of wakefulness and sleep. Specifically, UBEs were associated with EEG reactivation: increased high-frequency activity (beta and gamma) and decreased low-frequency activity (delta and theta), especially around temporal regions. These findings offer new insights into the neural correlates of self-consciousness and body perception across sleep and wakefulness.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 3, 2026
Chris Percy, Gautam Agarwal
A deliberately simple artificial neural network model can implement functional binding—combining micro-units of information for cognitive tasks—but fails to achieve phenomenal binding, the integration of micro-information into the unified, macro-scale conscious experience typical of human phenomenology. The model's failure highlights a key challenge for theories of consciousness: maintaining a distinction between unconscious and conscious processing while achieving phenomenal binding. Several established theories, including Integrated Information Theory, Orch-OR, and Conscious Electromagnetic Information Theory, map onto possible solution structures based on which parts of the model they elaborate or reject. Each proposed solution requires further development to fully account for phenomenal binding.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 18, 2026
Marieta Pehlivanova, Rense Lange, Bruce Greyson et al.
Two scales measuring the phenomenology of near-death experiences—the 16-item NDE Scale and the 20-item NDE-C—were compared in 705 self-identified experiencers. The scales correlate nearly perfectly (r = 0.98), indicating they measure the same underlying construct. However, Rasch analysis revealed problems with the NDE-C's category structure and five novel items. The original NDE Scale's item hierarchy replicated across samples, showing long-term stability. Based on parsimony and psychometric evidence, the original NDE Scale with Rasch scoring and a validated cut-off of 7 (out of 32) is recommended for future research.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2026
Manuela Kirberg, Jennifer Windt
Dreaming and mind wandering share features of spontaneous thought, but their precise relationship remains unclear. Bizarreness—unusual features of experience—has traditionally been seen as unique to dreams, though some propose it exists on a continuum where dreaming is an intensified form of mind wandering. Analyzing 379 spontaneous reports from the same participants in a naturalistic setting, the findings show that both dreaming and waking mind wandering have unique bizarreness profiles with similarities and differences. The comparison between the two changes depending on the type, subtype, and content of bizarreness measured. Thus, dreams cannot simply be described as intensified mind wandering; a more nuanced approach with specific measures is needed.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2026
Matthias Forstmann, Pascal Burgmer
A new 24-item questionnaire, the Nature of Mind Scale (NOMS), reliably measures eight distinct philosophical views about the relationship between mind and body, including substance dualism, interactionism, panpsychism, idealism, reductive and non-reductive physicalism, mystical monism, and neutral monism. Across four studies with 1,074 participants, exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses confirmed the eight-factor structure. Participants most strongly endorsed interactionism, non-reductive physicalism, and mystical monism, and least supported idealism. The scale showed good model fit, measurement invariance, and convergent validity with existing measures. Construct validity was supported by expected links with religiosity, free will beliefs, cognitive style, personality, and afterlife beliefs.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2026
Guillaume Pepin, Hélène Lœvenbruck, Alan Chauvin et al.
Hallucinations and involuntary mental imagery share many features but differ in key ways. In a survey of 1,951 French-speaking adults, involuntary mental imagery occurred more often than hallucinations and was rated as more vivid, emotionally positive, and self-generated. Hallucinations, by contrast, caused greater distress and were perceived as coming from outside the self. Moderate to strong correlations between the two on most dimensions support the idea of a shared experiential continuum, though differences in agency and controllability challenge existing cognitive models of self-monitoring. Refining these distinctions may improve early detection and prevention of distressing internal experiences.
Consciousness and Cognition
December 15, 2025
Andreas Krabbe, Pilleriin Sikka, Jussi Jylkkä
Meditation practice may enhance the benefits of psychedelic experiences and can confound associations between psychedelic use and well-being. In two cross-sectional online surveys, when examined separately, both cumulative psychedelic use and meditation practice were associated with greater well-being and psychological flexibility. However, when considered jointly, the associations for psychedelics were reduced or became nonsignificant, while meditation remained consistently associated with outcomes. In a second study, participants who experienced a personally meaningful event through meditation alone or combined with psychedelics reported significantly greater improvements in well-being compared with those who used psychedelics alone, though all groups showed positive change on average. Weak evidence suggested a potential synergy between the two practices.
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2025
Inés Abalo-Rodríguez, Ana P. Pinheiro
Hallucination research is an interdisciplinary field that combines psychology, neuroscience, psychiatry, and philosophy. This article outlines key conceptual issues, such as how hallucinations differ from other perceptual alterations and whether they form a single construct. It reviews experimental paradigms that measure enduring hallucinatory tendencies versus those capturing hallucinations in real time, along with rating instruments like confidence scales and the phenomenological approach focusing on first-person experience. A checklist of variables—including sensory modality, context, cognitive style, affective state, and cultural background—is provided for researchers to consider before designing studies.
Consciousness and Cognition
August 13, 2025
Azenet Lopez, Wanja Wiese
Consciousness science has many competing theories that often conflict, making progress toward a mature theory difficult. A building-block approach offers a way forward by focusing on simpler elements that make up theories, such as key notions or assumptions, rather than committing to entire theoretical proposals. This approach can help assess, integrate, and unify diverse theories. Two potential building blocks discussed are attention and information generation, given their roles in leading theories. The paper argues that shifting focus to these foundational constructs facilitates addressing urgent questions about consciousness in both natural and artificial systems.
Consciousness and Cognition
July 1, 2025
Michael Pauen
A widely held view claims that phenomenal experience cannot be explained by neural mechanisms due to an incompatibility between phenomenal and neuroscientific knowledge. This paper argues against that view in three steps. First, it shows that two key assumptions behind the explanatory gap argument are unfounded, making the problem solvable with standard scientific methods. Second, it hypothesizes that affective pain can be captured in functional terms if the function is cognitive rather than behavioral: feeling affective pain is feeling an urge to avoid. Third, it presents empirical evidence supporting this claim and shows how the functional description helps identify neural mechanisms underlying affective pain. This serves as a proof of principle that phenomenal experience can be explained in objective neuroscientific terms.
Consciousness and Cognition
July 1, 2025
Gulshan Kumar, Safoora Naaz, Nahida Jabin et al.
Dream recall is more frequent after REM sleep than N2 sleep. During dream recall, EEG beta activity increases, functional connectivity within the default mode network strengthens, and the medial frontal cortex activates, regardless of sleep stage. Auditory stimulation during sleep can influence the emotional content of dreams, suggesting that targeted memory reactivation may be possible. These findings help clarify how conscious experience arises during sleep.
Consciousness and Cognition
May 30, 2025
Ludwig Crespin
Dreaming consciousness is not fundamentally different from waking consciousness. The claim that dreams lack cognitive access or executive control is false because dream recall itself proves the dreamer noticed the experience, and dream reports show dreamers rationally assess situations and self-regulate within dreams. However, dreamers have reduced extended consciousness with limited access to their waking autobiographical self, which creates the retrospective illusion that the dream ego lacks rational control. The autobiographical self that regulates and recollects the dream is not the same as the waking one. Dreams occurring during sleep are still conscious experiences in their own right.
Consciousness and Cognition
March 1, 2025
Gal R. Chen, Yuval Harris, Ran R. Hassin
People differ reliably in how quickly non-conscious visual stimuli enter awareness, a trait linked to later cognitive and emotional processes. Two experiments tested whether this prioritization speed relates to noticing changes in a change blindness task. In the first experiment (97 participants), faster prioritization correlated with better change detection across multiple measures. A preregistered replication (99 participants) confirmed this correlation and showed it was not explained by variability in other perceptual-decision tasks. The findings suggest that the speed of becoming aware of stimuli is tightly connected to conscious experiences in other situations.
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2024
Peter Ulric Tse
Epistemological conceptions of information, based on decoding extrinsic inputs to become informed, are contrasted with ontological conceptions based on intrinsic states independent of external factors. Ontological views, such as those underlying integrated information theory or panpsychism, cannot account for consciousness. In animal brains, the only known conscious systems, decoding extrinsic inputs is central to creating consciousness and its contents. Only a specific subset of decodings should realize consciousness, because it evolved to create an evaluative experience of what is intrinsically true about the world and body, used in a perception-action cycle that affords choices for behavior to accomplish goals.
Consciousness and Cognition
July 1, 2024
John Balch, Rachel Raider, Joni Keith et al.
People who have more dissociative experiences during the day also tend to have more nightmares, lucid dreams, and beliefs in paranormal phenomena, and they take longer to fall asleep. The coherence and perspective of dreams—specifically how stable and first-person the dreamed self feels—predicts about 26% of the variation in dissociative symptoms. These findings suggest that REM sleep intruding into waking consciousness may contribute to some dissociative experiences. The results come from 219 volunteers who completed surveys including the Dissociative Experiences Scale, plus dream reports and sleep measures from a subgroup. The authors propose that dream content stability could be a useful indicator of dissociative tendencies and that treating nightmare distress might help reduce dissociation.
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2020
Yury V M Lages, Daniel C Mograbi, Thomas E Krahe et al.
Understanding complex emotional states in animals reveals that 70% of researchers emphasize the importance of anthropomorphic perspectives, which help bridge human and animal emotions. By exploring different theories of consciousness and neural processing, insights into the subjective experiences of nonhuman animals expand. The debate between dualism and monism also shapes our understanding, while contrasting affective consciousness with higher-order emotional theories sheds light on how animals experience feelings uniquely. This nuanced view fosters a deeper appreciation for the emotional lives within diverse species.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2016
Harry Haroutioun Haladjian, Carlos Montemayor
Phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines, despite advances in artificial intelligence that aim to reproduce human perception, cognition, and emotions. While ethical behavior may be programmable through rules and machine learning, emotions and empathy will remain simulations, not genuine experiences. Arguments from evolution, neuropsychology of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness in humans support this claim. The authors conclude that artificial consciousness is far from achievable.
Consciousness and Cognition
May 1, 2014
Jean-Arthur Micoulaud-Franchi, Clélia Quiles, Guillaume Fond et al.
A methodological framework for analyzing the relationship between cognitive processes and brain activity uses variables measured by neurofeedback (NF) with functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery (fMRI NF). Two traditional approaches, the neuropsychological (NP) and psychophysiology (PP) approaches, treat cognitive or brain variables as dependent or independent. The article suggests that NF can be inspired by neurophenomenology, because fMRI NF lets participants simultaneously experience their own cognitive processes and observe effects on brain region activations. Implementing the elicitation interview method could improve fMRI NF by collecting participants' introspective reports on subjective experiences.