Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2023
Alfredo Brancucci, Sara Ferracci, Anita D'Anselmo et al.
Bistable perception of ambiguous figures differs by sex and by which visual hemifield the stimulus is presented to, suggesting hemispheric asymmetries in conscious perception. In two experiments, 48 participants viewed Rubin's vase-faces figures projected to either the left and right or upper and lower visual hemifields for 180 seconds while eye movements were tracked. In the first experiment, males perceived face profiles for longer when stimuli were presented to the left visual field (processed by the right hemisphere) and the vase for longer in the right visual field, while females showed similar perception across hemifields. Males also more often experienced two different percepts simultaneously from identical stimuli. These effects were absent when stimuli were presented to upper and lower fields.
Consciousness and Cognition
June 13, 2023
Félix Schoeller
Primary states of consciousness are phylogenetically older than secondary states, which are shaped by sociocultural inhibition. The authors review the concept's history in psychiatry and neurobiology and propose that primary states involve a temporary breakdown of self-control, merging action, communication, and emotion (ACE fusion) that are normally separate in adults. This model relates to neural dedifferentiation, loss of modularity during altered states, and increased corticostriatal connectivity. The article offers a perspective on consciousness as a mechanism of differentiation and control, suggests a gradient from primary to secondary states based on thalamocortical interactions and arousal, and proposes testable hypotheses for their distinct signatures.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2023
T. Bachmann, Jaan Aru
The science of consciousness depends on experimental paradigms that compare conscious and unconscious processing. This review highlights a class of paradigms called "conscious interpretation," in which an object is consciously perceived as a set of features, but the interpretation of that set alternates in consciousness. The authors compare these paradigms with other types and review past and recent studies. They propose that for certain stimuli with a hierarchy of interpretations, conscious experience is drawn toward the higher-level interpretation and cannot revert to the lower level. The paper discusses how theories of consciousness might incorporate constraints arising from conscious interpretation.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2023
Damian K F Pang, Stamatis Elntib
Strongly masked visual stimuli are not erased but briefly held in a subliminal sensory buffer store (SSBS), where repetition can make them consciously accessible. The presentation sequence and the time from target to evaluation do not significantly affect perception. Selected information from the SSBS is transferred into a supraliminal short-term memory that maintains stable, fully conscious representations. The level of conscious access in memory storage influences later reportability more than initial phenomenology does, and this factor should be more prominent in discussions of perception and consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
September 1, 2022
Timo L Kvamme, Mesud Sarmanlu, Morten Overgaard
A double-blind neurofeedback study tested whether participants could become aware of the experiment's purpose. Using a contingency awareness questionnaire developed from consciousness research, 5 out of 20 subjects correctly guessed that the experiment aimed to manipulate their attention and multisensory perception in line with their group assignment. The questionnaire took about 25 minutes to complete. The authors call for replication before applying the questionnaire in clinical neurofeedback studies, noting both the strengths and limitations of the approach and the increasing importance of double-blinding in this field.
Consciousness and Cognition
August 10, 2022
Dylan Ludwig
Consciousness likely serves multiple distinct functions rather than a single capacity, as leading theories assume. Conscious processes are a heterogeneous class supported by various neurobiological mechanisms, suggesting different functional contributions across psychological domains. This paper develops a methodological framework for isolating functions associated with conscious experience and argues that Global Workspace Theories, Higher Order Thought Theory, and Information Integration Theory all fail to acknowledge this functional pluralism, limiting their applicability as theories of consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
May 27, 2022
Guaraci Ken Tanaka, T. Russell, J. Bittencourt et al.
Expert meditators show greater frontoparietal EEG gamma coherence than naive meditators, both at rest and during open presence meditation. The right frontoparietal network's connectivity may serve as a biomarker of advanced open monitoring meditation training.
Consciousness and Cognition
May 1, 2022
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Steven Phillips, Hayato Saigo
Perceived similarity between conscious experiences can be quantified, and category theory offers a framework for modeling these relationships. Earlier work treated similarity as binary—either present or absent—but many experiences involve graded levels of similarity. This paper introduces enriched category theory, which replaces binary arrows with more flexible relations, such as a measure of perceived dissimilarity. The authors argue that enriched categories can accommodate various types of conscious experiences. A key implication is that the Yoneda lemma in enriched category theory allows a quale to be characterized by its collection of relationships to other qualia, up to an enriched isomorphism.
Consciousness and Cognition
May 1, 2022
Jonas Mathes, Reinhard Pietrowsky
People who have nightmares in which they are the aggressor may be more aggressive in waking life, supporting the continuity hypothesis that dreams reflect waking experiences. In contrast, nightmares where the dreamer reacts aggressively in self-defense may compensate for suppressed aggression in waking life. The study used the Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire to measure waking-life aggression. Results showed that dreamers who initiated aggression in their nightmares were more aggressive in waking life than those whose aggression was reactive to threats from other dream characters. This suggests two subtypes of aggressor nightmares: those reflecting continuity of waking aggression and those compensating for it.
Consciousness and Cognition
April 19, 2022
M. R. Dias da Silva, Ó. Gonçalves, D. Branco et al.
Mind wandering, the natural shift from external focus to internal thoughts, alters brain activity in specific ways. During a visuomotor tracking task, participants showed reduced P3 brainwave responses to external targets just before reporting mind wandering, indicating less conscious processing of external stimuli. Alpha brainwave power increased globally, signaling an internal mental state, while theta power rose in centroparietal areas and beta power decreased in right frontal and centroparietal regions. Additionally, individuals prone to mind wandering had higher delta and gamma power but a lower theta-beta ratio. These findings reveal distinct neural signatures of mind wandering at both momentary and trait levels.
Consciousness and Cognition
April 1, 2022
Francesco Ellia, Robert Chis-Ciure
This paper compares two conceptual frameworks for explaining phenomenal experience: Neurobiological Naturalism (NN) by Feinberg & Mallatt and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) by Tononi and colleagues. The authors first introduce each framework, then outline a plan for analysis, articulate the philosophical profiles of NN and IIT—including their ontological commitments and epistemological foundations—and finally compare them point-by-point, including their positions on artificial consciousness. The analysis is meta-theoretical, assessing similarities previously noted by Feinberg & Mallatt.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2022
Michael H Herzog, Aaron Schurger, Adrien Doerig
The authors argue that integrated information theory (IIT) cannot be a scientific theory of consciousness because it relies on pure first-person experience as a foundation, which is not measurable except through reports, brain activity, and their relationship. Science requires measurements and data, not assertions of ground truth independent of data. No experiment based on third-person data can test IIT as a theory of consciousness. The authors contend that IIT's conception of consciousness is fully dissociated from measurable things, implying that both the level and content of consciousness are epiphenomenal and lack causal power. This leads to a form of dissociative epiphenomenalism that undermines trust in reports about first-person experiences, which are the basis for IIT's own axioms, meaning accepting IIT leads to rejecting its axioms.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 1, 2022
Amber R Hopkins, Kelvin J. McQueen
Perceptual filling-in occurs when the brain inserts visual properties like color or motion into areas of the visual field that lack corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces filled/non-filled pairs—images that look identical but differ in the amount of filling-in required—as a tool for testing theories of consciousness. A review of recent experiments suggests that filling-in involves brain activity with higher integrated information (Φ) compared to veridical perceptions. These pairs pose a challenge to integrated information theory, which predicts that phenomenologically identical experiences should depend on brain processes with identical Φ.
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2021
Daniel Revach, Moti Salti
The way researchers ask questions about consciousness is shaped by hidden assumptions that constrain possible answers. This paper identifies and tests the assumptions underlying contemporary debates about the neural correlates of consciousness, tracing them to Crick and Koch's 1990 framing. These premises create a sequential, passive view of conscious perception as the product of resolved unconscious processing at a single moment in time. Major debates—about the moment of entry, all-or-none versus graded nature, and report versus no-report paradigms—are driven by consensus on these assumptions. Removing these assumptions resolves some debates and suggests a dynamic, dispersed conception of consciousness, offering a more parsimonious account of conscious perception.
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2021
Linda Radek, Lauri Koskinen, Nils Sandman et al.
Subjective experiences, most often dreaming or incorporating elements of the setting, are common during sedation with anesthetics that act through different molecular mechanisms. In healthy male participants given equisedative doses of dexmedetomidine, propofol, sevoflurane, or S-ketamine for one hour, 46.9% of those who were arousable reported experiences. Dexmedetomidine was associated with the most frequent reports, while S-ketamine produced the most multimodal experiences. Whether participants were responsive at the end of administration did not affect the prevalence or content of the experiences. The differences between drugs were small in this sample.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2021
M. Usher
The unfolding argument (UA) claims that if consciousness depends on causal structure, its presence is unfalsifiable because any input-output function of a recurrent neural network can be approximated by an equivalent feedforward network, making behavioral tests inconclusive. This paper refutes UA by showing that the Universal Approximator theorem does not support robust functional equivalence between feedforward and recurrent networks, and that such equivalence would only apply to static input-output functions, not temporal patterns or responses to structural perturbations. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience indicates that consciousness involves flexible behavioral control requiring interacting top-down and bottom-up processes in brain dynamics, which recurrent networks can capture but feedforward networks cannot.
Consciousness and Cognition
September 22, 2021
Alessio Matiz, C. Crescentini, M. Bergamasco et al.
The brains of two people meditating together in the same room show different patterns of electrical activity compared to when they meditate alone in separate rooms. Expert meditator couples performed mindfulness-oriented meditation and instructed mind-wandering tasks either in the same room or in different rooms while EEG was recorded. Gamma brainwave activity was higher in limbic areas during mindfulness meditation performed together versus alone, an effect not explained by gender, age, or meditation expertise. Theta and alpha activity also differed between conditions in temporo-occipital regions. The findings suggest that the social context of shared meditation alters brain function in ways specific to mindfulness practice.
Consciousness and Cognition
April 1, 2021
Michael Pauen, John-Dylan Haynes
Many philosophers claim that the subjective character of conscious experience creates a fundamental deficit in third-person (extrospective) access to first-person experience. This paper argues that extrospective measurement methods suffer from no such deficit when compared with measurement techniques in the natural sciences. After rejecting principled objections, a historical comparison shows extrospective methods are still in an early stage of development but can be improved via a bootstrapping strategy similar to that used in physical measurement. Multiple sources of evidence should allow substantial advances. New developments in pain measurement demonstrate this bootstrapping strategy is already bearing fruit.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2021
J E Malinowski, C L Horton
Dreams from the early night are more clearly connected to waking-life activities, while late-night dreams are more emotional, important, varied in time orientation, and hyperassociative. These differences align with known sleep-stage functions: non-REM sleep supports episodic memory consolidation and REM sleep supports emotional regulation and creativity. The findings suggest that dream content reflects underlying sleep processes such as memory consolidation, emotion-processing, and creativity across the night.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 22, 2021
Francesco Ianì
When people incorporate an external object or body into their sense of self—a process called embodiment—there is a measurable cost to their actual body. This review examines evidence from studies of action observation, tool use, the rubber hand illusion, and full-body illusions. The findings suggest that embodiment involves both benefits, such as extending one's capabilities, and costs, including partial disembodiment of one's own body. The argument has implications for the embodied cognition approach.
Consciousness and Cognition
January 5, 2021
Anna Ciaunica, Axel Constant, H. Preissl et al.
preprint
The paper argues that the development of a minimal sense of self begins before birth, within the womb, through the processes of co-embodiment and co-homeostasis with the gestating parent. The authors contend that this prenatal period is a crucial, yet overlooked, aspect of the Predictive Processing and Active Inference framework, which holds that perceptions are shaped by prior experiences. They propose that the universal human experience of being carried and growing within another body fundamentally shapes the emergence of minimal selfhood and has implications for debates on consciousness, the self, and social cognition.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2020
Johannes Kleiner
A recent argument claimed that Integrated Information Theory and similar theories cannot explain consciousness (the 'unfolding argument'). A mathematical analysis proves that the argument's premises, if accepted, would imply the same problem for almost all theories of consciousness. However, one premise—that measures of brain activity cannot be used in empirical tests of consciousness theories—is unwarranted. When this premise is dropped, the argument no longer holds. Thus the unfolding argument is not valid.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2020
Chandra S Sripada, Aman Taxali
The spontaneous stream of thought (SST), often called the stream of consciousness, exhibits a "clump-and-jump" structure: clusters of related thoughts about a topic followed by a jump to a new topic, in a repeating pattern. Multiple lines of evidence support this structure, including high interrater agreement in identifying jumps, corroboration by automated text analytic methods, identification by a data-driven algorithm, and inferred presence in unverbalized SST. Jumps involve a discontinuous shift where a new clump is only modestly related to the previous one. These results illuminate serial structure in SST and invite research into the processes generating the pattern.
Consciousness and Cognition
October 1, 2020
Mikel Jimenez, José Antonio Hinojosa, Pedro R Montoro
The transition from unaware to aware visual experience may follow different patterns depending on the type of stimulus being processed. For low-level features such as stimulus energy, awareness appears to emerge gradually (graded), whereas for high-level features such as letters, words, or meaning, awareness seems to switch on abruptly (dichotomous). This review critically examines behavioral and brain-based evidence for the level of processing hypothesis, noting challenges including differences in conceptualizations, awareness scale issues, attentional confounds, and divergences in experimental factors or statistical analyses. The hypothesis is promising but requires further methodological and experimental work, especially neuroimaging studies, to clarify the neural correlates of consciousness.
Consciousness and Cognition
August 1, 2020
Adam Haar Horowitz, Tony J. Cunningham, Pattie Maes et al.
A new wearable device called Dormio automatically delivers auditory dream incubations during the hypnagogic period at sleep onset, enabling targeted information to be incorporated directly into dream content through a process termed targeted dream incubation (TDI). The protocol demonstrates that dream content can be experimentally manipulated, and the authors discuss how TDI can serve as a tool for controlled research on the role of dreams in memory consolidation. The work opens the black box of dreaming by providing a method to engineer dream content and study its relationship to overnight memory transformation.