Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Evan Alexander Owens, Robert O Duncan
2 citations
Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) comprises embodiment—the sense of owning a body—and presence—the sense of being at a location. Evidence suggests these rely on partly distinct neural networks, but how they interact remains unclear. A model is proposed in which presence depends on embodiment. In a virtual-reality experiment, correlated versus uncorrelated sensory feedback manipulated embodiment, and first- versus third-person perspective manipulated presence. Behavioral performance (reaction times and accuracy) improved with correlated feedback and first-person perspective. Functional MRI revealed frontoparietal areas supporting embodiment and temporoparietal areas supporting presence. Manipulations of embodiment produced larger effect sizes in presence-related areas than vice versa, and this pattern held for overlapping areas. The data indicate that presence-related brain areas may depend on activity in embodiment-related networks.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Ravinder Jerath, Connor Beveridge
2 citations
Reflexes integrate multimodal sensory information rapidly, yet how unconscious processes contribute to consciousness remains unclear. The Default Space Theory (DST) proposes a unified internal representation that integrates sensory inputs, cognition, emotion, and unconscious processes. Neuroimaging advances (fMRI, EEG, MEG) highlight neural oscillations and sensory integration in conscious experience. This perspective argues that research on reflexes' dynamic relationship with consciousness is lacking, particularly top-down cortical modulation of subcortical reflex circuits. Understanding how the brain encodes a multimodal model of self and environment to produce quick reflex responses could clarify boundaries between conscious and unconscious activity, offering new avenues for studying consciousness's physical nature.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Suguru Kawazu, Marie Amitani, Hajime Suzuki et al.
2 citations
A multicenter cluster-randomized controlled trial tested a 4-week mindfulness yoga program added to treatment as usual (cognitive behavioral therapy based on self-monitoring) for 43 children aged 10–15 years with school refusal. Anxiety symptoms, measured by the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, showed no significant difference between the yoga group (adjusted post-test score 39.9) and the non-yoga group (39.4); the between-group difference was 0.4 (80% CI -4.8 to 5.6, p = 0.54). Exploratory analysis found improvement on the Physical Injury Fears subscale, and pulse rate was significantly lower in the yoga group. The intervention appeared safe but had limited effectiveness for anxiety.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
April 8, 2026
Michael Wiest, Daya S. Gupta
1 citation
This editorial introduces a volume on quantum and quantum-like effects across neuroscience. It describes a growing literature applying quantum probability theory to model human behavior that appears irrational from a classical perspective, emphasizing context-sensitivity. One paper systematically motivates a quantum-like statistical framework for modeling behavior beyond individual cognition, while another interprets team effectiveness data, arguing the quantum-like description reveals performance gains from interdependence. The editorial discusses potential neural implementations, including microtubules as a hypothesized substrate for functional quantum brain processes, and notes that evidence from multiple sources supports the physical plausibility of the quantum consciousness hypothesis. Two papers propose frameworks for quantitatively distinguishing classical and quantum mechanisms in the brain.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
March 12, 2026
Chirapat Ukachoke
1 citation
Consciousness may be a form of neural information—specifically, information encoded in the spatiotemporal patterns of electrochemical signaling within certain neural circuits. This hypothesis is derived by analyzing the essential properties of consciousness and evaluating candidate non-material entities in the brain, such as electrical fields, magnetic fields, electromagnetic waves, and neural information. Neural information most parsimoniously meets the required criteria without invoking new forces or physical laws. The hypothesis generates empirically verifiable predictions, making it falsifiable. It also proposes neural mechanisms for how some information manifests phenomenally as consciousness and why this occurs only from a first-person perspective. The framework is grounded entirely in established neuroscience.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Beatrix Krause-Sorio, Sergio Becerra, Prabha Siddarth et al.
1 citation
Watching videos of galactic nebulas while meditating on universal connectedness activates brain regions involved in object, sensory, and memory processing, including the bilateral lateral occipital and fusiform gyri, right postcentral gyrus, and hippocampus. Compared to viewing AI-generated digital art or nature videos, meditation produced increased brain activity in sensory integration and sensorimotor areas such as the left parietal operculum and bilateral postcentral and supramarginal gyri. A pilot fMRI study with nine healthy adults (mean age 29; 5 women) used a block design to compare these conditions. The findings suggest distinct neural responses for meditative contemplation versus passive viewing of art or nature, though further research is needed to clarify therapeutic applications.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 17, 2026
Haruki Emori, Andrei Khrennikov, Atsushi Iriki
Cognitive neuroscience has accumulated robust findings that systematically resist explanation within classical probabilistic and causal frameworks, including order effects in judgment, multi-path motor preparation, perceptual binding, attentional selection, and the recursive construction of self and time. The authors argue these are signatures of a deeper, non-commutative architecture of cognition and brain dynamics. They propose quantum probability theory together with contextual probability theory as rigorous translational languages for cognitive processes, where observation actively transforms underlying state spaces. The framework suggests neural network dynamics are intrinsically organized to generate quantum-like representations, with structural primitives mapping onto specific brain activities. They outline a new sub-domain called Cognitive Structural Science and a research program combining human-macaque experiments with quantum-computer simulation.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 9, 2026
Igor Pivovarov
A new framework, TEVSER (Theory of Evolving Self-Representations), proposes that living systems maintain homeostasis through a hierarchy of self-representations that serve as control structures guiding behavior. Within this hierarchy, distinct functional levels correspond to qualitatively different forms of cognition, including the emergence of a phenomenological internal world, spatial subjectivity, temporal presence, behavioral intelligence, self-consciousness, and abstract symbolic intellect. Consciousness is treated as a structured and graded property arising from the organization of self-representing systems, offering a constructive approach to the hard problem of consciousness. The framework integrates predictive coding, active inference, higher-order theories, and integrated information theory within a unified architecture and generates testable hypotheses linking levels of self-representation to neural organization, behavior, and evolutionary complexity.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 18, 2026
Chirapat Ukachoke
Qualia and consciousness are not inert but influence neural and behavioral events through a non-mechanistic, information-based causal role. Events before or concurrent with the emergence of a pain quale are unaffected by it, while activities that explicitly involve phenomenal content—such as experiencing or reporting the quale—are influenced by its occurrence and character. This influence does not rely on particle-force interactions but operates as higher-level factors in stable, constitutive counterfactual relations to downstream effects. Qualia provide phenomenal information necessary for initiating and structuring neural causal chains and determining output content, though they require intact neural circuits to implement mechanistic processing. Thus, qualia and consciousness are causally efficacious in a restricted, information-based sense.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
John Sanfey
The hard problem of consciousness—explaining how subjective experience arises from physical processes—stems from the same logical paradox that makes quantum and classical physics incompatible: the measure-theoretic limit. Continuous time requires point-equivalent instants of zero duration, which cannot exist ontologically, making it impossible to explain state transitions within continuous time without approximations. Consciousness functions as an ontological workaround for problems related to temporally extended information in continuous time, including sensory qualia.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Borros Arneth
Subjective experience arises when a system's internal predictions and sensory inputs become recursively coupled, minimizing entropy exchange with the environment while maintaining high internal informational dynamics. This metastable condition, termed dynamic entropic closure, produces a self-referential, phase-coherent pattern that constitutes awareness. The framework builds on predictive processing and the Free Energy Principle, offering operational constraints and falsifiable predictions for neurophysiology, and is compatible with but distinct from Integrated Information Theory and global-workspace accounts.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Diego Iacono, Gloria C Feltis
Traumatic brain injury and near-death experiences can sometimes trigger unexpected cognitive and creative enhancements, including heightened artistic expression. Alterations in brain networks such as the default mode network, frontoparietal circuits, and limbic regions may underlie shifts in self-awareness, emotion processing, and symbolic thinking. Neuroplasticity, diaschisis, and compensatory reorganization may facilitate novel cognition and creative output after injury. Genetic factors and evolutionary perspectives are considered. The article argues that certain brain injuries and altered states can reconfigure cognitive and emotional systems, leading to emergent artistic abilities or intensified creative insight, challenging traditional dichotomies between damage and function.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
Philippe Peigneux
No Summary
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
Marc Cohen
Advanced meditators (mean 30 years' experience) showed higher current source density in high-frequency EEG bands, predominantly in the right temporal lobes, insula, and inferior frontal gyrus, compared to medium-level practitioners (mean 4 years' experience). The medium group had higher current source density in lower frequencies in the right occipital and temporal lobes, precentral gyrus, and superior frontal gyrus. Distinct right-lateralized networks were identified for low and high frequency bands, suggesting that meditation expertise is associated with specific changes in cortical oscillation patterns.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Giorgia Procissi, Elena Capelli, Beatrice Riva et al.
Caregiver-infant interaction is the space where development unfolds over time. The mutual regulation model (MRM) holds that meaning-making, emotion regulation, and stress resilience emerge from the fabric of these interactions. Within MRM, dyadic expansion of consciousness (DEC) describes how caregivers and infants co-create an expanded, more complex state of consciousness through reciprocal interactions and alternating phases of matching, mismatching, and reparation. The Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm (FFSF) experimentally manipulates caregiver availability to study these early exchanges. Recent developmental hyperscanning protocols promise to investigate DEC by exploring inter-brain coupling and uncoupling, potentially revealing a “two-brained system” that produces dyadic meanings through synchronized neural networks.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Francis G Smith
A review of empirical findings on the neural organization of conscious experience finds that conscious states are consistently associated with neural activity that is restricted to low-dimensional subspaces or manifolds, structured by meaningful geometric and topological relationships, and dynamically accessible under perturbation. Distances in neural representational space track experiential similarity, categorical perceptual distinctions correspond to clustering and boundaries in neural state space, and perturbational measures distinguish accessible experiential states from inactive or fragmented configurations. The authors provide a unifying structural synthesis of empirically grounded constraints on the neural organization associated with conscious experience, without advancing a specific theory of consciousness.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Cooper Kansala, Emre Cicek, Vanessa B Nkansah-Okoree et al.
The experience of free will is a conditioned illusion—a misattribution of causality reinforced through operant learning. Decisions and actions are determined, but the temporal contiguity of premotor and motor activations gives rise to superstitious conditioning, shaping an experience of and belief in free will compatible with determinism. Sustained by dopaminergic circuits and reinforced by sensorimotor feedback loops, this framework situates free will as an experiential phenomenon rooted in the functional neuroanatomy of learning. Implications for medicine, ethics, and law are discussed, along with conditions under which the experience may be disrupted or restructured.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup, Elizabeth Ann Stoll
A central obstacle to explaining consciousness is uncertainty about what kind of thing it is—its ontological status. Naturalization requires making every agreed property of consciousness continuous with properties admitted by the natural sciences. The hard problem will remain hard until cortical computation and the mechanisms by which biophysical processes generate phenomenal content are fully understood. This paper evaluates the naturalization project in light of debates in consciousness studies, then introduces a neuro-physically grounded framework for probabilistic neural computation: the holography solution. It offers a concrete account of naturalization, provides explanatory power, and identifies several testable predictions. Even if unconvincing, the proposal demonstrates that naturalization is possible and challenges other theories to deliver alternative accounts of what consciousness is.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Tam Hunt, M Bruce MacIver
Ephaptic coupling research has progressed over nine decades from initial observations in the 1930s through mid-20th-century skepticism to a modern revival. Contemporary work shows that weak electric fields (0.1-5 V/m) produce measurable physiological effects and that ephaptic interactions contribute to brain network complexity, memory formation, and potentially consciousness. Ephaptic communication, combined with electromagnetic field theories of consciousness, offers a solution to the binding problem that has perplexed philosophers and neuroscientists for at least a century. This historical perspective illustrates how scientific paradigms shift as methodological advances enable more sophisticated investigation of previously dismissed phenomena.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Josh Roeloffs, Jack A Tuszynski
A proposed framework explains how the brain switches between fast, intuitive (System 1) and slow, analytical (System 2) thinking. Self-referential evaluative monitoring acts as a biological switch, modulating microtubule-mediated quantum coherence through electromagnetic boundary conditions. The causal chain involves locus coeruleus-norepinephrine regulation of the default mode network, electromagnetic patterns from self-evaluation, and calcium-mediated changes to microtubule electrostatic environments. Quantum coherence enables parallel exploration while classical processing provides stability; evolution would have selected mechanisms balancing these demands. Anesthetics disrupt energy-threshold-dependent coherent processes in microtubules, consistent with their effects. Testable predictions relate default mode network activity, flow states, insight, and confidence to shifts along the quantum-classical processing spectrum.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Dwivedi Krishna, Deepeshwar Singh, N K Manjunath
Long-term heartfulness meditation practitioners show distinct frontal alpha asymmetry (FAA) patterns in their EEG compared to non-meditators, and these patterns correlate positively with self-reported depth of meditation. The study of 26 long-term practitioners and 33 non-meditators aged 30-45 used the Meditation Depth Questionnaire and Visual Analogue Scale to measure meditation depth. FAA findings exhibited interaction effects highlighting group differences. The results suggest heartfulness meditation may modulate FAA patterns, potentially linked to enhanced emotional balance.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Joachim Keppler
Conscious states are linked to long-range synchronized brain activity patterns that arise from phase transitions and exhibit self-organized criticality. This article connects these neurophysiological features to quantum electrodynamics (QED), which explains the origin of such transitions. A key QED component is the fluctuating electromagnetic zero-point field (ZPF). Model calculations suggest that resonant interaction of the ZPF with the glutamate pool of cortical microcolumns initiates phase transitions, producing macroscopic quantum effects that modulate ion channel activity and regulate neuronal firing rates.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Joachim Keppler
Conscious states are linked to synchronized neural activity patterns that exhibit self-organized criticality and phase transitions. This article argues that the brain initiates phase transitions and forms synchronized activity patterns by coupling to the zero-point field (ZPF), the ubiquitous vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field described by quantum electrodynamics. Model calculations suggest that critical brain dynamics arises from resonant interaction between the ZPF and the neurotransmitter glutamate, with pyramidal neurons in cortical microcolumns controlling this interaction. This resonant coupling amplifies specific ZPF modes, and the theory, named TRAZE, proposes that phenomenal qualities correspond to these amplified modes. An experimental setup is proposed to test the prediction that disrupting resonant glutamate-ZPF coupling eliminates normal conscious perceptions.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Andrés Gómez-Emilsson, Chris Percy
correction
This is a correction notice for a previously published article. It provides no new findings, arguments, or data.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Giovanni Berlucchi, Carlo Alberto Marzi
Roger Sperry was a maverick neuroscientist who arrived at definitive ideas about brain function by departing from the views of his peers. He solved the riddle of the corpus callosum and won a Nobel prize for identifying the different cognitive abilities of the disconnected right and left hemispheres. He could have won another Nobel for his work on prenatal formation of behavioral neuronal networks. Later in life, he fought an inconclusive battle to demonstrate that mental and spiritual factors can direct brain activity without violating orthodox neurophysiology. The paper discusses nodal points in his career and sources of inspiration within twentieth-century neuroscience.