Cognitive Neuroscience
January 21, 2014
Anil K. Seth
357 citations
Normal perception makes objects feel real and present in the world, a quality called 'perceptual presence.' Sensorimotor theories explain this by saying perception involves mastering how sensory input changes with movement, but they haven't specified the mechanism and struggle with synesthesia, where concurrents lack presence. Predictive processing theories see perception as probabilistic inference but haven't addressed presence or synesthesia. This paper proposes that generative models for perception include counterfactual elements—predictions of how sensory inputs would change with possible actions, even unperformed ones. Counterfactual richness determines perceptual presence: normal perception has rich models encoding many sensorimotor dependencies, while synesthetic concurrents arise from poor models. The theory also explains differences among dreaming, hallucination, and perception, and may reshape views on perceptual determinacy.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2016
Georg Northoff
213 citations
The self is often thought of as a high-level cognitive function, but this paper argues that self-specificity is a fundamental feature of the brain's spontaneous activity, particularly in cortical midline structures. Evidence shows overlap between resting-state activity and self-related processing in these regions, and resting-state patterns can predict later degrees of self-specificity. The author proposes the basis model, which conceives self-specificity as basic rather than higher-order, linking it to emotions, reward, and perception. This spontaneous self-specificity may provide a foundation for coding the self as subject in relation to internal or external mental events, connecting self-consciousness and phenomenal consciousness.
Cognitive Neuroscience
July 1, 2010
Marcello Massimini, Fabio Ferrarelli, Michael J. Murphy et al.
205 citations
During the first REM sleep episode of the night, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) triggered widespread and differentiated patterns of cortical activation on electroencephalography (EEG), similar to those observed during wakefulness. In contrast, during NREM sleep, cortical activations became more local and stereotypical, indicating impaired intracortical dialogue. These findings suggest that TMS combined with high-density EEG can probe the internal dialogue of the thalamocortical system, potentially offering a method to assess brain function in patients who are unable to move or communicate.
Cognitive Neuroscience
April 7, 2015
Anil K. Seth
56 citations
The author argues that perceptual presence—the sense that something is really there—can be explained by predictive models that link perception with action, specifically through the framework of predictive processing of sensorimotor contingencies. The paper re-emphasizes the core commitment to predictive model-based perception, reconsiders how presence relates to objecthood, and refines the target by distinguishing perceptual presence from the phenomenology of absence-of-presence, or phenomenal unreality. This conceptual work requires speculative, blue-sky thinking to advance the theory.
Cognitive Neuroscience
August 18, 2010
Geraint Rees, Anil K. Seth
11 citations
Consciousness research has advanced rapidly through cognitive neuroscience methods that combine multiple experimental techniques. This special journal issue presents five new empirical studies and one theoretical paper with peer commentaries, collectively examining how conscious mental states relate to brain activity patterns.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Johannes J Fahrenfort, Simon van Gaal
10 citations
A functionalist criterion for arbitrating between theories of consciousness is not theory-neutral because it focuses on functional equivalence between systems. Empirical theories of consciousness are mechanistic rather than functionalist, so such criteria are not helpful for arbitration.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Yair Pinto, Timo Stein
7 citations
The paper argues that the approach of setting aside the hard problem of consciousness—the question of why and how physical processes give rise to subjective experience—to focus only on measuring neural and functional correlates is not feasible. While some researchers advocate 'shut up and measure' as a pragmatic strategy, the authors contend that any data collection about consciousness necessarily involves an implicit or explicit stance on the hard problem itself. Thus, the hard problem cannot be bypassed through purely empirical methods.
Cognitive Neuroscience
September 1, 2010
Antti Revonsuo, Mika Koivisto
3 citations
Event-related brain potential (ERP) evidence supports two key ideas in Lamme's theory of consciousness. The earliest brain signal linked to visual consciousness appears over the back of the head about 100-200 milliseconds after a stimulus is presented, consistent with recurrent processing in visual cortex. This early signal is largely separate from later brain responses that reflect selective attention and working memory. The findings suggest that phenomenal consciousness of a visual stimulus arises before access consciousness, and that attention and awareness rely on different neural processes.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2023
Paul Sopcak
2 citations
A commentary on Willems' neurocognitive model for mixed and ambiguous emotions and morality offers three suggestions. First, an atheoretical approach may inadvertently adopt limitations from dominant paradigms and neglect the need for theoretical guidance in developing valid emotion constructs. Second, a dynamical systems theory of emotions, paired with neurophenomenology as a methodology, provides a more fruitful framework. Third, integrating insights from the humanities, particularly on literary moral emotions, would strengthen Willems' objectives.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Guy Dove
1 citation
A commentary argues that the embodied cognitive neuroscience approach proposed by Mougenot and Matheson can help resolve internal tensions within 4E cognition (embodied, embedded, enactive, extended). The approach combines embodied cognition with mechanistic explanation, offering benefits beyond general theoretical robustness—it specifically addresses conflicts among 4E frameworks without requiring neuroscientific reductionism or complete autonomy of psychology from neuroscience.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
J Kevin O'Regan
1 citation
A critique argues that Doerig et al. assessed how empirical theories address access consciousness but overlooked their treatment of phenomenal consciousness, likely because most theories do not address phenomenal consciousness. The sensorimotor theory is an exception, yet Doerig et al. failed to evaluate it as a theory of phenomenal consciousness.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Stuart Hameroff
The 'Orch OR' theory proposes that consciousness arises from quantum computations occurring in microtubules within brain neurons. Quantum computers process information as superpositions of multiple possibilities (quantum bits or qubits), which in Orch OR are alternative collective dipole oscillations orchestrated by microtubules. These oscillations entangle, compute, and terminate via Penrose objective reduction, producing sequences of moments that correspond to conscious experience, more like music than computation. Each event selects microtubule states that influence neuronal functions. The theory has broad explanatory power and is easily falsifiable.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
David Rosenthal
The author critiques Doerig et al.'s approach to evaluating theories of consciousness, focusing on problems with their overall project, three specific criteria they propose, and how they handle higher-order-thought theory. The argument suggests that the criteria are flawed and the treatment of higher-order-thought theory is inadequate, raising doubts about the validity of the evaluation framework.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Bernard J. Baars
A great deal of evidence now bears on the understanding of consciousness, but the multiplicity of theories suggests a lack of stringent criteria specifying how empirical data constrains theories of consciousness.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Anil K. Seth, Jakob Hohwy
Theories of consciousness often treat it as a single phenomenon to be explained, but this approach struggles to capture the diverse properties of conscious experience. Progress in consciousness science requires systematic mappings between physical or biological mechanisms and the functional and phenomenological features of consciousness. The authors argue for developing theories for consciousness science rather than a single theory of consciousness, and they highlight predictive processing as a highly promising framework for this purpose.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Stan B. Klein
A commentary on a paper comparing 13 empirical theories of consciousness argues that while the comparison is valuable, the paper overlooks how these theories address qualia—the subjective, felt aspects of conscious experience. The author considers qualia the greatest unsolved mystery in science and suggests that future work should examine how different empirical approaches might connect to this fundamental problem.
Cognitive Neuroscience
July 14, 2020
Adrien Doerig, Aaron Schurger, M. Herzog
Consciousness research has produced many competing theories, ranging from computational to quantum approaches, more than in other natural sciences. This abundance may stem from a lack of clear criteria for how empirical data should constrain such theories. The authors argue consciousness is empirically well-defined and propose a checklist of criteria that empirical theories of consciousness must address. They review 13 influential theories against these criteria, revealing their relative strengths and weaknesses from a strictly empirical perspective.
Cognitive Neuroscience
January 1, 2011
Michael S A Graziano, Sabine Kastner
Consciousness may not be a direct property of the brain but rather a construct created by the same neural machinery used to understand other people's minds. This hypothesis proposes that awareness is a perceptual reconstruction of attentional state, built by brain systems specialized for social intelligence. Evidence from studies on social perception, hemispatial neglect, out-of-body experiences, mirror neurons, and decision-making supports the idea that the mechanisms computing others' awareness also compute one's own awareness. The article argues that consciousness emerges from social cognitive processes, not from neuronal complexity alone, and that its adaptive value lies in predicting behavior.
Cognitive Neuroscience
September 1, 2010
Victor A. F. Lamme
The author argues that the study of consciousness has been misled by relying on introspection and behavior, which give the false impression that we know what we are conscious of. A simple visual-perception experiment shows that we actually do not know the contents of our own conscious experience. The author proposes that instead of introspection or behavior, neuroscience combined with theoretical and ontological reasoning can reveal the true nature of conscious sensation. This approach suggests that we see far more than we think, and that Global Workspace theory describes access to information, not the experience of seeing itself. Ultimately, consciousness is not private and exclusive as commonly believed.