Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 12, 2013
Anil K. Seth
1,812 citations
The brain functions as a prediction machine, a view recently revived by Bayesian brain and predictive coding theories. While this perspective has mainly been applied to external senses like vision and action, this work extends it to interoception—the perception of internal body states. The 'interoceptive inference' model proposes that subjective feelings and emotions arise from the brain's active inference about the causes of internal bodily signals. This approach generalizes appraisal theories, which hold that emotions result from cognitive evaluations of physiological changes. It also provides new insights into the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying body ownership and conscious selfhood, both in health and neuropsychiatric conditions.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
January 13, 2005
Ned Block
715 citations
The search for a single neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) may be misguided. Evidence increasingly supports a framework with at least two distinct NCCs: a phenomenal NCC and an access NCC. These can be distinguished using experimental methods such as signal-detection theory. Recent cognitive neuroscience findings provide empirical support for two separate NCCs rather than one.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
November 13, 2015
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Melanie Wilke, Stefan Frässle et al.
567 citations
The search for the neural basis of consciousness has been biased by the requirement that subjects report their experiences. Recent no-report paradigms aim to study conscious experience without any report, dissociating neural activity that gives rise to consciousness from activity that enables reporting. The advantages and disadvantages of both report-based and no-report approaches are discussed, and the authors ask how combining these methods can bring us closer to understanding the true neural basis of consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 1, 2010
Sid Kouider, Vincent De Gardelle, Jérôme Sackur et al.
477 citations
Current theories distinguish phenomenal consciousness (rich experience) from access consciousness (limited reportable content). The authors argue that evidence for phenomenal consciousness without access is weak, often confusing unconscious contents or illusory richness with genuine phenomenal experience. They propose a refined account where access operates across a hierarchy of representational levels, with partial awareness allowing independent access to lower and higher levels. This reframing of dissociable forms of consciousness into dissociable levels of access offers a more parsimonious explanation of existing evidence, and the illusion of rich phenomenology can be studied through testable cognitive mechanisms.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 22, 2016
Tim Bayne, Jakob Hohwy, Adrian M. Owen
443 citations
The concept of a level of consciousness is central to the science of consciousness, used to describe global states in post-comatose disorders, epileptic absence seizures, anesthesia, and sleep. However, what a level of consciousness actually means remains unclear. This paper argues that the levels-based framework for understanding global states of consciousness is untenable and instead proposes a multidimensional account of global states.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 22, 2022
Christopher Timmermann, Prisca R. Bauer, Olivia Gosseries et al.
145 citations
A neurophenomenological framework is proposed for studying non-ordinary states of consciousness (NSCs) such as hypnosis, meditation, and psychedelics. NSCs involve shifts in what appears to the experiencer or how it appears, enabling investigation of the plastic and dynamic nature of experience across mind, brain, body, and context. The approach highlights NSCs as catalysts of transformation in clinical practice by refining understanding of relationships between subjective experience and neural dynamics. Ethical implications for standard conceptions of health and pathology are outlined, along with the crucial role of experience-based know-how in NSC research and application.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2014
Ned Block
125 citations
A new technique suggests that people can consciously perceive more items at once than can be held in visual working memory. The method exploits unattended 'ensemble properties' that can be detected without reducing working memory capacity, offering a way to study phenomenal consciousness beyond memory limits.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2022
Pedro A. M. Mediano, Fernando E. Rosas, Daniel Bor et al.
109 citations
The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes a universal mathematical formula derived from fundamental properties of conscious experience to describe the quality of consciousness. The theory is ambitious in that it aims to derive a mathematical measure of integrated information from consciousness itself, using properties of conscious experience to characterize the quality of consciousness. The text repeatedly states that IIT is a theory of consciousness that proposes a mathematical formula derived from fundamental properties of conscious experience to describe the quality of consciousness, but it does not provide specific findings, numbers, or empirical results.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
January 22, 2020
Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Steven Laureys et al.
90 citations
Near-death experiences (NDEs) occur during comatose states, challenging the common view that consciousness disappears when the brain shuts down. A new framework distinguishing awareness, wakefulness, and connectedness is needed to understand the phenomenon. Classical NDEs represent internal awareness experienced in unresponsive conditions, constituting an episode of disconnected consciousness. This proposal points toward new directions for NDE research and consciousness science more broadly.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2003
Frank Tong
73 citations
Electrical stimulation of the angular gyrus can trigger out-of-body experiences, as reported in a patient studied by Blanke and colleagues in 2002. This finding aligns with earlier observations by Wilder Penfield. Such cases offer insights into the neural basis of conscious experience.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 3, 2012
Bruce Greyson, Janice Miner Holden, Pim van Lommel
47 citations
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Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 17, 2024
Stephen M Fleming, Nicholas Shea
26 citations
The quality space hypothesis holds that conscious sensory states, such as colors, are experienced in relation to one another—red feels more like orange than like green or blue. Recent evidence indicates that subjective similarity among experiences can be explained by similarities in neural activation patterns. This review examines how localist, workspace, and higher-order theories of consciousness can account for the qualitative character of experience and functionally support a quality space. Existing empirical evidence for each theoretical position is assessed, and novel experimental methods—including altering local activation spaces through brain stimulation or behavioral training—are highlighted as ways to distinguish among these accounts.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 1998
M Kurthen, T Grunwald, C E Elger
20 citations
The explanatory gap between brain processes and phenomenal consciousness may be resolvable if consciousness is understood as a non-intrinsic, description-dependent property. The author argues that neither current neuroscience nor philosophy alone can bridge this gap, but that new neuroscientific descriptions could change the features of consciousness itself, making the gap disappear. Neuroscientists should continue studying neural correlates of consciousness rather than trying to refute the gap argument.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 12, 2025
Thomas Andrillon, Antoine Lutz, Jennifer Windt et al.
14 citations
Moments during wakefulness that seem empty of any reportable thought, called mind blanking (MB), are not simply gaps in experience but distinct mental states with their own characteristics. This review maps MB by examining how people report it, its brain activity, and its links to related phenomena such as meditation and sleep. The authors propose that ongoing experience varies in richness, and contentless events represent a diverse category of mental states. They argue that recognizing MB as a reportable mental category is essential for a full understanding of how the mind works during wakefulness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2021
Benjamin Baird, Stephen LaBerge, Giulio Tononi
13 citations
Lucid dreamers can use eye movements to report on their dream content in real time during REM sleep, challenging the long-held belief that dreamers are completely isolated from the outside world. Sensory input is not entirely suppressed during sleep. A recent study by Konkoly et al. demonstrates that experimenters can question lucid dreamers during ongoing dreams and explores the feasibility of more extended two-way communication during lucid REM sleep dreaming.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2023
Kevin Berryman, Sara W. Lazar, Jakob Hohwy
11 citations
Mindfulness meditation has both positive and negative effects on moral functioning, distributed across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. A multifactor construct that assesses outcomes across several aspects of morality reveals that contemplative practices do not uniformly improve morality; instead, they produce a mix of beneficial and detrimental influences on different moral actions. The study provides an empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of mindfulness on morality, showing that the effects are complex and not captured by unidimensional measures.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 15, 2025
Matthew D. Lieberman
10 citations
Subjective conscious experience arises from effortless interpretations that feel like perceived facts, called p-interpretations, which are inherently idiosyncratic and integrate past and expected future moments into the present. Differential neural synchrony between groups suggests that parts of gestalt cortex, including the inferior parietal lobule and posterior temporal cortex, along with posterior medial cortex, track these p-interpretations. This differential synchrony may reflect each person's preexisting non-sensory representations—such as expectations, memories, and motivations—being integrated with sensory inputs to produce unique, meaning-infused immediate experiences across the stream of consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 17, 2025
Liad Mudrik, Nathan Faivre, Michael Pitts et al.
5 citations
A major controversy in consciousness science divides sensory and cognitive theories. Reexamining Block's 1995 distinction between phenomenal consciousness (P) and access consciousness (A), the authors argue that P and A are not two different types of consciousness but two necessary conditions for consciousness. This conceptual shift helps resolve unresolved questions about neural mechanisms, functions of consciousness, and its relationship with attention. The proposal motivates selective unification across different classes of theories.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 18, 2025
Flora Moujaes, Nathalie M. Rieser, L. Belinger et al.
5 citations
Serotonergic psychedelics are being investigated as treatments for psychiatric conditions, with promising results in mood disorders suggesting their effects on emotional processing may be central to therapeutic potential. However, mechanistic and clinical studies reveal a complex picture of how psychedelics impact emotions and mood. This review covers recent findings on psychedelics' effects on emotion, emotional empathy, and mood, discussing their influence on long-term emotion management strategies, the role of challenging experiences, and neuroplastic changes. The authors argue that more precise characterization of emotional states and attention to temporal dynamics of psychedelic-induced effects are critical for clarifying mechanisms and optimizing therapeutic impact.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 3, 2025
Andrew M. Haun, Giulio Tononi
5 citations
Visual experience is unfathomably rich, not sparse. Seeing involves three levels: high-level object and scene categorizations, mid-level feature groupings, and a fundamental spatial field of spots and their relations. Seeing objects requires seeing the groupings that compose them, and seeing groupings requires seeing the spatial field that grounds them. Even the basic feeling of spatial extendedness implies rich phenomenal structure. Much of what we see cannot be used, reported, or remembered, yet we see it.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 7, 2026
Nicolas W Schuck, Marit Petzka, Stephen M Fleming
Neural replay, the reactivation of patterns of brain activity, can now be studied noninvasively in humans. While human research has aimed to align with rodent findings, it often implicitly assumes that replay is tied to conscious, deliberate thought. This assumption limits the investigation of how replay relates to consciousness and overlooks broader cross-species differences.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2026
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Tim Bayne et al.
A method for assessing whether AI systems might be conscious is presented, drawing on existing neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The approach involves deriving indicators from such theories to inform beliefs about AI consciousness. This method can make progress because computational functionalist theories, which are influential, have empirically testable implications for AI. The work does not claim that any current AI is conscious but outlines a rigorous framework for future assessment.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2026
Jean-Pierre Changeux, Michele Farisco
The Global Neuronal Workspace (GNW) theory, often conflated with functionalist computational theories, actually describes a multilevel architecture of conscious processing that extends from cellular and molecular mechanisms to large-scale network dynamics. The paper argues that GNW is not a functionalist computational theory, unlike the Global Workspace theory with which it is frequently confused.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 7, 2026
Francesco Ellia, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Contemporary consciousness science is stuck in an impasse because competing theoretical frameworks—such as structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, and intrinsic versus extrinsic approaches—are creating philosophical deadlocks and conceptual standstills. These parallel debates have generated insights but lack a systematic framework to understand their relationships. The authors argue that these disputes reflect deeper unresolved tensions in how consciousness is conceptualized. They propose that the debates can be addressed by recognizing three fundamental meta-theoretical dimensions: explanatory medium, scope, and perspective. The interplay among these dimensions shapes evidence, language, and concepts, reframing theoretical conflicts into tractable disagreements.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2026
Ned Block
Computational functionalism holds that running certain computations is enough for consciousness, no matter what physical system does the computing. This view overlooks the possibility that the subcomputational biological mechanisms that actually carry out those computations are essential for consciousness. Comparing computational roles with their biological realizers reveals a tension: prioritizing computational roles supports consciousness in AI, while prioritizing biological realizers supports consciousness in simpler animals. Current theories are 'meat-neutral', but if specific physical substrates are necessary, AI may never become conscious. Understanding whether consciousness depends on computational roles, biological realizers, or both is crucial for assessing consciousness in AI and less complex animals.