Trends in Cognitive Sciences
February 1, 2020
Axel Cleeremans, Dalila Achoui, Arnaud Beauny et al.
Consciousness remains a formidable challenge. Different theories of consciousness have proposed vastly different mechanisms to account for phenomenal experience. Here, appealing to aspects of global workspace theory, higher-order theories, social theories, and predictive processing, we introduce a novel framework: the self-organizing metarerpresentational account (SOMA), in which consciousness...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
January 22, 2020
Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Steven Laureys et al.
90 citations
Forty-five years ago, the first evidence of near-death experience (NDE) during comatose state was provided, setting the stage for a new paradigm for studying the neural basis of consciousness in unresponsive states. At present, the state of consciousness associated with NDEs remains an open question. In the common view, consciousness is said to disappear in a coma with the brain shutting down,...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2019
Richard Brown, Hakwan Lau, Joseph E LeDoux
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness has often been misunderstood by critics. Here, we clarify its position on several issues, and distinguish it from other views, such as the global workspace theory (GWT) and early sensory models (e.g., first-order local recurrency theories). For example, HOT has been criticized for overintellectualizing consciousness. We show that, while...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 16, 2019
A. Satpute, Kristen A. Lindquist
Emotions are often assumed to manifest in subcortical limbic and brainstem structures. While these areas are clearly important for representing affect (e.g. valence, arousal), we propose that the default mode network (DMN) is additionally important for constructing discrete emotional experiences (of anger, fear, disgust, etc.). Findings from neuroimaging studies, invasive electrical stimulation...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 29, 2019
N. Shea, C. Frith
The two leading cognitive accounts of consciousness currently available concern global workspace (a form of working memory) and metacognition. There is relatively little interaction between these two approaches and it has even been suggested that the two accounts are rival and separable alternatives. Here, we argue that the successful function of a global workspace critically requires that the...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 1, 2019
Hyeong-Dong Park, Olaf Blanke
Although recent studies on self-consciousness emphasized the importance of bodily processing and multisensory integration, such research has focused solely on bodily signals originating from the outside of the body (i.e., exteroceptive bodily signals) or internal bodily signals from visceral organs (i.e., interoceptive bodily signals) and how each system contributes to self-consciousness,...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 1, 2016
Jennifer Windt, Tore Nielsen, Evan Thompson
Consciousness is often said to disappear in deep, dreamless sleep. We argue that this assumption is oversimplified. Unless dreamless sleep is defined as unconscious from the outset there are good empirical and theoretical reasons for saying that a range of different types of sleep experience, some of which are distinct from dreaming, can occur in all stages of sleep. We introduce a novel...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 22, 2016
Tim Bayne, Jakob Hohwy, Adrian M. Owen
443 citations
The notion of a level of consciousness is a key construct in the science of consciousness. Not only is the term employed to describe the global states of consciousness that are associated with post-comatose disorders, epileptic absence seizures, anaesthesia, and sleep, it plays an increasingly influential role in theoretical and methodological contexts. However, it is far from clear what...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
November 13, 2015
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Melanie Wilke, Stefan Frässle et al.
567 citations
The goal of consciousness research is to reveal the neural basis of phenomenal experience. To study phenomenology, experimenters seem obliged to ask reports from the subjects to ascertain what they experience. However, we argue that the requirement of reports has biased the search for the neural correlates of consciousness over the past decades. More recent studies attempt to dissociate neural...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 28, 2015
Cortland J. Dahl, Antoine Lutz, Richard J. Davidson
Scientific research highlights the central role of specific psychological processes, in particular those related to the self, in various forms of human suffering and flourishing. This view is shared by Buddhism and other contemplative and humanistic traditions, which have developed meditation practices to regulate these processes. Building on a previous paper in this journal, we propose a novel...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2014
Ned Block
125 citations
Can we consciously see more items at once than can be held in visual working memory? This question has eluded resolution because the ultimate evidence is subjects' reports in which phenomenal consciousness is filtered through working memory. However, a new technique makes use of the fact that unattended 'ensemble properties' can be detected 'for free' without decreasing working memory capacity.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 12, 2013
Anil K. Seth
1,812 citations
The concept of the brain as a prediction machine has enjoyed a resurgence in the context of the Bayesian brain and predictive coding approaches within cognitive science. To date, this perspective has been applied primarily to exteroceptive perception (e.g., vision, audition), and action. Here, I describe a predictive, inferential perspective on interoception: 'interoceptive inference' conceives...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2011
Dean Mobbs, Caroline Watt
Approximately 3% of Americans declare to have had a near-death experience. These experiences classically involve the feeling that one's soul has left the body, approaches a bright light and goes to another reality, where love and bliss are all encompassing. Contrary to popular belief, research suggests that there is nothing paranormal about these experiences. Instead, near-death experiences are...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 1, 2010
Sid Kouider, Vincent De Gardelle, Jérôme Sackur et al.
477 citations
Current theories of consciousness posit a dissociation between 'phenomenal' consciousness (rich) and 'access' consciousness (limited). Here, we argue that the empirical evidence for phenomenal consciousness without access is equivocal, resulting either from a confusion between phenomenal and unconscious contents, or from an impression of phenomenally rich experiences arising from illusory...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 15, 2009
Biyu J. He, M. Raichle
As functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become a driving force in cognitive neuroscience, it is crucial to understand the neural basis of the fMRI signal. Here, we discuss a novel neurophysiological correlate of the fMRI signal, the slow cortical potential (SCP), which also seems to modulate the power of higher-frequency activity, the more established neurophysiological correlate of...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne et al.
Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are two styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The other...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 1, 2005
Tiago V Maia, Axel Cleeremans
Over the past decade, many findings in cognitive neuroscience have resulted in the view that selective attention, working memory and cognitive control involve competition between widely distributed representations. This competition is biased by top-down projections (notably from prefrontal cortex), which can selectively enhance some representations over others. This view has now been...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2005
Bernard J. Baars, Steven Laureys
Although we admire Ned Block's effort to include cognitive neuroscience in his philosophical work, we cannot agree with his interpretation of the evidence [1xTwo neural correlates of consciousness. Block, N. Trends Cogn. Sci. 2005; 9: 46–52Abstract | Full Text | Full Text PDF | PubMed | Scopus (252)See all References[1]. Block has long argued that there are two kinds of consciousness:...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
January 13, 2005
Ned Block
715 citations
Neuroscientists continue to search for "the" neural correlate of consciousness (NCC). In this article, I argue that a framework in which there are at least two distinct NCCs is increasingly making more sense of empirical results than one in which there is a single NCC. I outline the distinction between phenomenal NCC and access NCC, and show how they can be distinguished by experimental...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 1, 2003
Sophie Schwartz
New phenomenological data demonstrate that integrated life episodes are incorporated in no more than 1-2% of dream reports. This appears to be at odds with the replay of temporally sequenced memory at the level of neuronal ensembles observed in some animals during sleep. This result will constrain emerging ideas on memory reactivation during sleep and the role of sleep in memory consolidation.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2003
Bernard J. Baars, Stan Franklin
Active components of classical working memory are conscious, but traditional theory does not account for this fact. Global Workspace theory suggests that consciousness is needed to recruit unconscious specialized networks that carry out detailed working memory functions. The IDA model provides a fine-grained analysis of this process, specifically of two classical working-memory tasks, verbal...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2003
Frank Tong
73 citations
Can the brain, when stimulated, yield entirely novel experiences? Blanke et al. (2002) describe a patient who reported spontaneous out-of-body experiences during electrical stimulation of her angular gyrus. These findings, although apparently extraordinary, agree with much earlier reports from a patient tested by Wilder Penfield. Such studies can provide clues about the nature of conscious...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
2002
Bernard J. Baars
Consciousness might help to mobilize and integrate brain functions that are otherwise separate and independent. Evidence for this 'conscious access hypothesis' was described almost two decades ago, in a framework called global workspace theory. The theory had little impact at first, for three reasons: because consciousness was controversial; the evidence, though extensive, was indirect; and...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
November 1, 2001
Nancy J. Woolf, Stuart Hameroff
A theoretical approach relying on quantum computation in microtubules within neurons can potentially resolve the enigmatic features of visual consciousness, but raises other questions. For example, how can delicate quantum states, which in the technological realm demand extreme cold and isolation to avoid environmental 'decoherence', manage to survive in the warm, wet brain? And if such states...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 1998
M Kurthen, T Grunwald, C E Elger
20 citations
Neuroscientists and philosophers nowadays claim that the problem of phenomenal consciousness is a scientific problem. Increasing knowledge of the neural correlates of consciousness is expected to yield an explanation of consciousness in neuroscientific terms. On the other hand, it is sometimes argued that even complete knowledge of brain function will leave unanswered the question of why...