Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 1, 2024
Remington Mallett, Karen R Konkoly, Tore Nielsen et al.
A review of recent interdisciplinary advances that overcome historical methodological barriers in dream research. Three frameworks are described: observable dreaming, using neural decoding and real-time reporting to measure dream content more directly; dream engineering, using targeted stimulation and lucidity to experimentally manipulate dream content; and computational dream analysis, generating and exploring large dream-report databases to identify patterns. These innovations enable systematic observation, engineering, and analysis of dreams, heralding a new era in dream science.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2024
Ned Block
Decoding perceptual contents from the prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been used to test rival theories of consciousness, but the evidence is ambiguous. Failures to decode from the PFC challenge cognitive theories like global workspace theory and higher-order monitoring theories, while successes seem to confirm them. However, PFC decoding shows both too much and too little: cognitive theories do not require PFC rerepresentation of perceptual contents, as pointers suffice, and decoding may reflect postperceptual cognitive representation, such as thoughts about perceptual contents, rather than conscious percepts themselves. This suggests that decoding evidence does not straightforwardly adjudicate between theories of consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 1, 2024
Shaun Gallagher, A. Raffone, S. M. Aglioti
Compassion, empathy, and sympathy are often conflated in academic and clinical literatures. This article proposes a pattern-theoretic approach to distinguish them. Drawing on psychology, Western philosophy, affective neuroscience, and contemplative science, the authors clarify compassion as a specific pattern of dynamically related factors: physiological, cognitive, affective, relational/intersubjective, and motivational/action tendencies. They show that this dynamic pattern is reflected in neuroscientific findings and in compassion practice. The pattern theory enables clear distinctions between compassion, empathy, and sympathy, arguing that each involves different configurations of these factors.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
March 1, 2024
Tim Bayne, Anil K. Seth, Marcello Massimini et al.
New tests for consciousness (C-tests) are urgently needed to resolve uncertainty about when consciousness arises in human development, when it is lost due to neurological disorders and brain injury, and how it is distributed in nonhuman species. This need is amplified by recent developments in AI, neural organoids, and xenobot technology. Existing C-tests are of limited use, and no tests exist for many critical populations. The paper identifies challenges facing any attempt to develop C-tests, proposes a multidimensional classification of such tests, and identifies strategies for validating them.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2023
Tim Bayne, Joel Frohlich, R. Cusack et al.
Evidence from studies of functional network connectivity, attention, multimodal integration, and cortical responses to global oddballs suggests that consciousness is likely present in early infancy and may even occur before birth. Recent research is beginning to provide clues about both the content and structure of infant consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 1, 2023
Biyu J. He
The assumption that a single neurobiological account will explain all types of conscious awareness is challenged by evidence that neural activity related to conscious visual perception varies in location, timing, and information flow depending on external and internal factors. This suggests the search for generic neural correlates of consciousness may not be fruitful. A more pluralistic approach is needed, and a new framework called joint determinant theory (JDT) is proposed. JDT may accommodate different brain circuit mechanisms for varied conscious contents such as percepts, wills, memories, emotions, and thoughts, as well as their integrated experience.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2022
Michael Pereira, Denis Perrin, Nathan Faivre
Perceptual experiences are not static but fluctuate as a leaky evidence accumulation process (LEAP), where confidence corresponds to the peak accumulated evidence. This proposal extends evidence accumulation models from decision-making to explain the dynamics of conscious perception itself, suggesting that percepts fade in and out of consciousness independent of tasks. The account offers a mechanistic understanding of phenomenal qualities like intensity and duration, moving beyond simple detection. Limitations and implications for neural correlates of consciousness are discussed.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 22, 2021
C. Dembski, Christof Koch, Michael Pitts
The P3b brain wave is not a reliable marker of conscious perception, as many experiments have failed to observe it during conscious experience. In contrast, the visual and auditory awareness negativity (VAN and AAN) have not been dissociated from consciousness, and a similar signal correlates with tactile consciousness. These awareness negativities are likely generated in sensory cortices and can be maximal contralateral to the stimulus, suggesting a generalized perceptual awareness negativity (PAN) that marks the onset of sensory consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
February 1, 2020
Axel Cleeremans, Dalila Achoui, Arnaud Beauny et al.
A novel framework called the self-organizing metarepresentational account (SOMA) proposes that consciousness is something the brain learns to do. The brain continuously and unconsciously learns to redescribe its own activity to itself, developing systems of metarepresentations that qualify target first-order representations. Experiences only occur in experiencers that have learned they possess certain first-order states and have learned to care more about some states than others. Consciousness is thus the brain's unconscious, embodied, enactive, nonconceptual theory about itself.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
September 1, 2019
Richard Brown, H. Lau, Joseph E LeDoux
The higher-order theory (HOT) of consciousness is often misunderstood. This theoretical paper clarifies HOT's position, distinguishing it from global workspace theory and early sensory models. Critics have accused HOT of overintellectualizing consciousness, but the authors argue that the cognitive requirements for higher-order states are considerably less than often presumed, positioning HOT as intermediate between other views. Most HOT proponents do not equate consciousness with metacognition or confidence. Compared to other theories, HOT can better account for complex everyday experiences like emotions and episodic memories, making it useful for conceptualizing pathological mental states.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 16, 2019
A. Satpute, Kristen A. Lindquist
Emotions like anger, fear, and disgust are typically linked to subcortical brain areas, but the default mode network (DMN) also plays a key role in constructing these discrete emotional experiences. Evidence from neuroimaging, electrical stimulation, and lesion studies supports this idea. The framework builds on constructionist theory, explaining how varied physiological and behavioral patterns can be grouped into the same emotion category. This categorization requires abstraction, a function the DMN is well-suited to perform. The authors present novel predictions from their proposed framework.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 29, 2019
N. Shea, C. Frith
The two main cognitive theories of consciousness—global workspace theory and metacognition—are often treated as separate or competing accounts. This paper argues that for a global workspace to function effectively, the information it broadcasts must include a metacognitive component, suggesting the two accounts are complementary rather than rivals.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 1, 2019
Hyeong-Dong Park, O. Blanke
Recent research on self-consciousness has separately examined bodily signals from outside the body (exteroception) and from internal organs (interoception), with little integration between these approaches. This review synthesizes evidence on interoceptive bodily processing and its combination with exteroceptive signals for self-consciousness. The authors propose an integrated neural system that reconciles these two perspectives and explains fundamental aspects of self-consciousness, including self-identification, self-location, and the experienced global unity and temporal continuity of the self.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
December 1, 2016
Jennifer Windt, Tore Nielsen, Evan Thompson
The assumption that consciousness disappears during deep, dreamless sleep is oversimplified. Empirical and theoretical reasons indicate that a range of different types of sleep experience, some distinct from dreaming, can occur in all sleep stages. A novel taxonomy for describing these dreamless sleep experiences is introduced, along with research methods for their investigation. Future studies should focus on memory consolidation, sleep disorders, and sleep state (mis)perception. This proposal suggests new directions for sleep and dream science, the neuroscience of consciousness, and can inform the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
July 28, 2015
Cortland J. Dahl, A. Lutz, R. Davidson
A novel classification system categorizes meditation styles into attentional, constructive, and deconstructive families based on their primary cognitive mechanisms. The authors propose that meta-awareness, perspective taking and cognitive reappraisal, and self-inquiry serve as key mechanisms within specific families, and that altering these processes may target experiential fusion, maladaptive self-schema, and cognitive reification. This framework integrates insights from scientific research on psychological processes related to the self with Buddhist and other contemplative traditions.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
October 1, 2011
Dean Mobbs, Caroline Watt
About 3% of Americans report having had a near-death experience, typically involving a sense of the soul leaving the body, approaching a bright light, and entering a reality of overwhelming love and bliss. Contrary to popular belief, research suggests these experiences are not paranormal but rather result from normal brain function gone awry during a traumatic or sometimes harmless event.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne et al.
Meditation encompasses a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Two commonly studied styles are focused attention meditation, which involves voluntarily focusing attention on a chosen object, and open monitoring meditation, which involves nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. The potential regulatory functions of these practices on attention and emotion processes could have a long-term impact on the brain and behavior.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 1, 2005
Tiago V Maia, Axel Cleeremans
Selective attention, working memory, and cognitive control arise from competition between widely distributed neural representations, biased by top-down signals from prefrontal cortex. Connectionist models implementing this competition share key features with models of global workspace theory, all relying on global constraint satisfaction. This review argues that these models are relevant for understanding consciousness.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
June 1, 2005
B. Baars, Steven Laureys
The authors critique Ned Block's distinction between phenomenological consciousness (what we experience) and access consciousness (information accessible via conscious experiences). They argue that evidence from cognitive neuroscience does not support this division. For instance, visual cortex activity is necessary but not sufficient for conscious visual qualities; without parietal and prefrontal activation, no correlation with consciousness is found. Similarly, when frontoparietal regions are impaired, sensory consciousness is absent despite sensory cortex activation. The authors contend that unconscious brain mechanisms interact with visual cortex to enable visual qualities, and that positing a separate 'access consciousness' is unnecessary. They suggest that what is needed is simply consciously-mediated access to brain capacities, most of which are unconscious.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
August 1, 2003
Sophie Schwartz
Integrated life episodes appear in only 1-2% of dream reports, based on new phenomenological data. This low rate conflicts with the replay of temporally sequenced memory seen in neuronal ensembles of some animals during sleep. The finding will limit emerging theories about memory reactivation during sleep and the role of sleep in memory consolidation.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2003
Bernard J. Baars, Stan Franklin
The active components of classical working memory are conscious, a fact that traditional theory does not account for. Global Workspace theory proposes that consciousness recruits unconscious specialized networks to perform detailed working memory functions. The IDA model offers a detailed analysis of this process, focusing on two classical working-memory tasks: verbal rehearsal and the use of a visual image. This analysis clarifies the interactions between conscious and unconscious aspects of working memory.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
January 1, 2002
Bernard J. Baars
Consciousness may serve to mobilize and integrate otherwise separate brain functions, a hypothesis known as the 'conscious access hypothesis' first described in global workspace theory nearly two decades ago. The theory initially had little impact because consciousness was controversial, the evidence was indirect, and integrative theory was unfashionable. Recent neuroimaging evidence broadly supports the hypothesis, which has implications for perception, learning, working memory, voluntary control, attention, and self systems in the brain.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
November 1, 2001
Nancy J. Woolf, Stuart Hameroff
Visual consciousness may arise from quantum computations inside microtubules within neurons, according to the Penrose-Hameroff 'Orch OR' model. A physiological model is presented that could allow such quantum states to survive in the warm, wet brain and extend across the whole brain. In this view, visual consciousness occurs in a series of several-hundred-millisecond epochs, each containing 'crescendo sequences' of quantum computations at approximately 40 Hz. The approach resolves some enigmatic features of visual consciousness but raises questions about how delicate quantum states avoid decoherence in the brain's environment.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 1998
S R Hameroff
The physicalist view that consciousness emerges solely from neural networks is insufficient to fully explain mental experience. A complete account requires supplementing physicalism with panpsychist or pan-experiential philosophy expressed through modern physics. In one scheme, proto-conscious experience is a basic property of reality accessible to a quantum process associated with brain activity: Roger Penrose's 'objective reduction' (OR), a self-organizing collapse of the quantum wave function tied to instability in space-time geometry. In the Penrose-Hameroff 'orchestrated objective reduction' (Orch OR) model, OR quantum computation occurs in cytoskeletal microtubules within neurons. Consciousness involves brain activities coupled to self-organizing ripples in fundamental reality.