Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
July 24, 2026
Peter Cariani, Janet M. Baker
Along the lines of neuronal global workspace theories, the paper hypothesizes that active neural signal regeneration in recurrent, re-entrant circuits could constitute an organizational basis for states of conscious awareness. In this view, brains are self-production systems that regenerate their own informational, signal states ("neural autopoiesis"). States of awareness themselves depend...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2026
Joseph Bodenheimer, Paul Bogdan, Sérgio Pequito et al.
Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the transitions between different states of consciousness is a fundamental challenge in neuroscience. Thus, we investigate the underlying drivers of changes during the resting-state dynamics of the human brain, as captured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) across varying levels of consciousness (awake, light sedation, deep sedation,...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2026
Tam Hunt
The binding problem and the criticality problem represent two of neuroscience's most persistent challenges: how do distributed neural processes create unified conscious experience, and how does the brain maintain optimal information processing at the critical boundary between order and chaos? This paper argues that both problems emerge from neuroscience's "prickly" bias toward discrete,...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2025
Darren J Edwards
Artificial intelligence (AI) has made some remarkable advances in recent years, particularly within the area of large language models (LLMs) that produce human-like conversational abilities via utilizing transformer-based architecture. These advancements have sparked growing calls to develop tests not only for intelligence but also for consciousness. However, existing benchmarks assess...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2024
Rousslan Fernand Julien Dossa, Kai Arulkumaran, Arthur Juliani et al.
As the apparent intelligence of artificial neural networks (ANNs) advances, they are increasingly likened to the functional networks and information processing capabilities of the human brain. Such comparisons have typically focused on particular modalities, such as vision or language. The next frontier is to use the latest advances in ANNs to design and investigate scalable models of...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
May 12, 2023
Pratik Purohit, Prasun Dutta, Prasun K. Roy
Introduction Visual-spatial perception is a process for extracting the spatial relationship between objects in the environment. The changes in visual-spatial perception due to factors such as the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (hyperactivation) or parasympathetic nervous system (hypoactivation) can affect the internal representation of the external visual-spatial world. We...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2023
Diana Stanciu
5 citations
The new approach in cognitive science largely known as "4E cognition" (embodied/embedded/enactive/extended cognition), which sheds new light on the complex dynamics of human consciousness, seems to revive some of Aristotle's views. For instance, the concept of "nature" (phusis) and the discussion on "active intellect" (nous poiêtikos) may be particularly relevant in this respect. Out of the...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2021
Edmund T Rolls
19 citations
The relation between mental states and brain states is important in computational neuroscience, and in psychiatry in which interventions with medication are made on brain states to alter mental states. The relation between the brain and the mind has puzzled philosophers for centuries. Here a neuroscience approach is proposed in which events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2021
Edmund T Rolls
17 citations
A neuroscience-based approach has recently been proposed for the relation between the mind and the brain. The proposal is that events at the sub-neuronal, neuronal, and neuronal network levels take place simultaneously to perform a computation that can be described at a high level as a mental state, with content about the world. It is argued that as the processes at the different levels of...
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience
2020
Patrick Krauss, Andreas Maier
The question of whether artificial beings or machines could become self-aware or conscious has been a philosophical question for centuries. The main problem is that self-awareness cannot be observed from an outside perspective and the distinction of being really self-aware or merely a clever imitation cannot be answered without access to knowledge about the mechanism's inner workings. We...