Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience - The Consciousness Library

Subjective Visibility Enhances Early Posterior EEG Decoding of Stimulus Location across Report and No-report Tasks

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience August 27, 2026 Sabine Gnodde, Vlada Aslanov, Abigail Hogan et al.

A central question in consciousness research is whether perceptual awareness is primarily reflected in early posterior sensory activity or in later frontal processes associated with access and report. Empirical tests of these alternatives are challenging because most paradigms rely on explicit perceptual reports, introducing motor and decisional confounds. Here, we used an...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.2691

Distilling the Neurophenomenological Signatures of Pure Awareness during Transcendental Meditation.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience May 27, 2026 Alejandro Chandia-Jorquera, Sean D. Van Mil, Mar Estarellas et al. 3 citations

Pure awareness (PA) has been proposed as a form of minimal phenomenal experience, but its neurophenomenological signatures remain poorly characterized. Transcendental meditation (TM) offers a particularly tractable empirical model of PA because its procedure is standardized, its induction is effortless, and it reliably elicits reports of awareness with minimal content. We combined...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.2626 Full text

Perception, Memory, Simulation, and Consciousness: A Convergence of Theories.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience January 7, 2026 Andrew E Budson, Hinze Hogendoorn, Donna Rose Addis

Our theories stemming from perception, memory, and neurology came to similar and complementary conclusions regarding the mechanism of conscious brain processes. We suggest that consciousness is the explicit memory of past events or the general cognitive capacity to simulate events, whether used to consciously remember the past, experience the present, or imagine the future. Perceptual...

DOI: 10.1162/JOCN.a.2429 Full text

Distinct Patterns of Directed Brain Connectivity in Focused Attention, Open Monitoring, and Loving Kindness Meditation: An Electroencephalographic Granger Causality Study with Long-term Meditators

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2026 Vasil Kolev, Kosio Beshkov, Peter Malinowski et al. 2 citations

The present study applied spectral Granger causality (GC) analysis to EEG recordings obtained during focused attention meditation (FAM), open monitoring meditation (OMM), and loving kindness meditation (LKM) in highly experienced meditators. The aim of the investigation was to characterize distinct connectivity signatures associated with each meditation style by examining the strength,...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.2593 Meditation Default mode network Mindfulness Electroencephalography +13

Time-resolved Neural and Experience Dynamics of Medium- and High-dose N,N-Dimethyltryptamine

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience December 30, 2025 Evan Lewis-Healey, Carla Pallavicini, Federico Cavanna et al. 4 citations

N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a fast-acting psychedelic drug that induces a radical reorganization of conscious contents and brain dynamics. However, our understanding of how brain dynamics support psychedelic-induced conscious states remains unclear. We therefore present a repeated-measures dose-dependent study of the subjective and neural dynamics induced through DMT under naturalistic...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.2423 Electroencephalography Neural activity Dynamics music Phenomenology philosophy +5

Using Real-time Reporting to Investigate Visual Experiences in Dreams

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience September 30, 2025 Karen R Konkoly, Saba Al-Youssef, Christopher Y Mazurek et al. 3 citations

Neuroscientific investigations of human dreaming have been hampered by reliance on dream recall after awakening. For example, a challenge of associating EEG features with post-waking dream reports is that they are subject to distortion, forgetting, and poor temporal precision. In this study, we used real-time reporting to investigate whether one of the most robust features of the waking visual...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.107 Full text Lucid dream Sniffing Efference copy Eye movement +10

Integrated Phenomenology and Brain Connectivity Demonstrate Changes in Nonlinear Processing in Jhana Advanced Meditation.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience May 14, 2025 Ruby M. Potash, Sean D. Van Mil, Mar Estarellas et al. 7 citations

We present a neurophenomenological case study investigating distinct neural connectivity regimes during an advanced concentrative absorption meditation called jhana (ACAM-J), characterized by highly stable attention and mental absorption. Using EEG recordings and phenomenological ratings (29 sessions) from a meditator with +20,000 hr of practice, we evaluated connectivity metrics tracking...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn.a.50 Full text Mindfulness Contemplation Deep meditation Advanced meditation +17

EEG Decoding of Conscious versus Unconscious Representations during Binocular Rivalry.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience February 6, 2025 Lara C Krisst, Steven J Luck

Theories of visual awareness often fall into two general categories, those assuming that awareness arises rapidly within visual cortex and those assuming that awareness arises more slowly as a result of interactions between visual cortex and frontoparietal regions. To test the plausibility of early theories of consciousness, we combined the temporal resolution of the EEG technique with...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02308 Full text

The Mindful Brain: A Systematic Review of the Neural Correlates of Trait Mindfulness.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience November 1, 2024 Isaac N Treves, Kannammai Pichappan, Jude Hammoud et al. 35 citations

Trait self-report mindfulness scales measure one's disposition to pay nonjudgmental attention to the present moment. Concerns have been raised about the validity of trait mindfulness scales. Despite this, there is extensive literature correlating mindfulness scales with objective brain measures, with the goal of providing insight into mechanisms of mindfulness, and insight into associated...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02230 Full text

Perception-action Dissociations as a Window into Consciousness.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience July 1, 2024 Marisa Carrasco, Miriam Spering

Understanding the neural correlates of unconscious perception stands as a primary goal of experimental research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. In this Perspectives paper, we explain why experimental protocols probing qualitative dissociations between perception and action provide valuable insights into conscious and unconscious processing, along with their corresponding neural...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02122 Full text

Developmental Roots of Human Self-consciousness

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience July 1, 2024 Philippe Rochat

Abstract Human consciousness is considered in the perspective of early development. Infants and young children remind us that at its core, the problem of consciousness is primarily a problem of identity, in particular a problem of self-identity with others in mind. It is about how we feel and construe ourselves as an entity among other entities. It is about becoming co-conscious: Aware of...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02117

Homeostatic Feelings and the Emergence of Consciousness

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience July 1, 2024 Antonio Damasio, Hanna Damasio

Abstract In this article, we summarize our views on the problem of consciousness and outline the current version of a novel hypothesis for how conscious minds can be generated in mammalian organisms. We propose that a mind can be considered conscious when three processes are in place: the first is a continuous generation of interoceptive feelings, which results in experiencing of the organism's...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02119

Inferring Consciousness in Phylogenetically Distant Organisms

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience July 1, 2024 Peter Godfrey-Smith

Abstract The neural dynamics of subjectivity (NDS) approach to the biological explanation of consciousness is outlined and applied to the problem of inferring consciousness in animals phylogenetically distant from ourselves. The NDS approach holds that consciousness or felt experience is characteristic of systems whose nervous systems have been shaped to realize subjectivity through a...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02158

Perceptual Awareness in Human Infants: What is the Evidence?

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience July 1, 2024 Ghislaine Dehaene-Lambertz

Perceptual awareness in infants during the first year of life is understudied, despite the philosophical, scientific, and clinical importance of understanding how and when consciousness emerges during human brain development. Although parents are undoubtedly convinced that their infant is conscious, the lack of adequate experimental paradigms to address this question in preverbal infants has...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02149 Full text

Entities, Uncertainties, and Behavioral Indicators of Consciousness

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience June 22, 2024 L. Syd M Johnson

Abstract Two problems related to the identification of consciousness are the distribution problem—or how and among which entities consciousness is distributed in the world—and the moral status problem—or which species, entities, and individuals have moral status. The use of inferences from neurobiological and behavioral evidence, and their confounds, for identifying consciousness in...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02130

Early Electrophysiological Correlates of Perceptual Consciousness Are Affected by Both Exogenous and Endogenous Attention.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience June 1, 2024 Łucja Doradzińska, Michał Bola 12 citations

It has been proposed that visual awareness negativity (VAN), which is an early ERP component, constitutes a neural correlate of visual consciousness that is independent of perceptual and cognitive mechanisms. In the present study, we investigated whether VAN is indeed a specific marker of phenomenal awareness or rather reflects the involvement of attention. To this end, we reanalyzed data...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02156 Full text

Integrating Consciousness Science with Cognitive Neuroscience: An Introduction to the Special Focus.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience May 30, 2024 Biyu J. He 2 citations

Consciousness science is experiencing a coming-of-age moment. Following 3 decades of sustained efforts by a relatively small group of consciousness researchers, the field has seen exponential growth over the past 5 years. It is increasingly recognized that although the investigation of subjective experiences is a difficult task, modern neuroscience need not and cannot shy away from the...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02193 Full text

Contributions of Basal Ganglia Circuits to Perception, Attention, and Consciousness

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience May 2, 2024 Michelle J. Redinbaugh, Yuri B Saalmann

Abstract Research into ascending sensory pathways and cortical networks has generated detailed models of perception. These same cortical regions are strongly connected to subcortical structures, such as the basal ganglia (BG), which have been conceptualized as playing key roles in reinforcement learning and action selection. However, because the BG amasses experiential evidence from higher and...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02177

Roles of the Default Mode Network in Different Aspects of Self-representation When Remembering Social Autobiographical Memories

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience March 22, 2024 Azusa Katsumi, Saeko Iwata, Takashi Tsukiura

Abstract Autobiographical memory (AM) is episodic memory for personally experienced events, in which self-representation is more important than that in laboratory-based memory. Theoretically, self-representation in a social context is categorized as the interpersonal self (IS) referred to in a social interaction with a person or the social-valued self (SS) based on the reputation of the self in...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02143 Full text

Electroencephalographic Signature of Out-of-Body Experiences Induced by Virtual Reality: A Novel Methodological Approach.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience September 1, 2023 Charlotte Martial, Héléna Cassol, Mel Slater et al. 13 citations

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are subjective experiences of seeing one's own body and the environment from a location outside the physical body. They can arise spontaneously or in specific conditions, such as during the intake of dissociative drug. Given its unpredictable occurrence, one way to empirically study it is to induce subjective experiences resembling an OBE using technology such as...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02011 Full text

Altered State of Consciousness and Mental Imagery as a Function of N, N-dimethyltryptamine Concentration in Ritualistic Ayahuasca Users

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2023 Johannes G. Ramaekers, Pablo Mallaroni, Lilian Kloft et al. 15 citations

Abstract Consumption of the psychedelic brew ayahuasca is a central ritualistic aspect of the Santo Daime religion. The current observational, baseline controlled study was designed to assess whether members (n = 24) of the Santo Daime church would show enhanced capacity for mental imagery during an ayahuasca experience. In addition, this study assessed whether the effects of ayahuasca on...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02003 Ayahuasca DMT Psychedelics Consciousness research +1

Altered Brain Connectivity and Network Topological Organization in a Non-ordinary State of Consciousness Induced by Hypnosis

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2023 Rajanikant Panda, Audrey Vanhaudenhuyse, Andrea Piarulli et al. 15 citations

Hypnosis has been shown to be of clinical utility; however, its underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. This study aims to investigate altered brain dynamics during the non-ordinary state of consciousness induced by hypnosis. We studied high-density EEG in 9 healthy participants during eyes-closed wakefulness and during hypnosis, induced by a muscle relaxation and eyes fixation procedure....

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02019 Full text Hypnosis Consciousness Cognitive science Altered state +2

Ecstatic or Mystical Experience through Epilepsy

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2023 Fabienne Picard 11 citations

Abstract Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy, so named because the seizures' first symptoms consist of an ecstatic/mystical experience, including feelings of increased self-awareness, mental clarity, and “unity with everything that exists,” accompanied by a sense of bliss and physical well-being. In this perspective article, we first describe the phenomenology of ecstatic...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_02031 Insula Surprise Cognitive psychology Feeling +5

Unresponsive but Not Necessarily Unconscious: An Introduction to the Special Focus

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2023 Charlotte Martial, Olivia Gosseries

A growing body of evidence from empirical research reveals that humans may be outwardly unresponsive but still experience episodes of disconnected consciousness (e.g., Martial, Cassol, Laureys, & Gosseries, 2020; Darracq et al., 2018; Sanders, Tononi, Laureys, & Sleigh, 2012). Disconnected consciousness refers to the mental experience of events, in the absence of concurrent awareness of the...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_e_02027 Citation Icon Focus optics Special collections +3

Long-term Meditation Training Is Associated with Enhanced Subjective Attention and Stronger Posterior Cingulate-Rostrolateral Prefrontal Cortex Resting Connectivity.

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience August 1, 2022 Tammi R. A. Kral, Regina C Lapate, Ted Imhoff‐Smith et al.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to increase resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), which is thought to reflect improvements in shifting attention to the present moment. However, prior research in long-term meditation practitioners lacked quantitative measures of attention that would provide a...

DOI: 10.1162/jocn_a_01881 Full text

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