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...
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...
Abstract: This study investigates intelligence-related differences in the adjustment of brain activity and connectivity to varying cognitive demands, testing for a moderation of an association between intelligence and neural efficiency by task difficulty. In 72 young adults (34 female, 38 male), fMRI brain activity changes during a decision-making task with five levels of difficulty were...
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...
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,...
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...
The default mode network (DMN) is a collection of interconnected transmodal brain regions that is engaged during internally oriented thought processes. It has been linked with multiple functions, including self-referential judgment, social cognition, episodic memory, and semantic memory. In an effort to identify a unitary overarching purpose of the DMN, Menon [Menon, V. 20 years of the default...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...