From visual awareness to consciousness without sensory input: The role of spontaneous brain activity.

This commentary on a target article about reconciling major theories of consciousness argues that the Attention Schema Theory (AST) offers advantages and is compatible with recent neuroscience findings. The authors call for future models of consciousness to move beyond focusing solely on awareness of external stimuli and instead incorporate internally generated conscious experiences.

Study at a glance

Abstract

This manuscript is an invited commentary on the article "Toward a standard model of consciousness: Reconciling the attention schema, global workspace, higher-order thought, and illusionist theories", by Drs. Graziano, Guterstam, Bio, and Wilterson, published in Cognitive Neuropsychology (2020). We believe this article is a timely attempt to find commonalities among a growing number of theories on consciousness. In our commentary, we highlight the advantages of the Attention Schema Theory (AST) and we illustrate how recent findings are compatible with the proposed link between the AST, a theory based on social cognition, and theories originating from the field of neuroscience. Finally, we describe elements that could be included in future versions of the models of consciousness. In particular, we emphasize that the field of consciousness will greatly benefit from moving beyond how we become aware of external information to consider internally generated conscious experiences.