Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Gordon Burghardt
Jennifer Mather has provided a comprehensive and fascinating overview of the various cognitive accomplishments of cephalopods and their sensory, behavioral, and neurophysiological attributes. The advances in our understanding of a clade that has been separated from vertebrate evolution by well over half a billion years is a testament to advances in both methodology and the questions we now feel...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Lynne U. Sneddon, Matthew C. Leach
Key (2016) affirms that we do not know how the fish brain processes pain but denies — because fish lack a human-like cortex — that fish can feel pain. He affirms that birds, like fish, have a singly-laminated cortex and that the structure of the bird brain is quite different from that of the human brain, yet he does not deny that birds can feel pain. In this commentary we describe how Key cites...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Donald M Broom
Neither sentience nor moral standing is confined to animals with large or human-like brains. Invertebrates deserve moral consideration. Definition of terms clarifies the relationship between sentience and welfare. All animals have welfare but humans give more protection to sentient animals. Humans should be less human-centred.
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Colin Klein, Andrew B Barron
Our target article, “Insects have the capacity for subjective experience,” has provoked a diverse range of commentaries. In this response we have collated what we see as the major themes of the discussion. It is clear that we differ from some commentators in our commitments to what subjective experience is and what the midbrain is capable of. Here we clarify where we stand on those points and...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Murray Shanahan
This commentary has two aims: first to clarify the behavioural grounds for the ascription of consciousness to non-human animals (including insects), and second to show how Klein & Barron’s views can be reconciled with the core claims of global workspace theory.
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Derek Ball
The hard problem of consciousness is to explain why certain physical states are conscious: why do they feel the way they do, rather than some other way or no way at all? Arthur Reber (2016) claims to solve the hard problem. But he does not: even if we grant that amoebae are conscious, we can ask why such organisms feel the way they do, and Reber’s theory provides no answer. Still, Reber’s...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Yew-Kwang Ng
Reber’s axiom: “Any organism with flexible cell walls, a sensitivity to its surrounds and the capacity for locomotion will possess the biological foundations of mind and consciousness” does not seem to be supported by things we know and the logic of evolutionary biology. The latter leads to the conclusion that conscious species are flexible in their behavior (rather than in their cell walls),...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Gwen J. Broude
Reber believes he has simplified Chalmers’s “hard problem” of consciousness by arguing that subjectivity is an inherent feature of biological forms. His argument rests on the related notions of continuity of mind and gradual accretion of capacities across evolutionary time. These notions need to be defended, not just asserted. Because Reber minimizes the differences in mental faculties among...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Michael L. Woodruff
In my target article, I argued that the brains of ray-finned fishes of the teleost subclass (Actinopterygii) are sufficiently complex to support sentience — that these fishes have subjective awareness of interoceptive and exteroceptive sense experience. Extending previous theories centered on the tectum, I focused on the organization of the fish pallium. In this Response to the commentaries, I...
Animal Sentience
August 3, 2026
Carolyn A. Ristau
Donald Griffin co-discovered bat sonar and founded the field of echolocation. He studied bird migration and founded Cognitive Ethology, the study of animal awareness and mental experiences. In all these endeavors, he faced hostile opposition. The biography (Ristau 2024) examines Griffin's life and the scientific explorations by him and others in these fields. This Précis emphasizes his...
World psychiatry : official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA)
June 1, 2022
Paolo Fusar‐poli, Andrés Estradé, Giovanni Stanghellini et al.
225 citations
Psychosis is the most ineffable experience of mental disorder. We provide here the first co-written bottom-up review of the lived experience of psychosis, whereby experts by experience primarily selected the subjective themes, that were subsequently enriched by phenomenologically-informed perspectives. First-person accounts within and outside the medical field were screened and discussed in...
Current Opinion in Psychology
October 25, 2018
Claire Petitmengin, Martijn van Beek, Michel Bitbol et al.
163 citations
Numerous scientific studies are conducted on the neurophysiological effects of meditation practices and on the neural correlates of meditative states. However, very few studies have been conducted on the experience associated with contemplative practice: what it is like to meditate - from moment to moment, at different stages of different forms of practice - remains almost invisible in...
Curr Top Behav Neurosci
2018
Frederick S. Barrett, Roland R. Griffiths
268 citations
This chapter begins with a brief review of descriptions and definitions of mystical-type experiences and the historical connection between classic hallucinogens and mystical experiences. The chapter then explores the empirical literature on experiences with classic hallucinogens in which claims about mystical or religious experiences have been made. A psychometrically validated questionnaire is...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
September 1, 2017
Georg Northoff, Zirui Huang
235 citations
Time and space are the basic building blocks of nature. As a unique existent in nature, our brain exists in time and takes up space. The brain's activity itself also constitutes and spreads in its own (intrinsic) time and space that is crucial for consciousness. Consciousness is a complex phenomenon including different dimensions: level/state, content/form, phenomenal aspects, and cognitive...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 23, 2017
Raphaël Millière
216 citations
There is converging evidence that high doses of hallucinogenic drugs can produce significant alterations of self-experience, described as the dissolution of the sense of self and the loss of boundaries between self and world. This article discusses the relevance of this phenomenon, known as "drug-induced ego dissolution (DIED)", for cognitive neuroscience, psychology and philosophy of mind....
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2016
Katrin H. Preller, Franz X. Vollenweider
285 citations
Classic serotonergic hallucinogens or psychedelics produce an altered states of consciousness (ASC) that is characterized by profound alterations in sensory perception, mood, thought including the perception of reality, and the sense of self. Over the past years, there has been considerable progress in the search for invariant and common features of psychedelic states. In the first part of this...
Consciousness and Cognition
December 1, 2015
Yochai Ataria, Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana
158 citations
This paper discusses the phenomenological nature of the sense of boundaries (SB), based on the case of S, who has practiced mindfulness in the Satipathana and Theravada Vipassana traditions for about 40years and accumulated around 20,000h of meditative practice. S's unique abilities enable him to describe his inner lived experience with great precision and clarity. S was asked to shift between...
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
February 1, 2013
Etzel Cardeña, Peter Jönsson, Devin B. Terhune et al.
151 citations
After a hypnotic induction, medium and highly hypnotizable individuals often report spontaneous alterations in various dimensions of consciousness. Few studies investigating these experiences have controlled for the inherent demands of specific hypnotic suggestions and fewer still have considered their dynamic properties and neural correlates. We adopted a neurophenomenological approach to...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Sanneke De Haan, Erik Rietveld, Martin Stokhof et al.
218 citations
People suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) do things they do not want to do, and/or they think things they do not want to think. In about 10% of OCD patients, none of the available treatment options is effective. A small group of these patients is currently being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). DBS involves the implantation of electrodes in the brain. These electrodes...
Journal of Speculative Philosophy
2008
Cynthia Gayman
440 citations
DOI: 10.1177/1357034X08093575 2008; 14; 129 Body Society Bryan S. Turner Turner, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore pp. 256, ISBN 978 0 521 67587 1 paperback, $24.99 Reviewed by Bryan S. by Richard Shusterman Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, Body Consciousness: A Philosophy of Mindfulness and Somaesthetics Review Article: Somaesthetics and the Critique of...
Schizophr Res
November 1, 2005
Shitij Kapur, Romina Mizrahi, Ming Li
510 citations
How does an excess in a neurochemical lead someone to being paranoid about the intentions of their neighbour? And why does blocking a dopamine receptor improve this symptom? In this article we present a heuristic framework which attempts to link the biology, phenomenology and pharmacology of psychosis. Focussing on dopamine's role in reward prediction and motivational salience we propose that...
Am J Psychiatry
2003
Shitij Kapur
2,813 citations
Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia.
Biological research
2003
David Rudrauf, Antoine Lutz, Diego Cosmelli et al.
194 citations
This paper reviews in detail Francisco Varela's work on subjectivity and consciousness in the biological sciences. His original approach to this "hard problem" presents a subjectivity that is radically intertwined with its biological and physical roots. It must be understood within the framework of his theory of a concrete, embodied dynamics, grounded in his general theory of autonomous...
Archives of General Psychiatry
August 1, 1983
Henry David Abraham
172 citations
One hundred twenty-three persons with a history of LSD use were studied for the presence of the LSD flashback phenomenon and compared with 40 control subjects. A syndrome emerged that included ten distance visual disturbances. It had lasted for five years in half of the population, was treatable with benzodiazepines, exacerbated by phenothiazines, and precipitated by 19 different stimuli, most...