Review of Philosophy and Psychology
2025
Julian Kiverstein, Mark Miller, Erik Rietveld
The predictive processing theory refers to a family of theories that take the brain and body of an organism to implement a hierarchically organized predictive model of its environment that works in the service of prediction-error minimization. Several philosophers have wondered how belief-like states of prediction account for the conative role desire plays in motivating a person to act. A...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Keiichi Onoda, Satoru Miyauchi, Shigeyuki Kan et al.
Integrated information theory (IIT) offers an axiomatic framework based on phenomenological properties, allowing the quantification and characterization of consciousness through a measure known as Φ. According to IIT, Φ reflects the level of consciousness and is expected to decrease with loss of consciousness, although empirical data supporting this claim remain limited. In this study, we...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Vince Polito, Stephanie Howarth, Andrew Roberts et al.
Anomalous experiences, such as hallucinations and mystical experiences, are positively related to delusional ideation, religiosity, and paranormal beliefs. Some researchers argue that these relationships are explained by 'transliminality'-a trait describing sensitivity to stimuli crossing the threshold into consciousness. This claim suggests such beliefs may be attempts to interpret barely...
Journal of Neurology & Stroke
2025
Marco Ruggiero
This commentary synthesizes findings from four articles exploring consciousness, meditative practices, and subtle physical phenomena. An article on fractals and consciousness1 proposes a theoretical link between consciousness and fractal processes, suggesting inherent limitations in modeling consciousness. An article on religious practice2 presents a study on the neurophysiological and...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Eleftheria Pistolas, Johan Wagemans
A Ganzfeld is a homogeneous, unstructured visual field that is known to induce visual hallucinations. Aside from visual percepts emerging in participants' awareness, Ganzfeld viewing is characterized by decays of color and brightness. The studies dedicated to this topic from the 20th century have focused on these decays, although they have been reported in a confusing way, with different terms...
International Journal of Yoga
2025
D Narayana Dutt, G R Ganesh Rao, C R Ramaswamy et al.
Although mechanistic studies on Yoga and meditation have demonstrated their efficacy over the past few decades, very few studies have focused on the Yogic state of Samaadhi, characterized by an ultimate state of peace and happiness. In this study, we probed electrophysiological correlates of Samaadhi in a Yogi par excellence. This research was conducted in the 1980s and is now being brought to...
Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences
2025
Marc Wittmann, Sylvie Droit-Volet
In accordance with Bud (A.D.) Craig's theories, we maintain that ascending physiological signals in their temporal dynamics are a necessary prerequisite for human time judgments. Functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological evidence have increasingly demonstrated that the subjective judgment of time is based on the physical and emotional self. The psychological literature reveals how...
Open Mind
2025
Eleftheria Pistolas, Boris Quétard, Sucharit Katyal et al.
A Ganzfeld is a homogeneous visual field, devoid of any focal points. Such a stimulus has been used by researchers to study perceptual phenomena in the absence of changes in sensory structure. Others have used it to study altered states of consciousness (ASCs). Until now, these different facets have been studied separately with little attention for the emotional subjective experience. This...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Joaquim Streicher, Sascha Meyen, Volker H Franz et al.
A central question of consciousness research is which cognitive processes can occur unconsciously. To investigate this, researchers typically compare participants' ability to consciously discriminate a stimulus to their unconscious processing of the same stimulus (e.g. measured via reaction time or brain activity). If participants are not significantly different from chance in the awareness (or...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Elise G Rowe, Ken Takeda, Masafumi Oizumi et al.
Top-down attentional amplification is often assumed to affect 'what' we see, that is, the contents of conscious experience. Previously, this claim has been examined by studies that manipulated attention and characterized conscious perception in binary categorical labels (e.g. seen versus unseen). However, these categorical judgments are not powerful enough to characterize the quality of...