Consciousness and Cognition
February 10, 2022
Simone Denzer, Sarah Diezig, Peter Achermann et al.
Differences in conscious experience of reality occur between waking, dreaming, and psychotic states. Between these states, there are systematic differences in the judgment about the reality of the experience when being confronted with bizarre breaks. However, the mechanisms underlying experience of reality in these different states are still unknown. To investigate the effect of bizarre breaks...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: A brief review of the history of the science of consciousness suggests that since the 1990s, important studies from experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience have been sidelined, to make room for rather speculative metaphysical and physics-centric theorizing. Some arguments are given in favor of restoring this balance. These include some considerations about the longevity and...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The chapter begins by questioning whether the prefrontal cortex plays a causal role in conscious perception. The dorsolateral prefrontal areas and the frontal polar cortex of the prefrontal cortex are identified as important because they seem to have survived the controls for all three kinds of confounders discussed in this volume: stimulus, report, and performance capacity. However,...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The so-called NCC project started in the 1990s. But as with the whole idea of a “revival” of consciousness science, there too is a long and often neglected history well before that. Not knowing our history is a problem because we are prone to repeating the same mistakes. The trouble is that some conceptual issues are hard to avoid, even when we think we are focusing on...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: When we don’t pay attention, we don’t perceive many details. But our experience may be subjectively “inflated” beyond what we actually represent in the sensory cortices. This poses troubles for local theorists. At the same time, the inflation account also suggests that the role played by the prefrontal cortex in consciousness isn’t as straightforward as global broadcast. This chapter...
In Consciousness we Trust
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract: The theory of perceptual reality monitoring connects two important notions of consciousness: subjective experience, and our rational grasp of reality. Studies in the social sciences, psychiatry, and clinical psychology have focused on this latter notion of consciousness for over a century. To many, that’s where the concept of consciousness really comes from, or at least that’s what...
February 10, 2022
Hakwan Lau
Abstract This book puts forward a mechanistic account of subjective experience based on a review of the current cognitive neuroscience literature on conscious perception, attention, and metacognition. It is argued that current empirical studies are often misinterpreted. An undue focus has been placed on perceptual capacity rather than subjective experience per se. Null findings are often...
Journal of Humanistic Psychology
February 10, 2022
Terence H. W. Ching, Monnica T. Williams, Sara Reed et al.
10 citations
MDMA (±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine)-assisted therapy (MDMA-AT) was shown in previous clinical trials to have promising efficacy and safety for alleviating treatment-resistant posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). However, due to low ethnoracial diversity, the question remains as to whether ethnoracial minority participants would benefit similarly. Thus, a mixed-methods case study was...
British Journal of Anaesthesia
February 9, 2022
Cameron P Casey, Sean Tanabe, Zahra Z Farahbakhsh et al.
Background: How conscious experience becomes disconnected from the environment, or disappears, across arousal states is unknown. We sought to identify the neural correlates of sensory disconnection and unconsciousness using a novel serial awakening paradigm. Methods: Volunteers were recruited for sedation with dexmedetomidine i.v., propofol i.v., or natural sleep with high-density EEG...
Current Biology
February 7, 2022
Daniel Gutierrez-Barragan, Neha Atulkumar Singh, Filomena Grazia Alvino et al.
Human imaging studies have shown that spontaneous brain activity exhibits stereotypic spatiotemporal reorganization in awake, conscious conditions with respect to minimally conscious states. However, whether and how this phenomenon can be generalized to lower mammalian species remains unclear. Leveraging a robust protocol for resting-state fMRI (rsfMRI) mapping in non-anesthetized, head-fixed...