Considering the very large body of knowledge which neuroimaging has put at our fingertips over the last three decades we looked at the brain with a fresh view which could unveil those 'old' things in new ways, in a framework which could help us making predictions tailored made for a scrutiny with the outstanding imaging instruments to come, such as ultra high field MRI. By doing so, switching...
ABSTRACT Panpsychism is ‘the theory or belief that there is an element of consciousness in all matter’. An ancient idea in Western philosophy that predates the earliest writings of the pre-Socratics, panpsychism is currently being revived in a number of different disciplines in the humanities. One reason for this resurgence of interest in panpsychism in the contemporary humanities is that...
Perceptual filling-in (PFI) occurs when a physically-present visual target disappears from conscious perception, with its location filled in by the surrounding visual background. Compared to other visual illusions, these perceptual changes are crisp and simple, and can occur for multiple spatially-separated targets simultaneously. Contrasting neural activity during the presence or absence of...
Any theory amenable to scientific inquiry must have testable consequences. This minimal criterion is uniquely challenging for the study of consciousness, as we do not know if it is possible to confirm via observation from the outside whether or not a physical system knows what it feels like to have an inside - a challenge referred to as the "hard problem" of consciousness. To arrive at a theory...
What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? This book argues that consciousness plays an essential role in explaining how we can acquire knowledge and epistemically justified belief about ourselves and our surroundings. On this view, our mental lives cannot be preserved in unconscious creatures—zombies—who behave just as we do. Only conscious creatures have epistemic justification to...
Human use of psychoactive substances has a long and complex history that has been documented in the archaeological record from as early as the Neolithic period (Guerra-Doce 2015). This exciting new field of archaeological research has potential to shed light on many approaches to human behaviours in the past, particularly those focused on ritual practice, phenomenology and human–environment...
Mindfulness interventions have gained much attraction, also due to their promise to improve health and wellbeing. However, not enough attention is devoted to the differentiation between various mental practice types. Here, we summarize findings from the ReSource Project, a 9-month longitudinal mental training study comparing practices focusing on (a) present-moment attention and interoception,...
We present a schizophrenia patient who reports "seeing rain" with attendant somatosensory features which separate him from his surroundings. Because visual/multimodal hallucinations are understudied in schizophrenia, we examine a case history to determine the role of these hallucinations in self-disturbances (Ichstörungen). Developed by the early Heidelberg School, self-disturbances comprise...
Human Brain MappingAugust 1, 2019Yi-Chia Kung, Chia-Wei Li, Shuo Chen et al.
Nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep is associated with fading consciousness in humans. Recent neuroimaging studies have demonstrated the spatiotemporal alterations of the brain functional connectivity (FC) in NREM sleep, suggesting the changes of information integration in the sleeping brain. However, the common stationarity assumption in FC does not satisfactorily explain the dynamic process of...
Prior observations and studies suggest self-consciousness disorders in schizophrenia and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), two neurodevelopmental disorders sharing social communication impairments. First, the relationships between schizophrenia and autism are explored regarding social communication impairments. Then, self-consciousness disorders in schizophrenia and autism are described and...