European journal of cell biology
March 1, 2025
Masanori Kataoka, Takuya Niikawa, Naoya Nagaishi et al.
22 citations
Human brain organoid research raises a range of ethical, legal, and social issues that extend beyond the widely discussed possibility of consciousness. These issues differ depending on whether the organoids are used for in vitro research, transplanted into non-human animals, or applied in biocomputing. Navigating this complex landscape requires a multidisciplinary approach that integrates ethical, legal, and social perspectives.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Takuya Niikawa
18 citations
A map of consciousness studies is presented, listing five fundamental categories of questions: Definitional, Phenomenological, Epistemological, Ontological, and Axiological. Each category is subdivided into more specific questions, and existing approaches to each question are classified into groups with principal researchers. The map is then applied to examine the integrated information theory and the global workspace theory of consciousness, demonstrating its usefulness.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 7, 2024
Satoshi Nishida, Hiro Taiyo Hamada, Takuya Niikawa et al.
2 citations
preprint
Shifting from the ordinary, outward-focused natural attitude to the reflective, inward-focused phenomenological attitude involves distinct neural processes. In a behavioral task alternating between these attitudes, participants made fewer errors but responded more slowly in the phenomenological attitude, indicating a difference beyond simple difficulty. Functional MRI revealed that multivoxel activation patterns in premotor cortex, posterior parietal cortex, supplementary motor area, and cerebellum could classify which attitude participants were in. Activation in these regions was lower during the phenomenological attitude, suggesting that this reflective stance suppresses action-related neural information. These findings offer initial evidence for the neural signature of the phenomenological attitude.