Nature reviews. Neuroscience
May 23, 2025
Sharif I Kronemer, Peter A Bandettini, Javier Gonzalez-Castillo
5 citations
Consciousness is inherently private, but overt behaviors like facial expressions and vocalizations are unreliable indicators because they can be deceptive, absent, or conflict with research goals. This review examines emerging covert physiological measures—including eye, skin, respiratory, and heart signals—that can disclose consciousness without relying on overt behavior. It also addresses the challenge of distinguishing physiological signals linked to conscious versus unconscious neural processing and considers the ethical implications of infringing on the innate privacy of consciousness.
PNAS nexus
July 1, 2026
David S Jin, Oumayma Agdali, Taruna Yadav et al.
Awareness of action (AoA)—the conscious awareness of one's own actions—is crucial for daily life, yet its neural basis is poorly understood. By developing a game where participants repeatedly made nearly identical moves while distracted, then reported awareness or unawareness of those moves, the authors compared neural activity between aware and unaware actions. On short timescales, aware actions showed larger neurophysiological signals both before and after movement, including volitional and perceptual event-related potentials, frontal midline theta, alpha/beta desynchronization, and increased blink rates. On longer timescales, a novel positive event-related potential preceded only unaware moves, and behavioral and pupillometric evidence indicated decreased attention and arousal concurrent with AoA loss. Three synergistic neural mechanisms were identified: long-term increases in arousal/attentional state, increased motor volitional signals, and increased sensory perceptual signals.