Journal of vision
May 1, 2024
Nadine Dijkstra, Matan Mazor, Stephen M. Fleming
9 citations
Perceptual reality monitoring errors can lead individuals to confuse imagined experiences with real ones. In two experiments involving 150 participants, confidence ratings aligned with decision-making shifts, indicating failures in distinguishing reality at both perceptual and metacognitive levels. While participants showed overall awareness of their errors, this insight did not correlate with specific trial-level confidence. These findings suggest that confidence does not effectively differentiate between imagination and reality during perception, highlighting the complexity of how we assess our own experiences.
Nature Mental Health
June 1, 2026
George E. Chapman, Philip R. Corlett, Stephen M. Fleming et al.
Fixed, false beliefs called delusions are a core feature of psychotic disorders, but why they remain fixed is not well understood. This review proposes a clearer vocabulary for describing delusion fixity—using the terms conviction, incorrigibility, persistence, and stability—and examines factors from diagnosis, psychopathology, psychodynamics, social context, cognition, metacognition, and cognitive neuroscience that may influence fixity. The authors present a working model of delusion fixity and call for interdisciplinary longitudinal studies to better understand it and to improve therapeutic strategies.
arXiv Preprint Archive
August 17, 2023
Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Eric Elmoznino et al.
No current AI systems are conscious, but there are no obvious technical barriers to building ones that might be, according to an analysis grounded in neuroscientific theories of consciousness. The report surveys prominent theories—recurrent processing, global workspace, higher-order, predictive processing, and attention schema—and derives computational indicator properties from them. Applying these indicators to recent AI systems yields no evidence of consciousness, but the authors argue that future systems could potentially implement the necessary properties.
Frontiers in Psychology
November 5, 2018
Matthias Michel, Stephen M. Fleming, Hakwan Lau et al.
A survey of 249 participants, mostly in academia and about 40% experts in consciousness research, assessed views on the field's progress, funding, job opportunities, and scientific rigor. 78% of respondents said scientific research on consciousness has been making progress. However, most perceived obtaining funding and getting a job in consciousness research as more difficult than in other neuroscience subfields. Work in consciousness research was seen as less rigorous than other neuroscience subfields, but this perception was not linked to the perceived difficulty in funding and jobs. Global workspace theory was rated most promising overall (about 28%), while among non-experts integrated information theory (IIT) was most popular (about 22%).