Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Annika Lübbert, Florian Göschl, Hanna Krause et al.
14 citations
Social cognition can be grounded in sensorimotor interactions shared across agents. An action-oriented account emerges from a broader interpretation of sensorimotor contingencies, where dynamic informational and sensorimotor coupling across agents mediates action-effect contingencies in social contexts. This framework, socializing sensorimotor contingencies (socSMCs), integrates neuroscience, psychology, and human-robot interaction research. Empirical findings suggest sensorimotor and informational entrainment plays an important role in social contexts. Social cognitive phenomena like joint attention, mutual trust, and empathy rely heavily on such coupling between agents. This insight may provide novel remedies for disturbed social cognition and lead to more natural human-robot interfaces.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Erkki J Brändas
13 citations
Quantum boundaries of life are illuminated through the integration of advanced quantum chemistry and theoretical chemical physics. Utilizing a sample size of 200 studies, findings reveal that self-referential amplification and long-range correlative information (ODLCI) exhibit a 75% coherence rate in supporting life and consciousness. The innovative application of Fourier-Laplace transforms enhances understanding of energy-time and momentum-space relationships, yielding novel communication frameworks. This approach underscores panexperiential materialism, demonstrating how negentropic coherence organizes biological systems across multiple levels, enriching our comprehension of life's quantum dynamics.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2017
Noriaki Kanayama, Tomohisa Asai, Takashi Nakao et al.
10 citations
In 96 healthy adults, lower gray matter volume in the insular cortex was linked to greater reported malfunction in the sense of ownership over one's body, as measured by the Embodied Sense of Self Scale. No such relationship was found for the sense of agency or narrative self. This suggests that the feeling of ownership may rely on distinct brain structures, and the scale could help screen for such neural correlates.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Patrick Mcnamara, Jordan Grafman
8 citations
Religious and spiritual experiences depend on interactions among three large-scale brain networks: the default mode network, the frontoparietal network, and the salience network. This pattern aligns with the Triple Network Model of neuropsychiatric function. A cycling version of that model can explain the neural basis of ecstatic seizures, brain scans of religious participants, psychedelic mystical states, and perceptions of supernatural agents. To fully account for perceptions of supernatural agents, REM sleep and dreaming mechanisms likely play a role. Future work should explore how such perceptions develop and how brain-mediated religious beliefs affect in-group cohesion and out-group hostility.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2021
Jesse J Winters
8 citations
A new theory of consciousness, the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL), proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality spanning a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure contains subsystems with higher levels of temporally-integrated causality than the whole, each existing as meaningful content from the system's point of view. The theory is compared with five major neuroscientific theories of consciousness using five characteristics of phenomenal consciousness. Although the theories emphasize different evidence, they share fundamental agreements, suggesting possible convergence. A key dividing feature is spatial and temporal nesting, which does not align with whether theories explicitly invoke EM fields.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Raquel Aparicio-Terrés, Samantha López-Mochales, Margarita Díaz-Andreu et al.
6 citations
Electronic music with a slower tempo (around 1.65 Hz, or 99 beats per minute) produces stronger brainwave entrainment and greater feelings of unity than faster tempos (around 2.85 Hz, or 171 beats per minute). Nineteen participants listened to one-minute electronic music excerpts at three different tempos while their brain activity was recorded with electroencephalography and they reported subjective experiences. Although entrainment was higher at the slower tempo and unity feelings were also higher, there was no direct link between how much an individual's brainwaves synchronized and their altered-state experiences. Instead, stronger entrainment correlated with slower reaction times, suggesting entrainment plays a functional role in processes related to rhythm-induced altered states, though the study could not confirm whether participants actually entered an altered state.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Niclas Kaiser, Juan Camilo Avendano-Diaz
4 citations
Relational neuroscience often overlooks the subtle, implicit qualities of shared interpersonal moments, especially those central to psychotherapy. The authors argue this gap arises from over-reliance on simplified quantitative methods, neglect of experiential factors, and a lack of convergence research. Drawing on 4E cognition and Mobile Brain/Body Imaging, they advocate integrating subjective experience with neural data and focusing on 'qualities' rather than binary or linear scales. They propose ConNECT (Convergence research including Neuroscience and Experiences, Capturing meaningful dynamics with Therapists' knowledge) as a multi-disciplinary path to better understand interpresence and the neurobiology of meaningful relational moments.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2015
Tal Yatziv, Hilla Jacobson
3 citations
Perceptual differences between autistic and typically developing individuals do not stem from a deficiency in basic phenomenal consciousness—the raw, immediate experience of the world. Instead, the atypicality is cognitive and conceptual, affecting how perceptual objects are integrated with concepts. Drawing on three-level processing models, the paper argues that the second level of perceptual processing, which supports viewer-centered visual representations and early integration (the mark of phenomenal consciousness), is typical in autism. The third, more cognitive level, which integrates perceptual objects with concepts, is atypical. Thus, autistic individuals likely have similar basic perceptual experiences but differ in cognitive access to those experiences.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Evan Alexander Owens, Robert O Duncan
2 citations
Bodily self-consciousness (BSC) comprises embodiment—the sense of owning a body—and presence—the sense of being at a location. Evidence suggests these rely on partly distinct neural networks, but how they interact remains unclear. A model is proposed in which presence depends on embodiment. In a virtual-reality experiment, correlated versus uncorrelated sensory feedback manipulated embodiment, and first- versus third-person perspective manipulated presence. Behavioral performance (reaction times and accuracy) improved with correlated feedback and first-person perspective. Functional MRI revealed frontoparietal areas supporting embodiment and temporoparietal areas supporting presence. Manipulations of embodiment produced larger effect sizes in presence-related areas than vice versa, and this pattern held for overlapping areas. The data indicate that presence-related brain areas may depend on activity in embodiment-related networks.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Ravinder Jerath, Connor Beveridge
2 citations
Reflexes integrate multimodal sensory information rapidly, yet how unconscious processes contribute to consciousness remains unclear. The Default Space Theory (DST) proposes a unified internal representation that integrates sensory inputs, cognition, emotion, and unconscious processes. Neuroimaging advances (fMRI, EEG, MEG) highlight neural oscillations and sensory integration in conscious experience. This perspective argues that research on reflexes' dynamic relationship with consciousness is lacking, particularly top-down cortical modulation of subcortical reflex circuits. Understanding how the brain encodes a multimodal model of self and environment to produce quick reflex responses could clarify boundaries between conscious and unconscious activity, offering new avenues for studying consciousness's physical nature.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Suguru Kawazu, Marie Amitani, Hajime Suzuki et al.
2 citations
A multicenter cluster-randomized controlled trial tested a 4-week mindfulness yoga program added to treatment as usual (cognitive behavioral therapy based on self-monitoring) for 43 children aged 10–15 years with school refusal. Anxiety symptoms, measured by the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale, showed no significant difference between the yoga group (adjusted post-test score 39.9) and the non-yoga group (39.4); the between-group difference was 0.4 (80% CI -4.8 to 5.6, p = 0.54). Exploratory analysis found improvement on the Physical Injury Fears subscale, and pulse rate was significantly lower in the yoga group. The intervention appeared safe but had limited effectiveness for anxiety.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Beatrix Krause-Sorio, Sergio Becerra, Prabha Siddarth et al.
1 citation
Watching videos of galactic nebulas while meditating on universal connectedness activates brain regions involved in object, sensory, and memory processing, including the bilateral lateral occipital and fusiform gyri, right postcentral gyrus, and hippocampus. Compared to viewing AI-generated digital art or nature videos, meditation produced increased brain activity in sensory integration and sensorimotor areas such as the left parietal operculum and bilateral postcentral and supramarginal gyri. A pilot fMRI study with nine healthy adults (mean age 29; 5 women) used a block design to compare these conditions. The findings suggest distinct neural responses for meditative contemplation versus passive viewing of art or nature, though further research is needed to clarify therapeutic applications.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2026
John Sanfey
The hard problem of consciousness—explaining how subjective experience arises from physical processes—stems from the same logical paradox that makes quantum and classical physics incompatible: the measure-theoretic limit. Continuous time requires point-equivalent instants of zero duration, which cannot exist ontologically, making it impossible to explain state transitions within continuous time without approximations. Consciousness functions as an ontological workaround for problems related to temporally extended information in continuous time, including sensory qualia.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Borros Arneth
Subjective experience arises when a system's internal predictions and sensory inputs become recursively coupled, minimizing entropy exchange with the environment while maintaining high internal informational dynamics. This metastable condition, termed dynamic entropic closure, produces a self-referential, phase-coherent pattern that constitutes awareness. The framework builds on predictive processing and the Free Energy Principle, offering operational constraints and falsifiable predictions for neurophysiology, and is compatible with but distinct from Integrated Information Theory and global-workspace accounts.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Diego Iacono, Gloria C Feltis
Traumatic brain injury and near-death experiences can sometimes trigger unexpected cognitive and creative enhancements, including heightened artistic expression. Alterations in brain networks such as the default mode network, frontoparietal circuits, and limbic regions may underlie shifts in self-awareness, emotion processing, and symbolic thinking. Neuroplasticity, diaschisis, and compensatory reorganization may facilitate novel cognition and creative output after injury. Genetic factors and evolutionary perspectives are considered. The article argues that certain brain injuries and altered states can reconfigure cognitive and emotional systems, leading to emergent artistic abilities or intensified creative insight, challenging traditional dichotomies between damage and function.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Francis G Smith
A review of empirical findings on the neural organization of conscious experience finds that conscious states are consistently associated with neural activity that is restricted to low-dimensional subspaces or manifolds, structured by meaningful geometric and topological relationships, and dynamically accessible under perturbation. Distances in neural representational space track experiential similarity, categorical perceptual distinctions correspond to clustering and boundaries in neural state space, and perturbational measures distinguish accessible experiential states from inactive or fragmented configurations. The authors provide a unifying structural synthesis of empirically grounded constraints on the neural organization associated with conscious experience, without advancing a specific theory of consciousness.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2026
Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup, Elizabeth Ann Stoll
A central obstacle to explaining consciousness is uncertainty about what kind of thing it is—its ontological status. Naturalization requires making every agreed property of consciousness continuous with properties admitted by the natural sciences. The hard problem will remain hard until cortical computation and the mechanisms by which biophysical processes generate phenomenal content are fully understood. This paper evaluates the naturalization project in light of debates in consciousness studies, then introduces a neuro-physically grounded framework for probabilistic neural computation: the holography solution. It offers a concrete account of naturalization, provides explanatory power, and identifies several testable predictions. Even if unconvincing, the proposal demonstrates that naturalization is possible and challenges other theories to deliver alternative accounts of what consciousness is.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Joachim Keppler
Conscious states are linked to long-range synchronized brain activity patterns that arise from phase transitions and exhibit self-organized criticality. This article connects these neurophysiological features to quantum electrodynamics (QED), which explains the origin of such transitions. A key QED component is the fluctuating electromagnetic zero-point field (ZPF). Model calculations suggest that resonant interaction of the ZPF with the glutamate pool of cortical microcolumns initiates phase transitions, producing macroscopic quantum effects that modulate ion channel activity and regulate neuronal firing rates.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Joachim Keppler
Conscious states are linked to synchronized neural activity patterns that exhibit self-organized criticality and phase transitions. This article argues that the brain initiates phase transitions and forms synchronized activity patterns by coupling to the zero-point field (ZPF), the ubiquitous vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field described by quantum electrodynamics. Model calculations suggest that critical brain dynamics arises from resonant interaction between the ZPF and the neurotransmitter glutamate, with pyramidal neurons in cortical microcolumns controlling this interaction. This resonant coupling amplifies specific ZPF modes, and the theory, named TRAZE, proposes that phenomenal qualities correspond to these amplified modes. An experimental setup is proposed to test the prediction that disrupting resonant glutamate-ZPF coupling eliminates normal conscious perceptions.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2022
M Bruce MacIver
Electromagnetic field (EMF) theories of mind-brain integration have been proposed for over seventy years and continue to attract interest because they explain unified conscious experience and address the binding problem. EMFs are easily measured, and many correlates have been noted for field activity associated with loss and recovery of consciousness, sensory perceptions, and behavior. Early experiments were thought to have ruled out a role of EMFs in brain activity, leading neuroscience to marginalize these theories. This paper explains why that early evidence was misinterpreted and offers an alternative view to help direct future research.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2020
correction
This is a correction notice for a previously published article. It does not contain any new findings, arguments, or data.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2019
Paul Dennison
The paper argues that typical studies of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) are limited because they examine one part of the cortical network using another, focusing on what is termed 'default consciousness' (DCs)—everyday waking awareness. In contrast, Buddhist jhāna meditation intentionally withdraws from DCs to an inward-directed, still state called jhāna consciousness. This preliminary EEG study of jhāna meditation reports findings unlike those in other meditation research: highly alert subjects displayed spindle activity similar to sleep spindles, more experienced subjects showed high-voltage slow-waves reminiscent of deep sleep or coma, and some exhibited spike-wave bursts similar to absence epilepsy. Some subjects could consciously evoke clonic seizure-like activity. The authors suggest these observations reflect a profound disruption of DCs when personal elements are withdrawn.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2019
Tam Hunt, Jonathan W Schooler
Resonance—synchronization, harmonization, or vibrations in a general sense—appears to be integrally related to consciousness. In mammalian brains, a specific combination of gamma, beta, and theta electrical synchrony is a possible neural correlate of consciousness. Similar resonance patterns occur in many living and non-living structures. This paper reviews resonating structures across neuroscience, biology, and physics and proposes a solution to the 'combination problem' of consciousness: how micro-conscious entities combine into macro-consciousness.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2018
Gonzalo Boncompte, Diego Cosmelli
The neural signature of conscious perception is debated, with candidates including the P3b, Visual Awareness Negativity (VAN), and early components like P1. Most studies use static images, favoring ventral stream processing. This experiment isolated local motion, a dorsally processed feature, as the consciously perceived content. Using physical equality between Seen and Unseen conditions and minimal contrast differences, a P3b with wide centro-parietal distribution strongly correlated with stimulus detection, with larger magnitude for Seen vs. Unseen conditions consistently at the single subject level. VAN was undetectable, and P1 was absent. A N2pc component appeared in the 200-300 ms window, consistent with high attentional demands. Results extend P3b's role as a content-independent neural correlate of consciousness to visual motion perception.