Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2017
Madeleine Ransom, Sina Fazelpour, Christopher Mole
38 citations
A prominent theory holds that cognition works by minimizing prediction errors through Bayesian inference, with attention understood as optimizing the precision of those error signals. While this account explains many attention-related phenomena, it fails to accommodate certain forms of voluntary attention. The authors argue that advocates of Bayesian prediction error minimization have overreached by claiming it is all the brain ever does, and that the theory's tools, though powerful, are insufficient for a complete explanation of attention.
Consciousness and cognition
July 1, 2014
Michael J Mackenzie, Linda E Carlson, David M Paskevich et al.
38 citations
A single yoga session for female cancer survivors was linked to steady increases in focused attention and positive mood, while changes in heart activity matched the intensity of each yoga sequence. Shifts in attention and mood were predicted by concurrent cardiac activity. Participants reported that awareness of breathing, physical movement, and increased relaxation were possible reasons for yoga's benefits. Yoga may work mainly as a meditative method for regulating attention and affect, distinct from exercise or relaxation alone.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2018
Peter Carruthers
37 citations
If a global workspace theory of phenomenal consciousness is correct and fully reductive, then questions about consciousness in nonhuman animals should be abandoned—not because they are too difficult, but because there are no substantive facts to discover. The argument hinges on the idea that global broadcasting is all-or-nothing in humans but framed in terms that imply gradations across species, yet the concept of phenomenal consciousness does not permit mental states to be conscious to some degree. The paper first displays some virtues of global workspace theory to motivate the discussion.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2015
Berit Brogaard
37 citations
People with type 2 blindsight, caused by damage to the primary visual cortex (V1), have some residual visual awareness, but their experience lacks three features often considered essential to ordinary vision: particularity (being directed at specific objects), transparency (the sense of seeing through to the world), and fine-grainedness (detailed sensory content). This case challenges the view that these characteristics are necessary for veridical visual experience and undermines the idea that visual experience is fundamentally a perceptual relation to external objects. The paper also argues that type 2 blindsight reveals how attentional modulation affects perceptual content, and that such modulation does not conflict with the claim that the phenomenology of visual experience arises from its content.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2020
Abigail Stocks, Michelle Carr, Remington Mallett et al.
33 citations
Higher levels of lucidity during dreaming are associated with more positive dream content and a more positive mood the following day. Twenty participants completed a week-long online dream diary after practicing lucid dream induction techniques. The study found no link between lucidity and subjective sleep quality. The findings suggest that cultivating lucid dreams may help improve waking mood, though longer-term studies are needed.
Consciousness and cognition
December 1, 2010
Vince Polito, Robyn Langdon, Jac Brown
31 citations
Pre-existing beliefs and emotional traits shape how people interpret unusual sensory experiences. In a study of 55 participants who took part in an unfamiliar shamanic sweat lodge ceremony, those who held paranormal beliefs aligned with shamanic mythology and those who had difficulty identifying their own feelings reported more positive aspects of the altered state of consciousness. The findings indicate that an individual's characterization of anomalous experiences is nuanced by their prior beliefs and affective factors.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2022
Leonard Dung
30 citations
A list of eight criteria is developed to evaluate tests for animal consciousness, addressing the challenge that many proposed behavioral and cognitive tests lack clear validity. The criteria are based on analogies between human and non-human behavior, theories of consciousness, and methods from human consciousness science. Tests that satisfy more of these criteria provide stronger evidence of consciousness, and future tests can be designed to meet them to increase evidential strength.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 1999
J Smythies
29 citations
Consciousness is examined through introspection and brain lesion studies, including cortical blindness, agnosia, and blindsight, alongside recovery of sight after injury. Two perception theories—Direct Realism and the Representative Theory—are discussed, covering the body-image, phantom limbs, phenomenal space, the homunculus argument, topographic coding, and the stimulus versus visual field distinction. Two brain-mind theories—Identity Theory and Bohr-Heisenberg complementarity—are compared. Binocular rivalry from intermittent photic stimulation in one eye, used in animal unit recording experiments, is proposed as a method to investigate the binding problem.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2009
Michael Snodgrass, Natasha Kalaida, E Samuel Winer
28 citations
Conscious access can be divided into two types: first-order access, where content becomes phenomenally conscious, and second-order access, where that conscious content is selected for higher-order reflective processing. When second-order access is understood as optional and flexible, there are strong reasons to believe that stimuli can be phenomenally conscious without being accessed in this second-order way. The partial access argument against this view fails because exclusion failure is due to lack of second-order access, not insufficient conscious information. The enable account better fits qualitative differences and subjective report and is simpler than the alternative. Second-order access arguably reflects the core meaning of access generally.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2020
Nick Brancazio, Miguel Segundo-Ortin
27 citations
Non-representational approaches to cognition, such as ecological-enactivism, have difficulty explaining long-term planning without invoking mental representations. Recent ecological-enactivist proposals attempt to account for such high-level capacities, but they overlook the role of long-term intentions in action coordination and perception. Drawing on enactive theories of language, the authors argue for a non-representational conception of intentions: rather than being actual cognitive entities, intentions are taken up as a practice through linguistically scaffolded attitudes. They introduce the skill of distal engagement to explain how present actions are coordinated toward distant goals without relying on representations.
Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2020
Abigail Wright, Barnaby Nelson, David Fowler et al.
26 citations
Auditory perceptual biases, such as a tendency to hear things differently, are linked to anomalous self-experiences, especially feeling alienated from one's surroundings and emotional numbing, in people with first episode psychosis and healthy controls. No link was found between metacognitive efficiency and anomalous experiences. The findings support the minimal self-disturbance model of schizophrenia spectrum vulnerability, particularly the idea of hyperreflexivity.
Consciousness and cognition
November 1, 2017
Tomáš Marvan, Michal Polák
26 citations
Most consciousness theorists agree that a mental state cannot have a phenomenal character (what it feels like) without being conscious. This paper challenges that consensus by distinguishing two models. The unitary model treats the production of a phenomenal quality and its becoming conscious as a single process. The dual model, which the authors advocate, separates the formation of the phenomenal quality from the process that makes it conscious. They present conceptual, methodological, neuropsychological, and neural arguments that together support the dual model and the idea of unconscious mental qualities. The dual view is proposed as a hypothesis worth further investigation.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2021
J E Malinowski, D Scheel, M Mccloskey
25 citations
Dreaming is hard to study in non-human animals because it is usually identified through verbal reports. Parallels between human dreaming—its phenomenology, physiology, and behaviors—offer a way forward. Three alternative measures of human dreaming (neural correlates, memory replay, and dream-enacting behaviors) can be applied to animals. Mammals and birds, with brains similar to humans, are good models for neural and memory measures. Cephalopods, especially octopuses, may be especially suitable for studying dream-enacting behaviors.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2020
Claudia Picard-Deland, Maude Pastor, Elizaveta Solomonova et al.
25 citations
Flying dreams, though common, rarely occur. In a study with 137 participants, a virtual reality flying task followed by a morning nap increased reports of flying dreams during the nap and the following morning, compared to baseline rates and a control group. These dreams also showed greater lucid control and emotional intensity. Prior dream-flying experience and the level of VR sensory immersion influenced induction. The results support a vection-based explanation of dream-flying and could aid in developing dream flight-induction technologies.
Consciousness and cognition
September 1, 2020
Jarrod Gott, Michael Rak, Leonore Bovy et al.
23 citations
Lucid dreaming, where people experience waking-like self-reflection during dreams, is linked to more wake-like brain activity in the prefrontal cortex. This multi-centre study, combining four investigations, examined whether fragmented sleep increases the chance of lucid dreaming. Results showed that self-reported awakenings, polyphasic sleep schedules, and physiologically measured wake-REM sleep transitions were associated with lucid dreaming. However, neither self-assessed sleep quality nor physiologically measured numbers of awakenings showed an association. The findings suggest a nuanced relationship, where certain types of sleep fragmentation, but not all, may relate to lucid dreaming, and the authors discuss possible causal mechanisms.
Consciousness and cognition
September 1, 2015
John M De Castro
23 citations
People who engage in meditation, yoga, or contemplative prayer—alone or in combination—report greater mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences. The amount of time spent practicing, rather than the specific pattern or social setting, appears to drive these benefits. Meditation shows the strongest links to these outcomes and may underlie the associations seen with yoga and prayer. The findings suggest that contemplative practices primarily enhance real-time awareness and appreciation of sensory and perceptual experiences, which may serve as a bridge between different practices and the observed improvements in mindfulness, kundalini effects, and mystical experiences.
Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2024
Jarrod A Gott, Sina Stücker, Philipp Kanske et al.
22 citations
Acetylcholine, a neurotransmitter involved in cognition and REM sleep regulation, may play a role in lucid dreaming—a state where metacognitive awareness returns during sleep. Recent studies using acetylcholinesterase inhibitors suggest a link, but the causal mechanisms remain unknown. This review examines theories connecting acetylcholine and metacognition across wakefulness and sleep, analyzing the phenomenon at microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic levels. It develops exploratory hypotheses to guide future research on how acetylcholine receptor activity affects metacognition.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2020
Timothy Joseph Lane
22 citations
The concept of a minimal self (MS), understood as the sheer sense of 'for-me-ness' of experience, has long been considered necessary for consciousness but lacked empirical support. Recent discovery of the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN) provides a starting point for neuroimaging investigations of MS. New experimental protocols targeting states where consciousness is lost and recovered—such as Unresponsive Wakefulness Syndrome, NREM sleep, and general anesthesia—offer evidence that self and consciousness can dissociate, and that MS might be a necessary precondition for conscious experience. These findings also suggest that the concept of 'levels of consciousness' may have a legitimate role in a mature science of consciousness.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2012
Brian Talbot
21 citations
Folk intuitions about mental states, often used by philosophers to study qualia and phenomenal consciousness, do not actually provide reliable data about these subjects. The paper argues that judgments in experiments by Justin Sytsma and Edouard Machery are likely produced by a fast, automatic cognitive system (System One) that would yield the same results regardless of whether phenomenal consciousness exists. This undermines much current experimental philosophy research into consciousness. To meaningfully investigate phenomenal consciousness, experimental philosophy must be grounded in a better understanding of how people make judgments.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2020
Cloé Blanchette-Carrière, Sarah-Hélène Julien, Claudia Picard-Deland et al.
20 citations
The neurophysiological basis of self-awareness during sleep (lucid dreaming) is still poorly understood. Previous work suggested that transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) during sleep could increase dream self-awareness, but methodological flaws in those studies motivated a new investigation. In the current study, both tACS and a sham procedure were associated with signal-verified and self-rated lucid dreams, indicating that situational factors, rather than the stimulation itself, may be critical for inducing self-awareness during sleep.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2004
L Andrew Coward, Ron Sun
20 citations
A rigorous scientific theory of consciousness requires a modular hierarchy of descriptions, similar to that used in electronic systems, where causal relationships at a phenomenological level are derived from simpler entities at more detailed levels. The causal relationships defining access and phenomenal consciousness are made explicit and linked to perception, memory, and skill learning. Extending these to physiological and neural levels is discussed. The capability of current consciousness models to support such a hierarchy is reviewed, with two models compared in detail.
Consciousness and cognition
April 1, 2019
Alan Jurgens, Michael D. Kirchhoff
18 citations
The paper argues against the cognitivist view that social cognition is realized solely inside the head. It develops an enactive account in which embodied, face-to-face interaction plays a constitutive, not merely causal, role in social understanding. The authors first explain how diachronic embodied engagement can constitute social cognition. They then refute the causal-constitutive fallacy objection by showing that the constitution–causation distinction does not map onto an internal–external divide. A second objection—the poverty of the interactional stimulus argument—claims that anticipation requires an internal model or tacit theory. The paper dissolves this by proposing that anticipatory processes can be orchestrated and maintained by sensorimotor couplings between interacting individuals.
Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2022
Benjamin Baird, Mariel Kalkach Aparicio, Tariq Alauddin et al.
17 citations
Spontaneous episodic thoughts about the past and future are common during waking but rarely occur during N2 or REM sleep. Analysis of thought reports from 138 participants who underwent experience-sampling while awake and serial awakenings during sleep shows that waking spontaneous thought frequently includes autobiographical planning with a strong bias toward the future. In contrast, dreaming sleep states rarely feature such mental time travel. This suggests that human consciousness differs substantially across the sleep-wake cycle in how it typically engages with episodic past and future events.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2023
Fiona G Sleight, Steven Jay Lynn, Richard E Mattson et al.
16 citations
A new 10-item Ego Dissolution Scale (EDS) reliably measures trait-like tendencies toward losing one's sense of self and experiencing unity, with internal consistency (Cronbach's α = 0.80) and subfactors for Ego-Loss (α = 0.84) and Unity (α = 0.75). The scale shows strong convergent validity with depersonalization, derealization, mysticism, and unusual experiences, and discriminant validity against neuroticism and social desirability. Ego dissolution and dissociation are empirically related but statistically distinguishable.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2021
Tim Julian Möller, Yasmin Kim Georgie, Guido Schillaci et al.
16 citations
Self-disorders are increasingly seen as the root cause of schizophrenia, not merely a symptom. This aligns with philosophical views of an enactive self, formed through action and interaction. The authors analyze definitions of the self and evaluate computational theories, particularly Bayesian and predictive processing approaches, for modeling the active self. They assess the implementation and challenges of these models in computational psychiatry and cognitive developmental robotics. Embodied robotic systems are described as valuable tools for assessing, validating, and simulating mechanisms of self-disorders, especially those involving sensorimotor learning, prediction, and self-other distinction. This link offers insights into self-formation and new avenues for treating psychiatric disorders.