Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2012
E G Milán, O Iborra, M Hochel et al.
15 citations
Some synaesthetes see colors triggered by emotionally charged stimuli such as familiar faces. One participant, R, describes seeing a human silhouette filled with color when viewing a familiar person. These subjective reports resemble descriptions of seeing auras. The authors analyze reports from four synaesthetes who experience colors in response to faces and figures, comparing them with descriptions of auras from esoteric literature. The discrepancies indicate that synaesthetic face-color perception and claimed auric perception are phenomenologically and behaviorally different.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 1998
J G Taylor
15 citations
A theoretical paper examines how certain neural network features in the cerebral cortex might help bridge the explanatory gap between phenomenal consciousness and correlated brain activity. The authors propose criteria that neural activity must meet to be associated with phenomenal consciousness, review various neural processing styles, and identify one style—semiautonomous, long-lasting cortical activity "bubbles" triggered by input—as the best fit. Further experimental criteria narrow the candidate neural models, leading to a specific class of models and a set of testable predictions about the neural underpinnings of phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2020
Remington Mallett
14 citations
Lucid dreamers can often control dream events, but the limits of that control are unclear. In this study, participants briefly viewed a real-world scene and then, while lucid dreaming, tried to change their dream scenery to match that scene. Even when dreamers were aware during the dream that their reinstatement was inaccurate, the dream imagery remained incorrect. This dissociation between memory access and dream imagery indicates that detailed control over dream content is limited, despite the ability to broadly change the dream environment. The findings suggest that reinstating waking contexts during lucid sleep can be a method for studying sleep, dreams, and memory.
Consciousness and cognition
February 1, 2025
Anusha Garg, Shivang Shelat, Madeleine E Gross et al.
13 citations
Thinking aloud while letting the mind wander does not substantially alter the stream of consciousness compared to thinking silently. In two studies with 111 and 102 participants, people who verbalized their ongoing thoughts showed no significant differences in meta-awareness or how often their topics shifted. Of 21 thought qualities and 18 content topics examined, only three qualities (private thoughts, mind blanking, and session difficulty) and one topic (partner, intimacy, love, and sexual matters) differed between conditions. Cognitive load also did not differ. The findings indicate that the Think Aloud method is a reliable and minimally reactive tool for studying the natural flow of thoughts in task-absent settings.
Consciousness and cognition
September 1, 2011
Erica Cosentino
13 citations
The narrative self, or extended self, is not a linguistic construction but is created by mental time travel—the ability to mentally project backward to relive past events or forward to anticipate future ones. Narrative language itself arises from a core brain network that includes mental time travel, mindreading, and visuo-spatial systems, rather than being the source of the narrative self. This challenges the common view that language constructs the narrative self.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2020
K Appel, S Füllhase, S Kern et al.
12 citations
Lucid dreams, where the dreamer is aware they are dreaming, are hard to induce in people without prior experience in a sleep laboratory. By simplifying a previous induction protocol, twenty naïve subjects spent one or two nights in a sleep lab. After about six hours of sleep, they were woken during REM sleep, performed cognitive tasks, and returned to bed. Ten subjects reported a lucid dream in the subsequent sleep period, and eight of these gave a predefined eye signal visible in the electrooculogram during REM sleep. The simplified protocol successfully replicated earlier results.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2024
Nicholas K Canby, Jared Lindahl, Willoughby B Britton et al.
11 citations
Experiences like mystical states, non-dual awareness, selflessness, and ego dissolution are increasingly studied in meditation and psychedelic research, but their definitions and measures often overlap and lack precision, especially regarding pathological experiences. In a survey of 386 people who reported an experience involving a loss of self or self-boundaries, researchers used statistical and qualitative methods to identify 16 distinct characteristics of such experiences. These included different types of changes in sense of self, accompanying phenomena, and cognitive or emotional responses. The results provide a more specific model for measuring and describing these experiences across contexts like meditation, psychedelics, and psychopathology.
Consciousness and cognition
August 1, 2019
Lachlan Kent, George Van Doorn, Britt Klein
11 citations
A hierarchical framework for consciousness is proposed that parallels factorial models of cognition and intelligence. Using temporal extension as a dimension—similar to how psychology organizes memory into short-term, long-term, and long-lasting—the analysis fits memory and time consciousness along the same logarithmic scale for timescales under 100 seconds. Different forms of time consciousness, such as experience, wakefulness, and self-consciousness, are embedded within ascending timescales of memory modes. A second dimension integrates higher-order consciousness and emotion with memory and cognition, aligning with existing theories of cognitive and emotional intelligence.
Consciousness and cognition
April 1, 2018
Sara Dell'Erba, David J Brown, Michael J Proulx
11 citations
A case report describes the experience of a congenitally blind individual, BP, after using LSD. BP reported no visual hallucinations, but instead experienced novel sensory alterations in other functioning senses, consistent with synthetic synesthesia and crossmodal correspondences. The absence of visual hallucinations and the low rates of psychosis observed in the congenitally blind population suggest that acquired visual experiences may be necessary for visual-like hallucinations, and that psychedelic-induced synesthesia can manifest through non-visual modalities.
Consciousness and cognition
March 1, 2009
Elizabeth Schier
11 citations
Phenomenal consciousness may be independent of access, and one way to test this is by looking for isomorphisms between phenomenal and neural activation spaces. Using verbal reports to map phenomenal spaces does not undermine this methodology, because mapping activation and phenomenal space through different means does not preclude their identification. The paper concludes by considering how empirical data could address this theoretical question.
Consciousness and cognition
June 1, 2009
Elizabeth Irvine
10 citations
A critique argues that claims by Block and Snodgrass about phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness, based on signal detection theory analysis of qualitative difference paradigms like exclusion failure, are unwarranted. Partial cognitive access, not a total lack, can explain exclusion failure results. Snodgrass's Objective Threshold/Strategic model relies on a problematic 'enable' approach that denies intentional control of unconscious perception and effects of task instructions on phenomenal consciousness. Many of Block's examples also depend on this approach. Qualitative difference paradigms may index only a subset of access consciousness, so they cannot isolate phenomenal consciousness, and attempts to do so face serious methodological problems.
Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2023
Salvatore G Chiarella, Luca Simione, Monia D'Angiò et al.
9 citations
Selective attention produces both costs and benefits in iconic memory and fragile visual short-term memory, which are linked to phenomenal consciousness. In three experiments using a retro-cue paradigm, attentional costs disrupted visual maintenance at longer delays. Reducing the memory array exposure from 250 ms to 100 ms prevented participants from selecting objects based on their priorities, indicating a bottom-up factor. A pattern mask presented before transfer to visual working memory reduced overall performance but preserved the priority effect. These findings suggest that fragile-VSTM and iconic memory play distinct roles in feature-based attentional selection, with implications for phenomenal consciousness before conscious access.
Consciousness and cognition
February 1, 2024
Aleš Oblak, Oskar Dragan, Anka Slana Ozimič et al.
8 citations
Working memory is usually measured with psychological tasks that focus on the reliability of outcomes rather than how participants experience the tasks. This study replicated protocols for investigating the lived experience of working memory using a visual span task. Eighteen healthy participants aged 21 to 35 provided subjective reports. Working memory was phenomenologically characterized at three time scales: background feelings, strategies, and tactics. At the level of tactics, transmodality—the transformation of one modality of lived experience into another—was identified as the central dynamic during task performance.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2021
Shaghayegh Konjedi, Reza Maleeh
8 citations
The dynamic framework of mind wandering, which views it as a spontaneous thought phenomenon, is revised by adding the concept of mindful meta-awareness. This integration changes the framework in two key ways: meta-awareness alters how thoughts relate to constraints, so the original criteria for mind wandering no longer apply, and lucid dreaming can be seen as unguided thought that still relies on deliberate constraints. The modified framework may aid in treating mental disorders involving altered spontaneous thought, such as depression and nightmares.
Consciousness and cognition
September 1, 2022
Hilary J Grimmer, Ruben E Laukkonen, Anna Freydenzon et al.
6 citations
False insights—moments of sudden, incorrect understanding—can be triggered in anyone under the right conditions, not just people prone to psychosis or delusional thinking. In an experiment with 200 participants who completed an adapted version of the FIAT paradigm, which elicits false 'Aha' moments for unsolvable anagrams, no association was found between these experimentally induced false insights and measures of schizotypy, need for cognition, jumping to conclusions, aberrant salience, faith in intuition, or cognitive reflection. The findings suggest that experiencing false insights may be a general human phenomenon rather than a marker of particular thinking styles or psychosis proneness.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2025
Andy Mckilliam, Manuela Kirberg
5 citations
Mental imagery has traditionally been considered a conscious experience, but recent findings suggest it can occur unconsciously. People with aphantasia, who report no conscious imagery, often perform similarly to controls on imagery-requiring tasks, show imagery-based priming, and exhibit imagery-related neural activity in visual cortex. However, investigating unconscious imagery faces challenges: ensuring imagery is genuinely unconscious rather than unreported due to response biases, and clarifying how imagistic or indirect perceptual processing must be to qualify as imagery. This paper examines the evidence, argues it is less compelling than initially appears, and proposes a strategy for advancing research.
Consciousness and cognition
April 1, 2025
Iraklis Pantazis, Marc Wittmann
5 citations
A crossover study with 34 participants found that 60 minutes of Floatation-REST (floating in a dark, quiet tank of thermoneutral salt water) produced significantly weaker body boundaries, greater time distortion, and more relaxation compared to Bed-REST. After floating, participants reported a stronger afterglow, more state mindfulness, and greater interoceptive awareness. Relaxation during floating fully explained the afterglow effect in a mediation analysis. These results align with psychedelic research, suggesting Floatation-REST can elicit similar afterglow experiences.
Consciousness and cognition
November 1, 2024
Benjamin Kozuch
5 citations
A new method for evaluating theories of consciousness uses evidence from complementary domains: neuroscientific evidence to judge philosophical theories and vice versa. The approach works when a neuroscientific and a philosophical theory are conceptually linked, so evidence confirming or disconfirming one can apply to the other. Applying this method to leading theories—including first- and second-order representationalism and theories emphasizing the prefrontal cortex's role—yields conclusions about their relative support. The method aims to improve how evidence is brought to bear on theories across disciplines.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2022
Moo-Rung Loo, Shih-Kuen Cheng
5 citations
People who frequently have lucid dreams—awareness of being in a dream—tend to be better at telling the difference between memories of real events and memories of imagined events. In one experiment with 31 college students, higher dream lucidity correlated with better performance on a reality monitoring test. A second experiment with 109 participants found that those with more lucid dreams showed smaller differences in sensory details between memories of perceived and imagined events. These results suggest that frequent lucid dreamers have a superior ability to distinguish external from internal experiences, which may help protect against reality monitoring errors.
Consciousness and cognition
January 1, 2022
Sepehrdad Rahimian
5 citations
The author argues that leading theories of consciousness fail to explain subjective experience because they rest on mistaken assumptions, creating a conflict between standard scientific methods and folk psychological notions. This cognitive dissonance blocks progress. Illusionism—the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion—is presented as the only viable framework for a scientific study of consciousness. Even if alternatives like panpsychism eventually prove correct, the author contends that the route to them must pass through Illusionism first.
Consciousness and cognition
September 1, 2021
Asger Kirkeby-Hinrup, Peter Fazekas
5 citations
A new inference to the best explanation (IBE) process is proposed for comparing theories of consciousness based on empirical support. The process has four steps: Assimilate, Compile, Validate, and Compare. Most work so far has focused on assimilation. To demonstrate feasibility, the authors compile a complete collection of empirical evidence for the distinction between access consciousness (A-Consciousness) and phenomenal consciousness (P-Consciousness) and the overflow hypothesis. They also validate the interpretation of aphantasics' performance on retro-cue paradigms, which has been used to support the overflow hypothesis. This compilation is the first step toward enabling side-by-side comparisons of theories and the empirical phenomena they explain.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2020
Eyal Alef Ophir, Guido Hesselmann, Dominique Lamy
5 citations
The attentional blink is a limitation in perceiving two events close in time. Three experiments disentangled the roles of spatial attention, conscious perception, and working memory in causing this blink. Allocating spatial attention to the first target (T1) was neither necessary nor sufficient for eliciting a blink, but consciously perceiving T1 was necessary yet not sufficient. When T1 was task irrelevant, conscious perception triggered a blink only when T1 matched the attentional set for the second target (T2). The authors conclude that consciously perceiving a task-relevant event causes the blink, possibly because it triggers encoding into working memory, with implications for the distinction between access and phenomenal consciousness.
Consciousness and cognition
May 1, 2025
Ishan Singhal, Nisheeth Srivastava
4 citations
Mental imagery unfolds at distinct timescales, with imagined contents being sluggish but more stable than visual perception. A large cohort (N = 827) completed six tasks recreating aspects of their imagination, revealing that temporal features of imagination can be accounted for by two factors: temporal ability and stability of mental imagery. Both imagination and perception share a common constraint: maintaining identically sized temporal windows of conscious experience.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2024
Karen R Konkoly, Nathan W Whitmore, Remington Mallett et al.
4 citations
A smartphone-based procedure called Targeted Lucidity Reactivation (TLR) can increase lucid dreaming without requiring laboratory equipment. In two experiments, participants reported more lucid dreams when they received sounds during REM sleep that they had heard during pre-sleep training, compared to a prior week without TLR or to blinded control procedures on alternate nights. The findings indicate that the sounds strengthen a link formed during training between the cues and a mindset of carefully analyzing one's current experience, which carries into dreams and boosts lucidity.
Consciousness and cognition
October 1, 2021
Camilo Miguel Signorelli, Quanlong Wang, Bob Coecke
4 citations
A mathematical framework using the graphical calculus of process theories (symmetric monoidal categories with Frobenius algebras) provides an ontologically neutral language to model aspects of consciousness. A toy example demonstrates how this axiomatic approach recovers features of conscious experience, including the distinction between external and internal subjective perspectives, the privacy or unreadability of personal subjective experience, and phenomenal unity—a key challenge for scientific studies of consciousness. These features emerge naturally from the compositional structure of the calculus.