Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2020
Johnjoe Mcfadden
152 citations
Consciousness represents bound or integrated information, but nearly all examples of so-called 'integrated information'—including neuronal processing and conventional computing—are only temporally integrated, meaning outputs correlate with multiple inputs over time rather than being physically integrated in space. Only energy fields can integrate information spatially. The conscious electromagnetic information (cemi) field theory proposes that consciousness is physically integrated, causally active information encoded in the brain's global electromagnetic field, implementing algorithms in space rather than time. The theory accounts for most observed features of consciousness, has recent experimental support, makes untested predictions, and implies a scientific dualism rooted in the difference between matter and energy.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2021
Lars Sandved-Smith, Casper Hesp, Jérémie Mattout et al.
116 citations
Meta-awareness, the ability to notice the current content of consciousness, is crucial for controlling cognitive states like directing attention. This paper models meta-awareness and attentional control using hierarchical active inference, treating mental actions as policy choices over higher-level cognitive states. A further hierarchical level represents meta-awareness states that modulate the expected confidence in the mapping between observations and hidden cognitive states. Simulations of mind-wandering during a sustained selective attention task illustrate how this inferential architecture enables accessing and controlling cognitive states, offering a computational foundation for a phenomenology of mental action and self-monitoring.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2016
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yochai Ataria, Stephen Fulder et al.
100 citations
The sense of being a self separate from the world can vary in intensity, is linked to specific brain activity, and can be altered through meditation. A long-term meditation practitioner deliberately produced three mental states with different degrees of self-boundary experience while undergoing magnetoencephalography. The results were partly confirmed in ten other experienced meditators. Right-lateralized beta oscillations in the temporo-parietal junction, which supports the unity of self and body, and in the medial parietal cortex, a key self-representation area, were implicated. The graded, flexible nature of self-specific processes may have clinical relevance for people with disturbed self-boundaries.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2022
Axel Cleeremans, Catherine Tallon-Baudry
97 citations
Consciousness is not a mere byproduct of brain activity but has a function: subjective experience carries intrinsic value that motivates action. The authors propose the 'phenomenal worthiness' hypothesis, arguing that agents act because they experience and care about those experiences. This value-laden quality allows comparison of different experiences in a unified, subject-centered space, explaining why consciousness feels unified. If phenomenal experience has intrinsic value, then consciousness must have a function, making the hard problem of consciousness more tractable by reframing it as a problem about function.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2024
Clara Colombatto, Stephen M Fleming
71 citations
A majority of a sample of 300 US residents were willing to attribute some possibility of phenomenal consciousness—subjective experiences like feelings and sensations—to large language models. These attributions were robust, predicting attributions of mental states typically linked to phenomenality, but also flexible, as they varied with individual differences such as how often participants used the technology. The findings suggest that folk intuitions about AI consciousness can diverge from expert views, with potential implications for the legal and ethical treatment of AI.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2021
Francesco Ellia, Jeremiah Hendren, Matteo Grasso et al.
61 citations
Subjective experience can be objectively explained in physical terms by moving beyond cognitive functions and understanding how experience is structured. Integrated information theory provides a framework to account for both the essential properties of every experience and the specific properties that make particular experiences feel the way they do, avoiding the fallacy that only objective properties should be explained by science.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2022
Joachim Bellet, Marion Gay, Abhilash Dwarakanath et al.
57 citations
Neuronal populations in the macaque prefrontal cortex (PFC) reliably encode visual stimuli even under conditions that challenge conscious perception and reduce post-perceptual processing. Recordings from the ventrolateral PFC during isolated trials and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) showed that stimulus identity could be decoded from population activity, with first signals at 60 ms and peak information at 150 ms. In RSVP, decoding accuracy dropped to chance by 200 ms as the next stimulus became decodable. Decoding in ventrolateral PFC was stronger than in posterior parietal cortex. The findings indicate PFC encodes visual information under conditions that limit conscious access and post-perceptual elaboration, raising questions about whether this reflects conscious access, phenomenal consciousness, or preconscious bottom-up processing.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2017
Tore Nielsen
57 citations
Sleep onset normally happens quickly and without notice, but in the lab it reveals how waking, perceptually grounded consciousness shifts into the hallucinatory simulations of dreaming. This review focuses on imagery during the sleep-onset transition—especially "microdreams"—as an alternative to studying dreaming in the traditional sleep lab. Preliminary work on microdream phenomenology has helped classify dreaming's core features (the "oneiragogic spectrum"), assess multiple memory inputs ("multi-temporal memory sources"), identify two new imagery types ("autosensory imagery" and "exosensory imagery"), and embed microdreaming in a "multisensory integration approach." These efforts may clarify dream neurophysiology and dreaming's role in memory consolidation, and advance the neuroscience of consciousness.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2023
Oryan Zacks, Eva Jablonka
45 citations
The Global Neuronal Workspace theory, which links consciousness to cognitive functions like perception and memory, aligns with the Unlimited Associative Learning theory that describes minimal consciousness. However, applying these models to basal vertebrates requires significant adjustments based on brain evolution. Comparative evidence indicates that in these vertebrates, the workspace is implemented by the event memory system in the hippocampal homolog. This offers testable predictions about hippocampal and cortical roles, the evolutionary link between memory and consciousness, and the development of unified perception.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2021
George Deane
38 citations
A predictive processing account of consciousness is proposed, grounded in active inference, which holds that phenomenal consciousness arises from 'subjective valuation'—a deep inference about the precision of self-evidencing outcomes of action. The account aims to inform the attribution of consciousness to non-human systems via their deep self-models and sensory attenuation mechanisms. An objection from psychedelic-induced ego-dissolution states is considered; such states do not undermine the theory but instead corroborate subjective valuation as constitutive of experience, highlighting psychedelic research's potential for consciousness science and computational psychiatry.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2020
William Wong, Valdas Noreika, Levente Móró et al.
35 citations
In a test of whether brain activity alone can reveal when someone is dreaming, researchers used an unsupervised machine learning classifier to distinguish dreamful from dreamless sleep based on EEG spectral power and electrode location. Nine participants contributed 54 one-minute polysomnograms from non-rapid eye movement sleep—27 with dreams and 27 without. A blinded Analysis Team attempted to classify each recording over five iterations with gradually reduced blindness. At no stage did the classifier perform significantly better than chance, indicating that EEG spectral power features could not reliably detect signatures of phenomenal consciousness in this dataset.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Michael C Wiest
22 citations
Recent experimental evidence indicates that inhalational anesthetics target intraneuronal microtubules, supporting the hypothesis that consciousness arises from a collective quantum state of microtubules, as predicted by the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory. Evidence also shows functionally relevant quantum effects in microtubules at room temperature and a macroscopic quantum entangled state in the living human brain correlated with conscious state and working memory. The quantum model makes panprotopsychism a viable solution to the hard problem by solving the binding problem, but raises an epiphenomenalism problem. The author proposes the quantum approach can solve this, and the Orch OR theory accounts for nonalgorithmic understanding and the psychological arrow of time.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2023
Sidath Rankaduwa, Adrian M Owen
21 citations
The entropic brain theory (EBT) explains how psychedelics alter brain activity by increasing brain entropy, offering insights into both normal and altered states of consciousness. This theory has implications for debates about whether consciousness exists in levels or dimensions, whether the psychedelic state represents a higher level of consciousness, and whether psychedelics could treat disorders of consciousness such as minimally conscious or vegetative states. The article summarizes EBT's core principles and their relevance to a theoretical model of consciousness, emphasizing that the therapeutic value of psychedelics for such patients depends on set and setting.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2021
Matteo Grasso, Andrew M Haun, Giulio Tononi
20 citations
A grid-like neural network representing posterior cortical areas can perform the same fixation function as a map-like pretectal circuit, but only the grid-like network's cause-effect structure, as analyzed by Integrated Information Theory, accounts for the subjective experience of space as extended. Standard functional analysis explains what the model does—encoding, decoding, and triggering eye movements—but cannot explain why a human fixating a stimulus would also see it at a location. The map-like network, lacking lateral connections, is functionally equivalent yet cannot account for the phenomenal properties of space.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Christopher Timmermann, James W Sanders, David Reydellet et al.
19 citations
The psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT can, in its most extreme cases, produce a complete absence of self-experience and other perceptual content while preserving a quality of aroused, waking awareness. In an exploratory observational study in naturalistic ceremonial settings, micro-phenomenological interviews, questionnaires, and EEG recordings revealed a dynamic progression of effects, including variable disruptions of bodily and narrative self, reduced phenomenal distinctions, and visual imagery. EEG showed global alpha and posterior beta power reductions, suggesting inhibition of top-down brain models. The findings indicate 5-MeO-DMT's potential as a pharmacological model for deconstructed consciousness, though retrospective questionnaires have limitations.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Adam Safron, Arthur Juliani, Nicco Reggente et al.
13 citations
Psychedelics profoundly impact brain and mind by altering belief systems. The REBUS model proposes that 5-HT2a receptor agonism relaxes prior expectations, enabling new perspectives. An alternative but compatible view, ALBUS (Altered Beliefs Under Psychedelics), suggests that at very high levels of 5-HT2a agonism, opposite effects may occur—synchronous neural activity becomes more powerful, leading to strengthened beliefs (SEBUS). These strengthened beliefs align with enhanced meaning-making in psychedelic therapy, hallucinations, and delusional thinking. ALBUS proposes that the balance between REBUS and SEBUS effects varies across the dose-response curve. Psychedelic experiences are described as waking dream states with varying lucidity, involving mechanisms of conscious perceptual synthesis, dreaming, and episodic memory.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2024
Xu Ji, Eric Elmoznino, George Deane et al.
13 citations
Conscious experiences feel rich and hard to fully describe or recall, a puzzle that partly motivates the explanatory gap—the belief that consciousness cannot be reduced to physical processes. This work offers an information-theoretic dynamical systems framework: richness corresponds to the amount of information in a conscious state, and ineffability to information lost during processing. Attractor dynamics in working memory cause impoverished recollections, language's discrete symbolic nature cannot capture high-dimensional experiential structure, and similar cognitive function between individuals improves communicability. The model advances a physicalist explanation of these puzzling aspects, though it may not settle all questions about the explanatory gap.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2023
Lena Lindström, Philippe Goldin, Johan Mårtensson et al.
12 citations
People who report a stronger sense of self-boundarylessness—feeling less distinct from the surrounding world—tend to endorse words related to fluidity more strongly and take longer on a math task. Brain imaging shows that during mind-wandering, boundarylessness is linked to less activity in the posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. Interestingly, both low and high boundarylessness, compared to moderate levels, are associated with greater connectivity within the default mode network at rest, less activity in the medial prefrontal cortex when processing self-related words, and lower endorsement of words related to constancy. Directing attention to the center of experience activates brain regions similar to meditation onset, regardless of meditation experience.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Lars Sandved-Smith, Juan Diego Bogotá, Jakob Hohwy et al.
10 citations
A computational formalism called deep parametric active inference, rooted in Bayesian mechanics, can bridge first-person phenomenological accounts of experience and third-person physiological measurements, fulfilling the neurophenomenology programme's goal of mutual constraints. The dual information geometry of Bayesian mechanics allows generative passage between lived experience and its neural instantiation under certain conditions. This paper argues that incorporating trained reflective awareness into empirical protocols yields incremental explanatory gains, shifting focus from the contents of experience to the how of experience—the activities of consciousness that constitute meaningful appearance. The resulting deep computational neurophenomenology gains explanatory power from disciplined circulation between perspectives, enabled by generative models that form beliefs about their own modelling parameters.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Yoav Schweitzer, Ohad Nave et al.
10 citations
Meditators' brains show acceptance rather than denial when processing death-related stimuli linked to the self, as measured by a magnetoencephalogram visual mismatch-response (vMMR) paradigm. This neural shift corresponds with increased self-reported well-being and is associated with positively valenced experiences of self-dissolution during meditation. The findings suggest that the brain's defensive response to mortality is not fixed but can be reduced through insight meditation grounded in mindful awareness, which trains acceptance of impermanence. The results also indicate that addressing mortality concerns is important when interventions may disrupt self-consciousness.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2025
Daniel A Atad, Pedro A M Mediano, Fernando E Rosas et al.
10 citations
A scoping review of neural complexity in meditation finds that, during meditation, brain activity shows higher complexity compared to waking rest or mind-wandering, while regular meditation practice is associated with decreased baseline complexity as a long-term trait. The review disentangles different families of complexity measures, distinguishes short-term state effects from long-term trait effects, and considers differences among meditation styles. It provides a framework to guide debates and offers practical guidelines for future research on complexity and consciousness.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2024
André Sevenius Nilsen, Alessandro Arena, Johan F Storm
10 citations
In rats under propofol, sevoflurane, and ketamine anesthesia, the perturbational complexity index (PCI) and two spontaneous EEG measures—Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZ) and geometric integrated information (ΦG)—best distinguished awake from anesthetized states for propofol and sevoflurane. However, PCI was anti-correlated with spontaneous measures of integrated information, which increased during propofol and sevoflurane anesthesia, contrary to expectations. The divergence suggests anesthesia disrupts global cortico-cortical information transfer, while spontaneous activity suggests the opposite, possibly due to suppressed encoding specificity or driving subcortical projections. Perturbation-based and spontaneous measures may be complementary for studying altered consciousness.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2024
Charlotte Grégoire, Corine Sombrun, Philippe Lenaif et al.
10 citations
Two Western trance practices, auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT) and Mahorikatan® trance (MT), both derived from traditional shamanic training, share core phenomenological features such as emotional expression, perceptual changes, a feeling of unicity, and expanded consciousness. AICT participants commonly reported body movements, vocalizations, increased creativity, visions of entities or places, and interaction with the environment, while MT participants commonly reported body dissolution. Most participants in both groups reported positive effects on personal life. The findings characterize the similarities and differences between these trance states and suggest further research into their potential clinical applications.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2020
Tehseen Noorani, Ben Alderson-Day
8 citations
Carhart-Harris and Friston's REBUS model applies predictive processing to explain how psychedelics alter brain function, offering a foundation for psychedelic psychiatry. The present authors commend this work but argue it underemphasizes contextual factors that shape extreme experiences and their outcomes. They also suggest that the comparisons made with certain non-psychedelic altered states miss more informative parallels elsewhere. Addressing these points would help identify the most relevant mechanisms of action in psychedelic experiences.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2019
Jennifer M Windt
8 citations
A commentary on Nielsen's proposal that microdreams—experiences during the earliest stages of sleep onset—can reveal how dream imagery forms. The author examines microdreams through simulation views, which define dreaming as an immersive virtual-world experience centered on a virtual self, and evaluates expanding the oneiragogic spectrum to include kinesis. The conclusion is that although some microdreams may not qualify as minimal dreams, studying them can address key questions in dream research and may offer a distinct route to full dreaming.