Cognitive science
August 1, 2011
Berit Brogaard
59 citations
The dissociation hypothesis by Milner and Goodale is often interpreted as dividing visual processing into two streams: a dorsal stream for unconscious action and a ventral stream for conscious perception. Evidence from blindsight and studies showing that illusions affect action suggests a more complex tripartite division: unconscious vision for action, conscious vision for perception, and unconscious vision for perception, leaving out conscious vision for action. The author argues that despite evidence that conscious vision can influence action, we cannot access dorsal stream representations cognitively, and these representations do not correlate with phenomenal consciousness, supporting the tripartite view.
Cognitive science
April 1, 2019
Heng Li, Yu Cao
13 citations
Right-handed Tibetan Bön practitioners, whose religion explicitly associates the left side with goodness, still implicitly associate positive ideas with their dominant right side, just as English speakers do. This supports the Body-Specificity Hypothesis, which holds that people link positive valence to the side of space where their dominant hand acts more fluently. The study shows that implicit space-valence mappings are shaped by bodily experience rather than by cultural conventions that favor the left.
Cognitive science
December 1, 2024
Eleanor Schille-Hudson, Kara Weisman, Tanya M Luhrmann
11 citations
Prayer, a common practice across many religions, changes not only how people feel or think but also what they perceive. Across three studies with thousands of participants from five cultures, more daily time spent in prayer is associated with more frequent reports of sensory and perceptual experiences interpreted as evidence of a god or spirit. Prayer most strongly relates to everyday events like dreams or strong emotions that feel not self-generated but caused by a deity. Prayer also relates to anomalous experiences such as voices and a sensed presence, but not to more dramatic events like possession, out-of-body experiences, or sleep paralysis. These results suggest that repeated practices can shape perception.
Cognitive science
May 1, 2024
Dylan Ludwig, Muhammad Ali Khalidi
8 citations
ASMR, a sensory-emotional experience first named in online forums, shows mounting psychological and neural evidence of a consistent set of triggers, experiential properties, and downstream effects. Psychological instruments now measure it. Despite its nonscientific origins, ASMR is a good candidate for being a real kind in cognitive sciences due to a robust causal profile and possible adaptive evolutionary history. Understanding its distinctive phenomenal experience can illuminate the functions of consciousness and challenge certain cognitive theories. ASMR warrants more extensive scientific investigation, including potential therapeutic applications.
Cognitive science
March 1, 2025
Christian R De Weerd, Leonard Dung
4 citations
Evolutionary arguments alone cannot confirm or falsify hypotheses about consciousness; consciousness science must rely primarily on experimental and observational evidence from humans and other animals alive today. The authors argue against "evolution-first" approaches that treat evolutionary considerations as the primary lens for assessing consciousness. Using Walter Veit's account as an example, they contend such approaches lack compelling empirical support. While evolutionary thinking can help advance consciousness research, it should not be foundational for hypothesis justification, though it may still play a role in hypothesis generation.
Cognitive science
February 1, 2026
Julian Hauser
Self-representation can involve different types of properties—spatial, temporal, bodily, or mental. This work argues that a distinction from spatial cognition, between egocentric and allocentric forms of representation, also applies to how other properties are represented. Using examples from animal cognition and developmental psychology, the author shows that creatures allocentrically represent their temporal, bodily, and cognitive properties. These allocentric representations are minimal self-representations: they differentiate the system from other objects or its actual from merely possible properties, are directly linked to behavior and sensation, and are immune to error through misidentification. Different creatures may self-represent more or fewer kinds of property, with more substantive forms requiring integrated minimal self-representations of the right kinds.