Trends in cognitive sciences
July 1, 2010
Sid Kouider, Vincent De Gardelle, Jérôme Sackur et al.
477 citations
Current theories distinguish phenomenal consciousness (rich experience) from access consciousness (limited reportable content). The authors argue that evidence for phenomenal consciousness without access is weak, often confusing unconscious contents or illusory richness with genuine phenomenal experience. They propose a refined account where access operates across a hierarchy of representational levels, with partial awareness allowing independent access to lower and higher levels. This reframing of dissociable forms of consciousness into dissociable levels of access offers a more parsimonious explanation of existing evidence, and the illusion of rich phenomenology can be studied through testable cognitive mechanisms.
Trends in cognitive sciences
September 1, 2014
Ned Block
125 citations
A new technique suggests that people can consciously perceive more items at once than can be held in visual working memory. The method exploits unattended 'ensemble properties' that can be detected without reducing working memory capacity, offering a way to study phenomenal consciousness beyond memory limits.
Trends in cognitive sciences
June 1, 1998
M Kurthen, T Grunwald, C E Elger
20 citations
The explanatory gap between brain processes and phenomenal consciousness may be resolvable if consciousness is understood as a non-intrinsic, description-dependent property. The author argues that neither current neuroscience nor philosophy alone can bridge this gap, but that new neuroscientific descriptions could change the features of consciousness itself, making the gap disappear. Neuroscientists should continue studying neural correlates of consciousness rather than trying to refute the gap argument.
Trends in cognitive sciences
March 12, 2025
Thomas Andrillon, Antoine Lutz, Jennifer Windt et al.
14 citations
Moments during wakefulness that seem empty of any reportable thought, called mind blanking (MB), are not simply gaps in experience but distinct mental states with their own characteristics. This review maps MB by examining how people report it, its brain activity, and its links to related phenomena such as meditation and sleep. The authors propose that ongoing experience varies in richness, and contentless events represent a diverse category of mental states. They argue that recognizing MB as a reportable mental category is essential for a full understanding of how the mind works during wakefulness.
Trends in cognitive sciences
June 1, 2021
Benjamin Baird, Stephen LaBerge, Giulio Tononi
13 citations
Lucid dreamers can use eye movements to report on their dream content in real time during REM sleep, challenging the long-held belief that dreamers are completely isolated from the outside world. Sensory input is not entirely suppressed during sleep. A recent study by Konkoly et al. demonstrates that experimenters can question lucid dreamers during ongoing dreams and explores the feasibility of more extended two-way communication during lucid REM sleep dreaming.
Trends in cognitive sciences
October 1, 2023
Kevin Berryman, Sara W Lazar, Jakob Hohwy
11 citations
Mindfulness meditation has both positive and negative effects on moral functioning, distributed across multiple dimensions of moral cognition and behavior. A multifactor construct that assesses outcomes across several aspects of morality reveals that contemplative practices do not uniformly improve morality; instead, they produce a mix of beneficial and detrimental influences on different moral actions. The study provides an empirically rigorous investigation into the impact of mindfulness on morality, showing that the effects are complex and not captured by unidimensional measures.
Trends in cognitive sciences
May 15, 2025
Matthew D Lieberman
10 citations
Subjective conscious experience arises from effortless interpretations that feel like perceived facts, called p-interpretations, which are inherently idiosyncratic and integrate past and expected future moments into the present. Differential neural synchrony between groups suggests that parts of gestalt cortex, including the inferior parietal lobule and posterior temporal cortex, along with posterior medial cortex, track these p-interpretations. This differential synchrony may reflect each person's preexisting non-sensory representations—such as expectations, memories, and motivations—being integrated with sensory inputs to produce unique, meaning-infused immediate experiences across the stream of consciousness.
Trends in cognitive sciences
December 17, 2025
Liad Mudrik, Nathan Faivre, Michael Pitts et al.
5 citations
A major controversy in consciousness science divides sensory and cognitive theories. Reexamining Block's 1995 distinction between phenomenal consciousness (P) and access consciousness (A), the authors argue that P and A are not two different types of consciousness but two necessary conditions for consciousness. This conceptual shift helps resolve unresolved questions about neural mechanisms, functions of consciousness, and its relationship with attention. The proposal motivates selective unification across different classes of theories.
Trends in cognitive sciences
July 3, 2025
Andrew M. Haun, Giulio Tononi
5 citations
Visual experience is unfathomably rich, not sparse. Seeing involves three levels: high-level object and scene categorizations, mid-level feature groupings, and a fundamental spatial field of spots and their relations. Seeing objects requires seeing the groupings that compose them, and seeing groupings requires seeing the spatial field that grounds them. Even the basic feeling of spatial extendedness implies rich phenomenal structure. Much of what we see cannot be used, reported, or remembered, yet we see it.
Trends in cognitive sciences
July 7, 2026
Nicolas W Schuck, Marit Petzka, Stephen M Fleming
Neural replay, the reactivation of patterns of brain activity, can now be studied noninvasively in humans. While human research has aimed to align with rodent findings, it often implicitly assumes that replay is tied to conscious, deliberate thought. This assumption limits the investigation of how replay relates to consciousness and overlooks broader cross-species differences.
Trends in cognitive sciences
April 7, 2026
Francesco Ellia, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Contemporary consciousness science is stuck in an impasse because competing theoretical frameworks—such as structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, and intrinsic versus extrinsic approaches—are creating philosophical deadlocks and conceptual standstills. These parallel debates have generated insights but lack a systematic framework to understand their relationships. The authors argue that these disputes reflect deeper unresolved tensions in how consciousness is conceptualized. They propose that the debates can be addressed by recognizing three fundamental meta-theoretical dimensions: explanatory medium, scope, and perspective. The interplay among these dimensions shapes evidence, language, and concepts, reframing theoretical conflicts into tractable disagreements.
Trends in cognitive sciences
May 1, 2023
Biyu J He
The assumption that a single neurobiological account will explain all types of conscious awareness is challenged by evidence that neural activity related to conscious visual perception varies in location, timing, and information flow depending on external and internal factors. This suggests the search for generic neural correlates of consciousness may not be fruitful. A more pluralistic approach is needed, and a new framework called joint determinant theory (JDT) is proposed. JDT may accommodate different brain circuit mechanisms for varied conscious contents such as percepts, wills, memories, emotions, and thoughts, as well as their integrated experience.
Trends in cognitive sciences
June 1, 2022
Michael Pereira, Denis Perrin, Nathan Faivre
Perceptual experiences are not static but fluctuate as a leaky evidence accumulation process (LEAP), where confidence corresponds to the peak accumulated evidence. This proposal extends evidence accumulation models from decision-making to explain the dynamics of conscious perception itself, suggesting that percepts fade in and out of consciousness independent of tasks. The account offers a mechanistic understanding of phenomenal qualities like intensity and duration, moving beyond simple detection. Limitations and implications for neural correlates of consciousness are discussed.