Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Romy Lauche, Dennis Anheyer, Lisa A Uebelacker et al.
Among 7,186 Australian women aged 36-43, 27.5% practiced yoga or meditation. Perceived stress partially explained the link between negative life events and depressive symptoms, but yoga/meditation did not reduce that stress. Instead, yoga/meditation directly weakened the connection between negative life events and depression, acting as a buffer. Social support and optimism also moderated the stress-depression link. The findings suggest yoga/meditation may help protect against depression after negative events, though the mechanism remains unclear.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Nam-Gyoon Kim, Judith A Effken
Perceiving affordances—opportunities for action that the environment offers relative to an individual's body and abilities—keeps people connected to their surroundings and mentally healthy. When this ability is impaired, meaningful relationships with the environment break down, contributing to irrational behavior seen in self disorders like schizophrenia. Two laboratory studies showed that patients with schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease have a reduced capacity to perceive affordances. This finding serves as contra-positive evidence that supports the affordance concept: if lacking affordance perception leads to mental health problems, then those with such problems should show impaired affordance detection. The results also suggest contra-positive evidence can complement positive evidence for empirically validating concepts like affordance and meaning.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Joan González Guardiola
The authors argue that Husserl's phenomenology contains a notion of a 'minimal self' that is not reducible to a Cartesian subject. They distinguish the philosophy of the subject from the philosophy of the self, showing that Husserl's conception of the self does not align with the Cartesian association Heidegger criticized. By analyzing the 'senses of the self' in Husserl's work, they extract the concept of 'minimal self' relevant to current debates between psychiatry and phenomenology. The authors also demonstrate that moving from the transcendental ego to a theory of the orientation of conscious life requires grounding the concept of ego in the formal mereology of Husserl's third 'Logical Investigation.'
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Alexandra Kitson, Alice Chirico, Andrea Gaggioli et al.
Self-transcendence involves reduced self-saliency (ego disillusionment) and increased connection, and interest in the topic has grown over the past decade. Several measures with some psychometric validity and reliability exist, but no prior review has systematically described, contrasted, and evaluated the various methodological approaches—including questionnaires, neurological and physiological measures, and qualitative methods. This review fills that gap by describing existing measurement methods, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, and suggesting future research directions and recommendations for selecting appropriate methods based on research context.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2015
Francisco A Olivares, Esteban Vargas, Claudio Fuentes et al.
Neurophenomenology aims to bridge qualitative and quantitative methods in consciousness research through reciprocal constraints between first-person accounts and neurophysiological data, but has faced methodological difficulties in systematically obtaining and analyzing subjective reports. Recently developed second-person methods—interview techniques that elicit verbal and non-verbal information—offer a way to obtain detailed subjective reports. This paper examines the potential of second-person methodologies for neurophenomenology, describes available interview techniques, analyzes two experimental studies that incorporate them, and identifies the validation problem of comparing results across participants and interviewers. The authors argue that second-person methods are a powerful approach for closing the gap between experiential and neurobiological levels of description.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2014
Éric Laurent
Vision is not an isolated, modular process but is instead shaped by non-visual contextual factors—biological, physical, and social systems with which it is coupled. Converging evidence from human perception research indicates that visual activity is enacted through multiscale couplings rather than hard-wired modules. The article introduces the Multiscale Enaction Model (MEM), which links psychological findings with biocomputational data to bridge scales of analysis. MEM accounts for autopoiesis-driven information seeking and the emergence of perception, emphasizing the embodied, flexible teleology of subsystems.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2014
Paul Lodder, Mark Rotteveel, Michiel van Elk
Within social cognition, some researchers argue that understanding others relies on dynamic, second-person interactions rather than detached observation. This enactivist view splits over whether such intersubjective processes are innate. Nativist enactivists cite neonatal imitation as evidence that infants possess an embodied form of understanding others from birth, while empiricist enactivists claim these processes are learned through social interaction. A critical examination of studies on neonate imitation finds that only tongue protrusion imitation is consistently replicated across studies; evidence for other gestures is mixed. If neonates imitate only one gesture, a simpler explanation for tongue protrusion is possible. Thus, the nativist claim that second-person interactive processes are present at birth appears unsupported. The evidence aligns with the empiricist position, suggesting that such interactive understanding develops over time.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2026
Benjamin Kozuch, Peter Kok
A framework is proposed for identifying the neural correlates of a low-level component of visual consciousness called base experience, defined as the spatial arrangement of colors across the visual field. A content-matching method compares the content of base experience with that represented by candidate neural systems, using matches and mismatches as evidence for or against a neural system being the neural basis of base experience. A formal system specifies the content of both experience and neural activity in a common quantitative format for precise comparison. Three matching strategies—region-matching, grain-matching, and representational-matching—are outlined for testing hypotheses about the neural basis of conscious visual content. Applying this method can help adjudicate between competing theories of consciousness.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2026
Leonardo Christov-Moore, Félix Schoeller, Mathilda Von Guttenberg et al.
A guided loving kindness meditation combined with chills-inducing music enhances mood, self-transcendence, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight more than meditation alone. In a randomized online study with 398 participants, loving kindness meditation increased connectedness to others compared to a mindfulness-based control, while adding chills-inducing music to either meditation boosted self-transcendence, mood, emotional breakthrough, and psychological insight. The experience of aesthetic chills during meditation predicted these positive effects. Individual traits like absorption, interoceptive awareness, and vividness of internal imagery also independently contributed to specific outcomes such as ego-dissolution and connectedness. Chills augmentation appears a viable method for deepening contemplative practices.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2026
Isabella Langwei, Bin Li
Whether a group has collectively experienced an optimal state—like flow or effervescence—has been judged by individual reports, leaving unclear how the group itself could recognize such an experience. An analysis of bisosilin, the evaluative term Bunun singers use to decide whether their ritual polyphonic chant pasibutbut is complete, shows that recognition depends not on anyone's internal feeling but on achieving a specific relational configuration of sonic alignment, bodily coordination, and shared intentional orientation. The study argues that collective optimal experience is not generated first and then recognized; generation and recognition are structurally inseparable. Two models are proposed: a three-layer body grammar specifying necessary conditions, and a process-uncertainty-alignment model describing a nonlinear transition called critical convergence at which the experience is established as a structural event, not an internal state.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2026
Human-Friedrich Unterrainer
Altered states of consciousness, ranging from psychotic disintegration to mystical union, often involve oceanic affectivity—experiences of ego dissolution, boundlessness, and affective merging. Such states can be induced by psychedelics, trauma, meditation, or compulsive addictive cycles. While oceanic states may temporarily relieve psychic pain, they can reinforce a regressive return to early undifferentiated states, bypassing affect and symbolic integration. From a neuropsychodynamic perspective, addiction functions as a failed form of transcendence, an attempt to escape internal fragmentation. Neuroscientifically, these states involve alterations in the default mode network, limbic dysregulation, reduced top-down control, and increased neural entropy, potentially loosening rigid ego structures and facilitating unconscious material. The paper integrates psychodynamic theory with neuroscientific findings to conceptualize addiction as a neuropsychodynamic attempt to restore internal cohesion, offering therapeutic implications.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2026
Sharon Vaisvaser
Aesthetic experiences are rooted in the body and can evoke deep emotions, supporting development, mental health, and well-being. This conceptual review integrates neuroaesthetics and psychodynamic approaches to show how aesthetic experiences arise from a dynamic interplay between anticipation and surprise, generating prediction errors that drive exploration, curiosity, and meaning-making. These processes engage neural systems for sensorimotor processing, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge integration. In psychotherapy, aesthetic moments emerge through embodied interactions and creative arts, enabling pre-symbolic impressions to be transformed into symbolic, thinkable experience. Therapist and patient co-create a shared field that expands peripersonal space, deepens connection, and helps integrate unrepresented aspects of self, supporting emotional regulation, mentalization, neural plasticity, and corrective learning.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2025
William Brennan, Melissa Field, Catherine Schon et al.
The EMBARK training program for session monitors in clinical trials of psychedelic treatments was developed iteratively by Cybin, Inc. The program has been used in two completed and three ongoing clinical trials. This article describes the three phases of development, including core components, successes, lessons learned, and rationale for changes. The most recent iteration, EMBARKCT, used in Phase 3 trials, incorporates artificial intelligence with expert human oversight to identify when session monitors need additional support and training. Recommendations for the field are also discussed.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2025
Christopher Gutland, Huan Liu
Liangkang Ni's work identifies deep parallels and divergences between Edmund Husserl's phenomenology and Yogācāra Buddhism, particularly in doctrines like consciousness-only, store-consciousness, and self-consciousness. Ni reads Husserl's own reflections on Buddhism and reconstructs genetic and structural parallels between Husserl's genetic phenomenology and Yogācāra concepts. The article provides conceptual clarification and theoretical integration aimed at informing contemporary debates in consciousness studies, rather than offering new empirical data.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Ken Mogi
Consciousness may enable certain cognitive capacities that unconscious processing and current AI systems cannot replicate, such as flexible attention, handling novel contexts, integrated sensory cognition, and embodied decision-making. While large language models exhibit intelligent behavior without consciousness, and some conscious states lack intelligence, suggesting a dissociation between the two, human conscious processing appears uniquely suited for ad hoc judgments. The author proposes 'conscious supremacy'—analogous to quantum supremacy—to identify computations that require consciousness within practical time and resource limits. This framework has implications for AI alignment, where human and machine computations must be coordinated.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Scott Andersen
Consciousness arises from multiple goals for action and their continuous adjudication to implement behavior, a framework called the maps of meaning (MoM) theory. The theory proposes that an organism's goals are not intentional but emerge from Darwinian inclusive fitness—randomization and survival of the fittest—as embodiment meets the world. These goals form through gradual descent under inclusive fitness, matching the evolutionary environment. Human consciousness implements the brain efficiency hypothesis, driven by genetics, epigenetics, and experience-crystallized efficiencies that are objectively arbitrary but determine consciousness's operation and level, termed extreme thrownness. Perception is the operant process of consciousness, involving information intake and discrimination based on Bayesian priors of efficiency. Consciousness is modular and dimensionalized, with meta dimensions including intelligence quotient, personality, richness of perception intake, and discrimination.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Mel Slater, Maria V Sanchez-Vives
The abstract contrasts two views of consciousness: the standard scientific view that matter is primary and consciousness arises from brain activity, versus an alternative view that consciousness is a primary force in nature from which physical laws might derive. The authors argue that virtual reality (VR) provides an experimental context where consciousness is a first-order phenomenon, making the alternative view intuitively accessible. They discuss the Interface Theory of Perception, which holds that perceptions are not veridical but based on evolutionary payoffs, and suggest this theory accurately describes perception and consciousness within VR. They propose an experimental study to explore this but do not draw conclusions about physical reality or challenge the emergence of consciousness from brain function.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Vincent Ringgaard Christoffersen, Borut Škodlar, Mads Gram Henriksen
Tranquility is a fundamental human experience that has been pursued across Eastern and Western philosophical, religious, and spiritual traditions, yet its experiential nature has not been systematically compared. This theoretical study examines central experiences of tranquility from both traditions, sorting them into four categories based on focus: the body, emotions, the mind, and mysticism. The authors propose that these diverse tranquil experiences share common features: a sense of presence and inner peace as content, and a structure involving detachment and absorption. The account is exploratory, aiming to identify what different tranquil experiences may have in common.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2019
Riccardo Manzotti
A mind-object identity theory is proposed: one's experience of an object is identical with the object itself. The hypothesis is defended by redefining physical objects in terms of relative and actual properties. Cases of misperception like dreams and hallucinations are addressed by redefining the notion of present in relative terms. Both the object and the present are recast as object-relative.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2019
Muwang Ye, Yong Lyu
Electrophysiological recordings identified two neural correlates of visual awareness: visual awareness negativity (VAN) and later positivity (LP). In immediate and delayed detection tasks, VAN amplitude over posterior temporal and occipital areas remained unchanged by task timing, whereas LP amplitude over parietal, posterior temporal, and occipital areas was reduced during delayed detection between 650-850 ms. These findings indicate VAN reflects early visual awareness, while LP represents post-perceptual processes involved in reporting awareness.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2018
Mark Solms
The article applies the free energy principle to the hard problem of consciousness. It argues that the elemental form of consciousness is affect, located in the upper brainstem via an extended form of homeostasis. This mechanism is formalized as free energy minimization in unpredicted contexts, where decreases in expected uncertainty are felt as pleasure and increases as unpleasure. The work emphasizes why such existential imperatives feel like something to and for an organism.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2018
Michele Farisco, Jeanette H Kotaleski, Kathinka Evers
Computer models and simulations are increasingly used to describe, explain, and predict brain function, aiming to integrate fragmented neuroscientific knowledge. This paper examines whether simulation technologies could plausibly emulate consciousness and assesses their potential clinical impact on disorders of consciousness such as coma, vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, and minimally conscious state. Despite technical limitations, the authors suggest that simulating neural correlates of consciousness may offer new solutions to practical clinical problems, particularly improving treatments for patients with these disorders.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2017
Marek Havlík, Eva Kozáková, Jiří Horáček
This review addresses two central questions about consciousness: the 'how' (neural correlates and mechanisms) and the 'why' (the hard problem of why conscious experience exists at all). The authors argue that while the hard problem will likely never fully disappear, its significance may diminish as empirical research advances. They predict that future work will be guided by a unifying brain theory—predictive coding—which must explain both perceptual consciousness and conscious mind-wandering to succeed. Such a theory could clarify the function of conscious experience, thereby reducing the weight of the hard problem.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2017
Stefano Gallotto, Alexander T Sack, Teresa Schuhmann et al.
Conscious experiences are linked to brain activity, known as the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). This review focuses on spontaneous brain oscillations—rhythmic fluctuations of neuronal activity characterized by frequency, amplitude, and phase. It surveys oscillatory measures that correlate with conscious perception and discusses techniques like entrainment for studying their causal role. Findings suggest that alpha-band activity (7-13 Hz) may index or causally support conscious perception. However, results highlight a challenge in NCC research: separating neural activity that is a prerequisite for consciousness from the substrate or consequences of conscious experience.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2016
Sascha Benjamin Fink
A widely accepted definition of the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), proposed by Chalmers in 2000, defines an NCC as a neural system minimally sufficient for a conscious experience. This definition has several shortcomings: it focuses on the capacity to experience rather than actual experiences, fails to address cases motivating NCC research, does not match how scientists use the term, and prevents comparative hypothesis testing. An improved operationalization, called NCC2.0, is proposed that avoids these problems while retaining compatibility with extended, embedded, enacted, or embodied accounts of consciousness and allowing for non-biological or artificial experiencers.