No-Report Paradigms: Extracting the True Neural Correlates of Consciousness

The search for the neural basis of consciousness has been biased by the requirement that subjects report their experiences. Recent no-report paradigms aim to study conscious experience without any report, dissociating neural activity that gives rise to consciousness from activity that enables reporting. The advantages and disadvantages of both report-based and no-report approaches are discussed, and the authors ask how combining these methods can bring us closer to understanding the true neural basis of consciousness.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The goal of consciousness research is to reveal the neural basis of phenomenal experience. To study phenomenology, experimenters seem obliged to ask reports from the subjects to ascertain what they experience. However, we argue that the requirement of reports has biased the search for the neural correlates of consciousness over the past decades. More recent studies attempt to dissociate neural activity that gives rise to consciousness from the activity that enables the report; in particular, no-report paradigms have been utilized to study conscious experience in the full absence of any report. We discuss the advantages and disadvantages of report-based and no-report paradigms, and ask how these jointly bring us closer to understanding the true neural basis of consciousness.