Neuroscience of Consciousness最新文献

{"title":"Why do we need imagination-reality monitoring?","authors":"Nadine Dijkstra, Stephen M Fleming, Nicholas Shea","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag048","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag048","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The ability to imagine scenarios decoupled from the immediate environment supports a wide range of cognitive functions, such as planning, memory, and decision making. However, this increase in cognitive sophistication comes with a potential cost of mistaking simulation for reality. Here, we provide a functional analysis of the imagination-reality problem and argue that the specific way that imagination is used to guide behaviour puts unique constraints on the ability to distinguish it from reality. Our analysis illuminates the space of possible solutions supporting the ability to separate imagination from reality and offers a roadmap for future empirical research.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag048"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13492659/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148801251","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Affirmed gender shapes virtual embodiment: a phenomenological account of ownership and agency across gender identities.","authors":"Marina Leggieri, Borriero Alessio, Ciorli Tommaso, Pyasik Maria, Schintu Selene, Finzi Sarah, Molo Maria Teresa, Pia Lorenzo","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag047","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag047","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Gender identity plays a crucial role in how we come to feel our bodies as our own. When the inner sense of gender does not align with bodily appearance, the resulting tension can shape both conscious and pre-reflective aspects of embodiment. In this study, we examined how gendered self-representations influence bodily self-consciousness using the Full-Body Illusion in immersive virtual reality. Eleven transgender and eleven cisgender participants embodied both gender-congruent and gender-incongruent avatars viewed from a first-person perspective under visuomotor synchrony. Participants rated their sense of ownership and agency using the Avatar Embodiment Questionnaire, and completed the Utrecht Gender Dysphoria Scale-Gender Spectrum to assess dysphoria and affirmation. All participants experienced a convincing illusion of embodiment. Yet, only transgender participants showed a clear difference between conditions, with stronger embodiment for gender-congruent avatars. Bootstrapped analyses confirmed higher ownership and mirror-ownership scores in the congruent condition, and correlations revealed that dysphoria was positively associated with mirror-based embodiment, whereas affirmation was negatively associated with agency. These findings suggest that the sense of owning and controlling one's body may be influenced not only by multisensory integration but also by its alignment with one's affirmed gender. Gender identity thus may emerge as a deeply embodied and dynamically instantiated dimension of minimal selfhood, bridging the sensorimotor and the phenomenological layers of bodily consciousness.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag047"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13474268/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148762855","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Subjective experience of 'Stream of Consciousness Impairment' in three patients with severe amnesia.","authors":"Anaïs Servais, Fleur Gérard, Hélène Mirabel, Marie Rafiq, Marie Wolfrum, Chloé Bost, Fabrice Bonneville, Jérémie Pariente, Emmanuel J Barbeau","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag049","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Patients with severe anterograde amnesia have been described as 'stuck in time'; their mental time travel abilities are altered, and they seem to live in the present. Here, we examine an unusual phenomenon in which severely amnesic patients recurrently report the belief that they have just awakened from an unconscious state. A famous case illustrating this phenomenon was that of Clive Wearing who repeatedly wrote '<i>I am now awake</i>' in his diary. This unique cognitive phenomenon has not been specifically studied until now. We report three new patients who described similar subjective experiences. All three patients suffered from autoimmune encephalitis and showed massive bilateral hippocampal inflammation causing severe anterograde amnesia. We propose to call this phenomenon '<i>Stream of Consciousness Impairment</i>', a reference to William James's theory according to which, normally, we experience an uninterrupted flow of consciousness. This condition should be added to the spectrum of neurological symptoms that contribute to the study of memory and consciousness in humans.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag049"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13474263/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148762797","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Dynamics of the stream of thought: insights from an accumulation-to-threshold model.","authors":"Adrien Kérébel, Jérôme Sackur","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag045","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The dynamics of the stream of spontaneous thoughts has been the object of increasing research in recent years. Here, we study the timing of transitions from one coherent thought episode to the next as one aspect of such dynamics. Participants either vocalized freely generated words or allowed their minds to wander during 2- to 3-min runs, and were instructed to report thought transitions by pressing a key. We first validate this subjective mental event segmentation, which enables us to measure the duration of coherent thought episodes. We then turn to model comparison to show that the timing of thought transitions is best explained by an accumulation-to-threshold mechanism. We further find that the threshold of this accumulation negatively correlates with participants' trait tendency towards disorganized thought. We speculate about the nature of the accumulated information and emphasize that individual variability in transition thresholds underscores the role of mental impulsivity in thought transitions.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag045"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13474264/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148765582","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Demographics-robust spontaneous eye blinking slowing in patients with severe acquired brain injury.","authors":"Alfonso Magliacano, Leonardo Corsi, Piergiuseppe Liuzzi, Calogero Maria Oddo, Andrea Mannini, Anna Estraneo","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag043","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag043","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study aimed to explore whether spontaneous eye blinking features from a brief vertical electro-oculogram recording can distinguish patients with severe acquired brain injury from healthy volunteers. Given evidence for shared neurobiological substrates in blinking control and attention, we expected altered blinking features in patients. In this observational cross-sectional study we extracted eye blink rate, amplitude, rise time, fall time, duration, and blink-blink interval variability from electro-oculography in 19 patients with severe acquired brain injury and 21 healthy controls during resting state and an auditory oddball task. We tested group differences with Kruskal-Wallis and Conover-Iman post-hoc comparisons. Differences covarying age and sex were assessed with Wald tests for odds ratios from logistic regression. Univariate Kruskal-Wallis testing showed longer rise time and duration and smaller amplitude in patients relative to healthy controls. When considering demographics as covariate, we show that amplitude is strongly confounded by demographics whereas rise time, duration and, to a lesser extent, fall time, are associated to the brain injury condition regardless of age or sex. Eye blink rate and blink-blink interval variability did not show statistically significant differences. Condition moderated effects: group contrasts were strongest at rest and attenuated during oddball. We found preliminary evidence that rise time and total duration are prolonged in patients independently of demographic factors, although with no difference between different levels of consciousness. Our results suggest a general slowing of blink dynamics consistent with altered basal ganglia dopaminergic activity, contributing physiological information relevant for monitoring and rehabilitation planning in brain injury.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag043"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13464740/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148726619","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Integrated information theory (IIT) and the testability of the silent neuron predictions.","authors":"Sergio Ponce de Leon, Jeff Yoshimi","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag037","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag037","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Integrated information theory (IIT) makes two predictions about the role of inactive neurons in consciousness. According to the silent brain (SB) prediction, rendering all active neurons inactive (\"silent\") in the physical substrate of consciousness (the \"main complex\") does not eliminate the presence of consciousness, because the neurons are still able to spike. According to the disabled neuron (DN) prediction, rendering a <i>subset</i> of silent neurons in the main complex no longer able to spike (\"disabled\") can impact the qualitative character of experiences \"nonconventionally\" associated with those neurons. Bartlett (2022) argues that these predictions are untestable, because evidence for either prediction would imply that the testing conditions were not met. In this paper, we provide a detailed analysis of both silent neuron predictions, showing how they can in fact be tested. For the SB case, we clarify how a neural mechanism <i>outside</i> of the main complex can yield the required report of consciousness while maintaining the SB state. For the DN case, we distinguish between two ways of explaining how a neural mechanism could casually interact with the main complex: an IIT-inspired \"dispositionalist\" explanation, and a more conventional \"actualist\" explanation. Drawing on the work of Imre Lakatos, we conclude with a discussion of how the distinction between the two explanations sheds light on why it is so difficult to resolve theoretical disputes about consciousness. Despite these difficulties, we provide a framework that can lead to concrete progress for consciousness science.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag037"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-08-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13452459/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148698250","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Early correlates of visual awareness are affected by self-related information.","authors":"Tommaso Ciorli, Oskar MacGregor, Martin Nilsson, Alessio Borriero, Ieva Smate, Andreas Kalckert, Lorenzo Pia","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag042","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag042","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Self-related cues, most notably one's own face, are highly salient and confer processing advantages at both conscious and unconscious levels. Whether such self-related information and stimulus salience modulate the earliest electroencephalography (EEG) correlate of visual awareness, the visual awareness negativity (VAN), remains unknown. In this study, we examined whether self-related information influences the amplitude, latency, and topography of the VAN. Thirty-six participants performed a backward masking task while an EEG was recorded as viewing either their own or a familiar face under masked and unmasked conditions. VAN was computed for each identity by subtracting unaware from aware face-specific trials. Results showed that VAN amplitude was greater during self-face perception, specifically over the right hemisphere. Moreover, VAN was larger at parieto-occipital than at occipital electrodes. These findings indicate that stimulus salience related to self-information directly impacts the earliest neural correlates of visual awareness. Such an effect may reflect enhanced perceptual or attentional mechanisms triggered by self-related content. This suggests either that early awareness correlates are embedded within perceptual and attentional dynamics that shape conscious access, or that the VAN does not constitute a purely content-independent correlate of consciousness.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag042"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13422636/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148632723","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Strength of religious faith is associated with altered sense of agency during multisensory conflict.","authors":"Gerardo Salvato, Alara France, Manuela Sellitto, Martina Corgnati, Ugo Volli, Luigi Pizzamiglio, Gabriella Bottini","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag041","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag041","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Religious belief systems shape human experience of the self and the world, yet their influence on the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying bodily self-awareness remains poorly understood. The present study investigated whether subjective strength of religious faith modulates components of bodily self-awareness during multisensory conflict. Sixty-two healthy female participants completed the Mirror Box Illusion paradigm, assessing explicit experiences of ownership and agency as well as implicit proprioceptive drift, and self-report measures of religious faith and interoceptive sensibility. While synchronous stimulation reliably enhanced embodiment across participants, subjective strength of religious faith selectively modulated the sense of agency. Specifically, individuals with stronger religious faith showed an illusion of agency even under asynchronous visuomotor stimulation, indicating reduced sensitivity to sensorimotor incongruence. Religious faith level was also negatively associated with interoceptive sensibility; however, interoception did not mediate the relationship between faith and agency. These findings suggest that stronger religious faith is associated with a perceptual weighting strategy that prioritizes external visual cues over motor signals. Overall, our results provide evidence that the level of religious faith may modulate the sensory processing underlying agency.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag041"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-07-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13422634/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148632701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bridging subjective and neural state transitions in the rubber hand illusion: a neurophenomenological study.","authors":"Yuki Tsuji, Miyuki Azuma, Camille Lépingle, Momoka Kimuro, Mika Ishizu, Fugo Suzuki, Yves Rossetti, Sotaro Shimada","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag040","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag040","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The rubber hand illusion (RHI) provides a powerful paradigm for probing the malleability of bodily self-consciousness. While conventional studies rely on proprioceptive drift, questionnaires, or averaged neural measures, phenomenological research suggests that the RHI unfolds through multiple subjective state transitions rather than as a simple binary phenomenon. Participants often describe ambiguous coexistence of real and artificial hands, partial incorporation, and eventual ownership, indicating meaningful dynamics of selfhood. Here, we adopt a neurophenomenological approach that integrates first-person interviews with electroencephalographic (EEG) functional connectivity network analysis. Subjective trajectories during the RHI were characterized through phenomenological interviews and modeled as successive states. EEG connectivity was analyzed using graph neural networks, enabling data-driven clustering of neural states aligned with subjective transitions. To establish a correspondence between the phenomenological and neural domains, we employed Gromov-Wasserstein (GW) optimal transport, which maps structural correspondences between subjective and EEG-derived state spaces despite their differing metrics. The results show that specific subjective transitions correspond to distinct changes in network topology. Major subjective states were associated with reconfigurations of connectivity patterns and shifts in degree centrality across several regions, including the premotor cortex and insula, which are known to contribute to body ownership. GW optimal transport further revealed a principled correspondence between the geometry of subjective and neural state spaces. Together, these findings demonstrate that subjective transitions in the RHI are mirrored by dynamic reorganization of brain networks, illustrating how neurophenomenology combined with computational modeling can advance the study of embodied selfhood.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag040"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-07-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13417469/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148621951","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Increasing power for detecting awareness: a new approach to test group level objective performance.","authors":"Shaked Lublinsky, Itay Yaron, William Marshall, Liad Mudrik","doi":"10.1093/nc/niag039","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niag039","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Demonstrating reliable unconscious effects is notoriously challenging, and the scope of unconscious processing remains debated. Establishing unconscious effects requires two critical pieces of evidence: first, that the stimulus of interest was processed, and second, that participants were not consciously aware of that stimulus. Here, we focus on the second requirement which has faced criticism due to the low statistical power of awareness tests, undermining the reliability of evidence for unawareness. Consequently, reported unconscious effects might in fact stem from conscious processing. To better detect awareness, we suggest using two tests: the frequentist Group Binomial or Chi test and the Bayesian Group Binomial Bayesian test. Both tests were tailored for maximizing power in detecting consciousness, when using objective measures of awareness. We used simulations to compare the sensitivity and specificity of these tests with other commonly used ones (<i>t-</i>test, Mixed Model Logistic Regression, and Bayesian <i>t-</i>test). Our results show a clear power advantage for the proposed tests, across different scenarios. Furthermore, we reanalyzed 79 previously reported effects, from 15 papers on unconscious processing, and found cases where the proposed test revealed affects that were not detected by the other tests. We suggest that our systematic approach towards assessing and comparing the power of awareness tests will advance the field of unconscious processing and reduce the risk of contaminating reports of unconscious effects by undetected conscious processes.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2026 1","pages":"niag039"},"PeriodicalIF":3.8,"publicationDate":"2026-07-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13411290/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148621946","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}