Neuroscience of Consciousness最新文献

{"title":"The positive evidence bias in perceptual confidence is unlikely post-decisional.","authors":"Jason Samaha,&nbsp;Rachel Denison","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac010","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Confidence in a perceptual decision is a subjective estimate of the accuracy of one's choice. As such, confidence is thought to be an important computation for a variety of cognitive and perceptual processes, and it features heavily in theorizing about conscious access to perceptual states. Recent experiments have revealed a \"positive evidence bias\" (PEB) in the computations underlying confidence reports. A PEB occurs when confidence, unlike objective choice, overweights the evidence for the correct (or chosen) option, relative to evidence against the correct (or chosen) option. Accordingly, in a perceptual task, appropriate stimulus conditions can be arranged that produce selective changes in confidence reports but no changes in accuracy. Although the PEB is generally assumed to reflect the observer's perceptual and/or decision processes, post-decisional accounts have not been ruled out. We therefore asked whether the PEB persisted under novel conditions that addressed two possible post-decisional accounts: (i) post-decision evidence accumulation that contributes to a confidence report solicited after the perceptual choice and (ii) a memory bias that emerges in the delay between the stimulus offset and the confidence report. We found that even when the stimulus remained on the screen until observers responded, and when observers reported their choice and confidence simultaneously, the PEB still emerged. Signal detection-based modeling showed that the PEB was not associated with changes to metacognitive efficiency, but rather to confidence criteria. The data show that memory biases cannot explain the PEB and provide evidence against a post-decision evidence accumulation account, bolstering the idea that the PEB is perceptual or decisional in nature.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/75/06/niac010.PMC9316228.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40557686","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":"Editing reality in the brain.","authors":"Eamonn Walsh, David A Oakley","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac009","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niac009","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Recent information technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) allow the creation of simulated sensory worlds with which we can interact. Using programming language, digital details can be overlaid onto displays of our environment, confounding what is real and what has been artificially engineered. Natural language, particularly the use of direct verbal suggestion (DVS) in everyday and hypnotic contexts, can also manipulate the meaning and significance of objects and events in ourselves and others. In this review, we focus on how socially rewarding language can construct and influence reality. Language is symbolic, automatic and flexible and can be used to augment bodily sensations e.g. feelings of heaviness in a limb or suggest a colour that is not there. We introduce the term 'suggested reality' (SR) to refer to the important role that language, specifically DVS, plays in constructing, maintaining and manipulating our shared reality. We also propose the term edited reality to encompass the wider influence of information technology and linguistic techniques that results in altered subjective experience and review its use in clinical settings, while acknowledging its limitations. We develop a cognitive model indicating how the brain's central executive structures use our personal and linguistic-based narrative in subjective awareness, arguing for a central role for language in DVS. A better understanding of the characteristics of VR, AR and SR and their applications in everyday life, research and clinical settings can help us to better understand our own reality and how it can be edited.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/aa/4f/niac009.PMC9319104.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40557688","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":"Determining states of consciousness in the electroencephalogram based on spectral, complexity, and criticality features.","authors":"Nike Walter, Thilo Hinterberger","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac008","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niac008","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study was based on the contemporary proposal that distinct states of consciousness are quantifiable by neural complexity and critical dynamics. To test this hypothesis, it was aimed at comparing the electrophysiological correlates of three meditation conditions using nonlinear techniques from the complexity and criticality framework as well as power spectral density. Thirty participants highly proficient in meditation were measured with 64-channel electroencephalography (EEG) during one session consisting of a task-free baseline resting (eyes closed and eyes open), a reading condition, and three meditation conditions (thoughtless emptiness, presence monitoring, and focused attention). The data were analyzed applying analytical tools from criticality theory (detrended fluctuation analysis, neuronal avalanche analysis), complexity measures (multiscale entropy, Higuchi's fractal dimension), and power spectral density. Task conditions were contrasted, and effect sizes were compared. Partial least square regression and receiver operating characteristics analysis were applied to determine the discrimination accuracy of each measure. Compared to resting with eyes closed, the meditation categories emptiness and focused attention showed higher values of entropy and fractal dimension. Long-range temporal correlations were declined in all meditation conditions. The critical exponent yielded the lowest values for focused attention and reading. The highest discrimination accuracy was found for the gamma band (0.83-0.98), the global power spectral density (0.78-0.96), and the sample entropy (0.86-0.90). Electrophysiological correlates of distinct meditation states were identified and the relationship between nonlinear complexity, critical brain dynamics, and spectral features was determined. The meditation states could be discriminated with nonlinear measures and quantified by the degree of neuronal complexity, long-range temporal correlations, and power law distributions in neuronal avalanches.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/cb/85/niac008.PMC9319002.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40557687","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":"Capacity for consciousness under ketamine anaesthesia is selectively associated with activity in posteromedial cortex in rats.","authors":"A Arena, B E Juel, R Comolatti, S Thon, J F Storm","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac004","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niac004","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>It remains unclear how specific cortical regions contribute to the brain's overall capacity for consciousness. Clarifying this could help distinguish between theories of consciousness. Here, we investigate the association between markers of regionally specific (de)activation and the brain's overall capacity for consciousness. We recorded electroencephalographic responses to cortical electrical stimulation in six rats and computed Perturbational Complexity Index state-transition (PCI^ST), which has been extensively validated as an index of the capacity for consciousness in humans. We also estimated the balance between activation and inhibition of specific cortical areas with the ratio between high and low frequency power from spontaneous electroencephalographic activity at each electrode. We repeated these measurements during wakefulness, and during two levels of ketamine anaesthesia: with the minimal dose needed to induce behavioural unresponsiveness and twice this dose. We found that PCI^ST was only slightly reduced from wakefulness to light ketamine anaesthesia, but dropped significantly with deeper anaesthesia. The high-dose effect was selectively associated with reduced high frequency/low frequency ratio in the posteromedial cortex, which strongly correlated with PCI^ST. Conversely, behavioural unresponsiveness induced by light ketamine anaesthesia was associated with similar spectral changes in frontal, but not posterior cortical regions. Thus, activity in the posteromedial cortex correlates with the capacity for consciousness, as assessed by PCI^ST, during different depths of ketamine anaesthesia, in rats, independently of behaviour. These results are discussed in relation to different theories of consciousness.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8896332/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42637264","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":"Susceptibility to auditory hallucinations is associated with spontaneous but not directed modulation of top-down expectations for speech.","authors":"Ben Alderson-Day, Jamie Moffatt, César F Lima, Saloni Krishnan, Charles Fernyhough, Sophie K Scott, Sophie Denton, Ivy Yi Ting Leong, Alena D Oncel, Yu-Lin Wu, Zehra Gurbuz, Samuel Evans","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac002","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niac002","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs)-or hearing voices-occur in clinical and non-clinical populations, but their mechanisms remain unclear. Predictive processing models of psychosis have proposed that hallucinations arise from an over-weighting of prior expectations in perception. It is unknown, however, whether this reflects (i) a sensitivity to explicit modulation of prior knowledge or (ii) a pre-existing tendency to spontaneously use such knowledge in ambiguous contexts. Four experiments were conducted to examine this question in healthy participants listening to ambiguous speech stimuli. In experiments 1a (<i>n</i> = 60) and 1b (<i>n</i> = 60), participants discriminated intelligible and unintelligible sine-wave speech before and after exposure to the original language templates (i.e. a modulation of expectation). No relationship was observed between top-down modulation and two common measures of hallucination-proneness. Experiment 2 (<i>n</i> = 99) confirmed this pattern with a different stimulus-sine-vocoded speech (SVS)-that was designed to minimize ceiling effects in discrimination and more closely model previous top-down effects reported in psychosis. In Experiment 3 (<i>n</i> = 134), participants were exposed to SVS without prior knowledge that it contained speech (i.e. naïve listening). AVH-proneness significantly predicted both pre-exposure identification of speech and successful recall for words hidden in SVS, indicating that participants could actually decode the hidden signal spontaneously. Altogether, these findings support a pre-existing tendency to spontaneously draw upon prior knowledge in healthy people prone to AVH, rather than a sensitivity to temporary modulations of expectation. We propose a model of clinical and non-clinical hallucinations, across auditory and visual modalities, with testable predictions for future research.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824703/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39613424","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":"Consciousness explained or described?","authors":"Aaron Schurger,&nbsp;Michael Graziano","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac001","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Consciousness is an unusual phenomenon to study scientifically. It is defined as a subjective, first-person phenomenon, and science is an objective, third-person endeavor. This misalignment between the means-science-and the end-explaining consciousness-gave rise to what has become a productive workaround: the search for 'neural correlates of consciousness' (NCCs). Science can sidestep trying to explain consciousness and instead focus on characterizing the kind(s) of neural activity that are reliably correlated with consciousness. However, while we have learned a lot about consciousness in the bargain, the NCC approach was not originally intended as the foundation for a true explanation of consciousness. Indeed, it was proposed precisely to sidestep the, arguably futile, attempt to find one. So how can an account, couched in terms of neural correlates, do the work that a theory is supposed to do: explain consciousness? The answer is that it cannot, and in fact most modern accounts of consciousness do not pretend to. Thus, here, we challenge whether or not any modern accounts of consciousness are in fact theories at all. Instead we argue that they are (competing) laws of consciousness. They describe what they cannot explain, just as Newton described gravity long before a true explanation was ever offered. We lay out our argument using a variety of modern accounts as examples and go on to argue that at least one modern account of consciousness, attention schema theory, goes beyond describing consciousness-related brain activity and qualifies as an explanatory theory.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/dc/02/niac001.PMC8824704.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39613425","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":"Sense of self in mind and body: an eLORETA-EEG study.","authors":"Zhongjie Bao,&nbsp;Paul Frewen","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac017","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac017","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The human brain engages the sense of self through both semantic and somatic self-referential processing (SRP). Alpha and theta oscillations have been found to underlie SRP but have not been compared with respect to semantic and somatic SRP. We recorded electroencephalography (EEG) from 50 participants during focused internal attention on life roles (e.g. \"friend\") and outer body (e.g. \"arms\") compared to resting state and an external attention memory task and localized the sources of on-scalp alpha (8-12 Hz) and theta (4-8 Hz) EEG signals with exact low-resolution tomography. Logarithm of <i>F</i>-ratios was calculated to compare differences in alpha and theta power between SRP conditions, resting state, and external attention. Results indicated that compared to resting state, semantic SRP induced lower theta in the frontal cortex and higher theta in the parietal cortex, whereas somatic SRP induced lower alpha in the frontal and insula cortex and higher alpha in the parietal cortex. Furthermore, results indicated that compared to external attention, both semantic and somatic SRP induced higher alpha in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex with lateralized patterns based on task condition. Finally, an analysis directly comparing semantic and somatic SRP indicated frontal-parietal and left-right lateralization of SRP in the brain. Our results suggest the alpha and theta oscillations in the frontal, parietal, and the insula cortex may play crucial roles in semantic and somatic SRP.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/ee/1e/niac017.PMC9748806.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"10400179","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":"Consciousness matters: phenomenal experience has functional value","authors":"Axel Cleeremans, C. Tallon-Baudry","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract ‘Why would we do anything at all if the doing was not doing something to us?’ In other words: What is consciousness good for? Here, reversing classical views, according to many of which subjective experience is a mere epiphenomenon that affords no functional advantage, we propose that subject-level experience—‘What it feels like’—is endowed with intrinsic value, and it is precisely the value agents associate with their experiences that explains why they do certain things and avoid others. Because experiences have value and guide behaviour, consciousness has a function. Under this hypothesis of ‘phenomenal worthiness’, we argue that it is only in virtue of the fact that conscious agents ‘experience’ things and ‘care’ about those experiences that they are ‘motivated’ to act in certain ways and that they ‘prefer’ some states of affairs vs. others. Overviewing how the concept of value has been approached in decision-making, emotion research and consciousness research, we argue that phenomenal consciousness has intrinsic value and conclude that if this is indeed the case, then it must have a function. Phenomenal experience might act as a mental currency of sorts, which not only endows conscious mental states with intrinsic value but also makes it possible for conscious agents to compare vastly different experiences in a common subject-centred space—a feature that readily explains the fact that consciousness is ‘unified’. The phenomenal worthiness hypothesis, in turn, makes the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness more tractable, since it can then be reduced to a problem about function.","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"61047611","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Modelling the simultaneous encoding/serial experience theory of the perceptual moment: a blink of meta-experience","authors":"H. Bowman, William Jones, H. Pincham, Steve Fleming, Axel Cleeremans, Murray Smith","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac003","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract One way to understand a system is to explore how its behaviour degrades when it is overloaded. This approach can be applied to understanding conscious perception by presenting stimuli in rapid succession in the ‘same’ perceptual event/moment. In previous work, we have identified a striking dissociation during the perceptual moment, between what is encoded into working memory [Lag-1 sparing in the attentional blink (AB)] and what is consciously perceived (Lag-1 impairing in the experiential blink). This paper links this dissociation to what, taking inspiration from the metacognition literature, could be called meta-experience; i.e. how the ability to track and comment on one’s visual experience with subjectivity ratings reflects objective performance. Specifically, we provide evidence that the information (in bits) associated with an encoding into working memory decouples from the experiential reflection upon that perceptual/encoding event and that this decoupling is largest when there is the greatest perceptual overload. This is the meta-experiential blink. Meta-experiential self-observation is common to many computational models, including connectionist interpretations of consciousness, Bayesian observers and the readout-enhanced simultaneous type/serial token (reSTST) model. We assess how our meta-experiential blink data could be modelled using the concept of self-observation, providing model fits to behavioural and electroencephalogram responses in the reSTST model. We discuss the implications of our computational modelling of parallel encoding but serial experience for theories of conscious perception. Specifically, we (i) inform theories of Lag-1 sparing during the AB and (ii) consider the implications for the global workspace theory of conscious perception and higher-order theories of consciousness.","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45678909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Decoding rapidly presented visual stimuli from prefrontal ensembles without report nor post-perceptual processing","authors":"Joachim Bellet, Marion Gay, A. Dwarakanath, B. Jarraya, Timo van Kerkoerle, S. Dehaene, T. Panagiotaropoulos","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The role of the primate prefrontal cortex (PFC) in conscious perception is debated. The global neuronal workspace theory of consciousness predicts that PFC neurons should contain a detailed code of the current conscious contents. Previous research showed that PFC is indeed activated in paradigms of conscious visual perception, including no-report paradigms where no voluntary behavioral report of the percept is given, thus avoiding a conflation of signals related to visual consciousness with signals related to the report. Still, it has been argued that prefrontal modulation could reflect post-perceptual processes that may be present even in the absence of report, such as thinking about the perceived stimulus, therefore reflecting a consequence rather than a direct correlate of conscious experience. Here, we investigate these issues by recording neuronal ensemble activity from the macaque ventrolateral PFC during briefly presented visual stimuli, either in isolated trials in which stimuli were clearly perceived or in sequences of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) in which perception and post-perceptual processing were challenged. We report that the identity of each stimulus could be decoded from PFC population activity even in the RSVP condition. The first visual signals could be detected at 60 ms after stimulus onset and information was maximal at 150 ms. However, in the RSVP condition, 200 ms after the onset of a stimulus, the decoding accuracy quickly dropped to chance level and the next stimulus started to be decodable. Interestingly, decoding in the ventrolateral PFC was stronger compared to posterior parietal cortex for both isolated and RSVP stimuli. These results indicate that neuronal populations in the macaque PFC reliably encode visual stimuli even under conditions that have been shown to challenge conscious perception and/or substantially reduce the probability of post-perceptual processing in humans. We discuss whether the observed activation reflects conscious access, phenomenal consciousness, or merely a preconscious bottom-up wave.","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47051140","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}