Neuroscience of Consciousness最新文献

{"title":"Neurophenomenal structuralism. A philosophical agenda for a structuralist neuroscience of consciousness.","authors":"Holger Lyre","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac012","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The program of \"neurophenomenal structuralism\" is presented as an agenda for a genuine structuralist neuroscience of consciousness that seeks to understand specific phenomenal experiences as strictly relational affairs. The paper covers a broad range of topics. It starts from considerations about neural change detection and relational coding that motivate a solution of the Newman problem of the brain in terms of spatiotemporal relations. Next, phenomenal quality spaces and their Q-structures are discussed. Neurophenomenal structuralism proclaims a homomorphic mapping of the structures of self-organized neural maps in the brain onto Q-structures, and it will be demonstrated how this leads to a new and special version of structural representationalism about phenomenal content. A methodological implication of neurophenomenal structuralism is that it proposes measurement procedures that focus on the relationships between different stimuli (as, for instance, similarity ratings or representational geometry methods). Finally, it will be shown that neurophenomenal structuralism also has strong philosophical implications, as it leads to holism about phenomenal experiences and serves to reject inverted qualia scenarios.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":" ","pages":"niac012"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-08-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/ed/8d/niac012.PMC9396309.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"40637241","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":"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":" ","pages":"niac010"},"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":"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":"2022 1","pages":"niac017"},"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":"131 1","pages":""},"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":"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":" ","pages":""},"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}

{"title":"Functions of consciousness: conceptual clarification","authors":"T. Niikawa, Katsunori Miyahara, H. Hamada, S. Nishida","doi":"10.1093/nc/niac006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niac006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract There are many theories of the functions of consciousness. How these theories relate to each other, how we should assess them, and whether any integration of them is possible are all issues that remain unclear. To contribute to a solution, this paper offers a conceptual framework to clarify the theories of the functions of consciousness. This framework consists of three dimensions: (i) target, (ii) explanatory order, and (iii) necessity/sufficiency. The first dimension, target, clarifies each theory in terms of the kind of consciousness it targets. The second dimension, explanatory order, clarifies each theory in terms of how it conceives of the explanatory relation between consciousness and function. The third dimension, necessity/sufficiency, clarifies each theory in terms of the necessity/sufficiency relation posited between consciousness and function. We demonstrate the usefulness of this framework by applying it to some existing scientific and philosophical theories of the functions of consciousness.","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46464193","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":"The nature of blindsight: implications for current theories of consciousness","authors":"Diane Derrien, Clémentine Garric, C. Sergent, S. Chokron","doi":"10.1093/nc/niab043","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niab043","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Blindsight regroups the different manifestations of preserved discriminatory visual capacities following the damage to the primary visual cortex. Blindsight types differentially impact objective and subjective perception, patients can report having no visual awareness whilst their behaviour suggests visual processing still occurs at some cortical level. This phenomenon hence presents a unique opportunity to study consciousness and perceptual consciousness, and for this reason, it has had an historical importance for the development of this field of research. From these studies, two main opposing models of the underlying mechanisms have been established: (a) blindsight is perception without consciousness or (b) blindsight is in fact degraded vision, two views that mirror more general theoretical options about whether unconscious cognition truly exists or whether it is only a degraded form of conscious processing. In this article, we want to re-examine this debate in the light of recent advances in the characterization of blindsight and associated phenomena. We first provide an in-depth definition of blindsight and its subtypes, mainly blindsight type I, blindsight type II and the more recently described blindsense. We emphasize the necessity of sensitive and robust methodology to uncover the dissociations between perception and awareness that can be observed in brain-damaged patients with visual field defects at different cognitive levels. We discuss these different profiles of dissociation in the light of both contending models. We propose that the different types of dissociations reveal a pattern of relationship between perception, awareness and metacognition that is actually richer than what is proposed by either of the existing models. Finally, we consider this in the framework of current theories of consciousness and touch on the implications the findings of blindsight have on these.","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45694966","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":"Consciousness as a multidimensional phenomenon: implications for the assessment of disorders of consciousness.","authors":"Jasmine Walter","doi":"10.1093/nc/niab047","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niab047","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Disorders of consciousness (DoCs) pose a significant clinical and ethical challenge because they allow for complex forms of conscious experience in patients where intentional behaviour and communication are highly limited or non-existent. There is a pressing need for brain-based assessments that can precisely and accurately characterize the conscious state of individual DoC patients. There has been an ongoing research effort to develop neural measures of consciousness. However, these measures are challenging to validate not only due to our lack of ground truth about consciousness in many DoC patients but also because there is an open ontological question about consciousness. There is a growing, well-supported view that consciousness is a multidimensional phenomenon that cannot be fully described in terms of the theoretical construct of hierarchical, easily ordered conscious levels. The multidimensional view of consciousness challenges the utility of levels-based neural measures in the context of DoC assessment. To examine how these measures may map onto consciousness as a multidimensional phenomenon, this article will investigate a range of studies where they have been applied in states other than DoC and where more is known about conscious experience. This comparative evidence suggests that measures of conscious level are more sensitive to some dimensions of consciousness than others and cannot be assumed to provide a straightforward hierarchical characterization of conscious states. Elevated levels of brain complexity, for example, are associated with conscious states characterized by a high degree of sensory richness and minimal attentional constraints, but are suboptimal for goal-directed behaviour and external responsiveness. Overall, this comparative analysis indicates that there are currently limitations to the use of these measures as tools to evaluate consciousness as a multidimensional phenomenon and that the relationship between these neural signatures and phenomenology requires closer scrutiny.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2021 2","pages":"niab047"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/e1/fc/niab047.PMC8716840.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39791463","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":"Representational 'touch' and modulatory 'retouch'-two necessary neurobiological processes in thalamocortical interaction for conscious experience.","authors":"Talis Bachmann","doi":"10.1093/nc/niab045","DOIUrl":"10.1093/nc/niab045","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Theories of consciousness using neurobiological data or being influenced by these data have been focused either on states of consciousness or contents of consciousness. These theories have occasionally used evidence from psychophysical phenomena where conscious experience is a dependent experimental variable. However, systematic catalog of many such relevant phenomena has not been offered in terms of these theories. In the perceptual retouch theory of thalamocortical interaction, recently developed to become a blend with the dendritic integration theory, consciousness states and contents of consciousness are explained by the same mechanism. This general-purpose mechanism has modulation of the cortical layer-5 pyramidal neurons that represent contents of consciousness as its core. As a surplus, many experimental psychophysical phenomena of conscious perception can be explained by the workings of this mechanism. Historical origins and current views inherent in this theory are presented and reviewed.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2021 2","pages":"niab045"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/e9/57/niab045.PMC8672242.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39739493","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":"Erratum to: Stage 1 registered report: metacognitive asymmetries in visual perception and Stage 2 registered report: metacognitive asymmetries in visual perception.","authors":"Matan Mazor,&nbsp;Rani Moran,&nbsp;Stephen M Fleming","doi":"10.1093/nc/niab046","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niab046","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/nc/niab005.][This corrects the article DOI: 10.1093/nc/niab025.].</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":" ","pages":"niab046"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8667774/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"39817818","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}