Neuroscience of Consciousness最新文献

{"title":"Feeling ready: neural bases of prospective motor readiness judgements.","authors":"Elisabeth Parés-Pujolràs,&nbsp;Karla Matić,&nbsp;Patrick Haggard","doi":"10.1093/nc/niad003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niad003","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The idea that human agents voluntarily control their actions, including their spontaneous movements, strongly implies an anticipatory awareness of action. That is, agents should be aware they are about to act before actually executing a movement. Previous research has identified neural signals that could underpin prospective conscious access to motor preparation, including the readiness potential and the beta-band event-related desynchronization. In this study, we ran two experiments to test whether these two neural precursors of action also tracka subjective feeling of readiness. In Experiment 1, we combined a self-paced action task with an intention-probing design where participants gave binary responses to indicate whether they felt they had been about to move when a probe was presented. In Experiment 2, participants reported their feeling of readiness on a graded scale. We found that the feeling of readiness reliably correlates with the beta-band amplitude, but not with the readiness potential.</p>","PeriodicalId":52242,"journal":{"name":"Neuroscience of Consciousness","volume":"2023 1","pages":"niad003"},"PeriodicalIF":4.1,"publicationDate":"2023-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://ftp.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pub/pmc/oa_pdf/f6/04/niad003.PMC9994593.pdf","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9601222","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":"2022 2","pages":"niac001"},"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":"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":"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":" ","pages":""},"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":" ","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}