scholarly journals A Deeper Look at the “Neural Correlate of Consciousness”

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fink Fink
Keyword(s):  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

scholarly journals Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1641) ◽  
pp. 20130211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph Blake ◽  
Jan Brascamp ◽  
David J. Heeger
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Binocular Rivalry ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Neural Dynamics ◽  
Perceptual Decision Making ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Neural Correlates Of Consciousness ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

This essay critically examines the extent to which binocular rivalry can provide important clues about the neural correlates of conscious visual perception. Our ideas are presented within the framework of four questions about the use of rivalry for this purpose: (i) what constitutes an adequate comparison condition for gauging rivalry's impact on awareness, (ii) how can one distinguish abolished awareness from inattention, (iii) when one obtains unequivocal evidence for a causal link between a fluctuating measure of neural activity and fluctuating perceptual states during rivalry, will it generalize to other stimulus conditions and perceptual phenomena and (iv) does such evidence necessarily indicate that this neural activity constitutes a neural correlate of consciousness? While arriving at sceptical answers to these four questions, the essay nonetheless offers some ideas about how a more nuanced utilization of binocular rivalry may still provide fundamental insights about neural dynamics, and glimpses of at least some of the ingredients comprising neural correlates of consciousness, including those involved in perceptual decision-making.

scholarly journals The Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape: Reconciling Neuroscientific Theories With the Phenomenology of Consciousness

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse J. Winters
Keyword(s):  
Conscious Experience ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Phenomenal Consciousness ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Resonance Theory ◽  
Thalamocortical System ◽  
Integrated Information Theory ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

In recent years, there has been a proliferation of neuroscientific theories of consciousness. These include theories which explicitly point to EM fields, notably Operational Architectonics and, more recently, the General Resonance Theory. In phenomenological terms, human consciousness is a unified composition of contents. These contents are specific and meaningful, and they exist from a subjective point of view. Human conscious experience is temporally continuous, limited in content, and coherent. Based upon those phenomenal observations, pre-existing theories of consciousness, and a large body of experimental evidence, I derived the Temporally-Integrated Causality Landscape (TICL). In brief, the TICL proposes that the neural correlate of consciousness is a structure of temporally integrated causality occurring over a large portion of the thalamocortical system. This structure is composed of a large, integrated set of neuronal elements (the System), which contains some subsystems, defined as having a higher level of temporally-integrated causality than the System as a whole. Each Subsystem exists from the point of view of the System, in the form of meaningful content. In this article, I review the TICL and consider the importance of EM forces as a mechanism of neural causality. I compare the fundamentals of TICL to those of several other neuroscientific theories. Using five major characteristics of phenomenal consciousness as a standard, I compare the basic tenets of Integrated Information Theory, Global Neuronal Workspace, General Resonance Theory, Operational Architectonics, and the Temporo-spatial Theory of Consciousness with the framework of the TICL. While the literature concerned with these theories tends to focus on different lines of evidence, there are fundamental areas of agreement. This means that, in time, it may be possible for many of them to converge upon the truth. In this analysis, I conclude that a primary distinction which divides these theories is the feature of spatial and temporal nesting. Interestingly, this distinction does not separate along the fault line between theories explicitly concerned with EM fields and those which are not. I believe that reconciliation is possible, at least in principle, among those theories that recognize the following: just as the contents of consciousness are distinctions within consciousness, the neural correlates of conscious content should be distinguishable from but fall within the spatial and temporal boundaries of the full neural correlates of consciousness.

Consciousness: Don't Give Up on the Brain

2010 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Aizawa
Keyword(s):  
Extended Mind ◽  
Visual Illusions ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

AbstractIn the extended mind literature, one sometimes finds the claim that there is no neural correlate of consciousness. Instead, there is a biological or ecological correlate of consciousness. Consciousness, it is claimed, supervenes on an entire organism in action. Alva Noë is one of the leading proponents of such a view. This paper resists Noë's view. First, it challenges the evidence he offers from neuroplasticity. Second, it presses a problem with paralysis. Third, it draws attention to a challenge from the existence of metamers and visual illusions.

scholarly journals The search for the NCC: Progress and challenges

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Lepauvre ◽  
Lucia Melloni
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Neural Correlates ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Neural Correlates Of Consciousness ◽  
Consciousness Studies ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
Tremendous Amount ◽  
20Th Anniversary ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

Twenty years ago, Thomas Metzinger published the book "The Neural Correlates of Consciousness" amassing the state of knowledge in the field of consciousness studies at the time from philosophical and empirical perspectives. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of this impactful publication, we review the progress the field has made since then and the important methodological challenges it faces. A tremendous number of empirical studies have been conducted, which has led to the identification of many candidate neural correlates of consciousness. Yet, this tremendous amount of work has not unraveled a consensual account of consciousness as of now. Many questions, some already raised twenty years ago, remain unanswered, and an enormous proliferation of theories sharply contrasts with the scarcity of compelling data and methodological challenges. The contrastive method, the foundational method used to study the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), has also been called into question. And while awareness in the community of its shortcomings is widespread, few concrete attempts have been made to go beyond it and/or to revise existing theories. We propose several methodological shifts that we believe may help to advance the quest of the NCC program, while remaining uncommitted to any specific theory: (1) the currently prevalent “contrastive method” should lose its monopoly in favor of methods that attempt to explain the phenomenology of experience; (2) experimental data should be shared in centralized, multi-methods databases, transcending the limitations of individual experiments by granting granularity and power to generalize findings and “distill” the NCC proper; (3) the explanatory power of theories should be directly pitted against each other to overcome the non-productive fractioning of the field into insular camps seeking confirmatory evidence for their theories. We predict these innovations might enable the field to progress towards the goal of explaining consciousness.

scholarly journals Three comments on Teller’s “bridge locus”

2013 ◽  
Vol 30 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 219-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. ANTHONY MOVSHON
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Visual Pathway ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Neural Correlate ◽  
Current Thinking ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Perceptual Representations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Neural Correlate Of Consciousness

AbstractThe notion of a set of neurons that form a “bridge locus” serving as the immediate substrate of visual perception is examined in the light of evidence on the architecture of the visual pathway, of current thinking about perceptual representations, and of the basis of perceptual awareness. The bridge locus is likely to be part of a tangled web of representations, and this complexity raises the question of whether another scheme that relies less on geography might offer a better framework. The bridge locus bears a close relationship to the neural correlate of consciousness (NCC), and like the NCC may be a concept which is no longer precise enough to provide a useful basis for reasoning about the relationship between brain activity and perceptual experience.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document