Corrigendum to: the Sussex-Waterloo Scale of Hypnotizability (SWASH): measuring capacity for altering conscious experience

Conscious attention performs two distinct roles in experience, a role of placing and a role of focusing, roles which match a distinction between selection and access endorsed in recent theories of attention. The intentionality of conscious experience consists in two sorts of attentional action, a focusing at and a placing on, the first lending to experience a perspectival categorical content and the second structuring its phenomenal character. Placing should be thought of more like opening a window for consciousness than as shining a spotlight, and focusing has to do with accessing the properties of whatever the window opens onto. A window is an aperture whose boundaries are defined by what is excluded—in this case, distractors.

Download Full-text

Consciousness

10.1093/oso/9780199674923.003.0037 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Anil K. Seth

Keyword(s):

Conscious Experience ◽

Real Problem ◽

Active Inference ◽

Biological Mechanisms ◽

Specific Content ◽

Brain Responses ◽

Biomimetic Approach ◽

Multiple Levels ◽

In Virtue Of ◽

The Brain

Consciousness is perhaps the most familiar aspect of our existence, yet we still do not know its biological basis. This chapter outlines a biomimetic approach to consciousness science, identifying three principles linking properties of conscious experience to potential biological mechanisms. First, conscious experiences generate large quantities of information in virtue of being simultaneously integrated and differentiated. Second, the brain continuously generates predictions about the world and self, which account for the specific content of conscious scenes. Third, the conscious self depends on active inference of self-related signals at multiple levels. Research following these principles helps move from establishing correlations between brain responses and consciousness towards explanations which account for phenomenological properties—addressing what can be called the “real problem” of consciousness. The picture that emerges is one in which consciousness, mind, and life, are tightly bound together—with implications for any possible future “conscious machines.”

Download Full-text

Pain Perception in Disorder of Consciousness: A Scoping Review on Current Knowledge, Clinical Applications, and Future Perspective

Brain Sciences ◽

10.3390/brainsci11050665 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 665

Author(s):

Rocco Salvatore Calabrò ◽

Loris Pignolo ◽

Claudia Müller-Eising ◽

Antonino Naro

Keyword(s):

Functional Connectivity ◽

Scoping Review ◽

Pain Perception ◽

Current Knowledge ◽

Conscious Experience ◽

Minimally Conscious State ◽

Conscious State ◽

Future Perspective ◽

Disorder Of Consciousness ◽

Minimally Conscious

Pain perception in individuals with prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC) is still a matter of debate. Advanced neuroimaging studies suggest some cortical activations even in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (UWS) compared to those with a minimally conscious state (MCS). Therefore, pain perception has to be considered even in individuals with UWS. However, advanced neuroimaging assessment can be challenging to conduct, and its findings are sometimes difficult to be interpreted. Conversely, multichannel electroencephalography (EEG) and laser-evoked potentials (LEPs) can be carried out quickly and are more adaptable to the clinical needs. In this scoping review, we dealt with the neurophysiological basis underpinning pain in PDOC, pointing out how pain perception assessment in these individuals might help in reducing the misdiagnosis rate. The available literature data suggest that patients with UWS show a more severe functional connectivity breakdown among the pain-related brain areas compared to individuals in MCS, pointing out that pain perception increases with the level of consciousness. However, there are noteworthy exceptions, because some UWS patients show pain-related cortical activations that partially overlap those observed in MCS individuals. This suggests that some patients with UWS may have residual brain functional connectivity supporting the somatosensory, affective, and cognitive aspects of pain processing (i.e., a conscious experience of the unpleasantness of pain), rather than only being able to show autonomic responses to potentially harmful stimuli. Therefore, the significance of the neurophysiological approach to pain perception in PDOC seems to be clear, and despite some methodological caveats (including intensity of stimulation, multimodal paradigms, and active vs. passive stimulation protocols), remain to be solved. To summarize, an accurate clinical and neurophysiological assessment should always be performed for a better understanding of pain perception neurophysiological underpinnings, a more precise differential diagnosis at the level of individual cases as well as group comparisons, and patient-tailored management.

Download Full-text

Personal Information as Symmetry Breaker in Disagreements

Philosophy ◽

10.1017/s0031819121000292 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-20

Author(s):

Diego E. Machuca

Keyword(s):

Personal Information ◽

Conscious Experience ◽

Real Life ◽

Cognitive Capacities ◽

First Order ◽

Natural Reaction ◽

Epistemic Standing

Abstract When involved in a disagreement, a common reaction is to tell oneself that, given that the information about one's own epistemic standing is clearly superior in both amount and quality to the information about one's opponent's epistemic standing, one is justified in one's confidence that one's view is correct. In line with this natural reaction to disagreement, some contributors to the debate on its epistemic significance have claimed that one can stick to one's guns by relying in part on information about one's first-order evidence and the functioning of one's cognitive capacities. In this article, I argue that such a manoeuvre to settle controversies encounters the problem that both disputants can make use of it, the problem that one may be wrong about one's current conscious experience, and the problem that it is a live possibility that many of one's beliefs are the product of epistemically distorting factors. I also argue that, even if we grant that personal information is reliable, when it comes to real-life rather than idealized disagreements, the extent of the unpossessed information about one's opponent's epistemic standing provides a reason for doubting that personal information can function as a symmetry breaker.

Download Full-text

Experiential ownership and body ownership are different phenomena

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-90014-y ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Caleb Liang ◽

Wen-Hsiang Lin ◽

Tai-Yuan Chang ◽

Chi-Hong Chen ◽

Chen-Wei Wu ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Conscious Experience ◽

Distinct Type ◽

Body Part ◽

The Body ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Rubber Hand ◽

Person Perspective ◽

The One ◽

First Time ◽

Full Body

AbstractBody ownership concerns what it is like to feel a body part or a full body as mine, and has become a prominent area of study. We propose that there is a closely related type of bodily self-consciousness largely neglected by researchers—experiential ownership. It refers to the sense that I am the one who is having a conscious experience. Are body ownership and experiential ownership actually the same phenomenon or are they genuinely different? In our experiments, the participant watched a rubber hand or someone else’s body from the first-person perspective and was touched either synchronously or asynchronously. The main findings: (1) The sense of body ownership was hindered in the asynchronous conditions of both the body-part and the full-body experiments. However, a strong sense of experiential ownership was observed in those conditions. (2) We found the opposite when the participants’ responses were measured after tactile stimulations had ceased for 5 s. In the synchronous conditions of another set of body-part and full-body experiments, only experiential ownership was blocked but not body ownership. These results demonstrate for the first time the double dissociation between body ownership and experiential ownership. Experiential ownership is indeed a distinct type of bodily self-consciousness.

Download Full-text