Abstract
This joint article reflects the authors' personal views regarding noteworthy advances in the neuroscience of consciousness in the last 10 years, and suggests what we feel may be promising future directions. It is based on a small conference at the Samoset Resort in Rockport, Maine, USA, in July of 2012, organized by the Mind Science Foundation of San Antonio, Texas. Here, we summarize recent advances in our understanding of subjectivity in humans and other animals, including empirical, applied, technical, and conceptual insights. These include the evidence for the importance of fronto-parietal connectivity and of “top-down” processes, both of which enable information to travel across distant cortical areas effectively, as well as numerous dissociations between consciousness and cognitive functions, such as attention, in humans. In addition, we describe the development of mental imagery paradigms, which made it possible to identify covert awareness in non-responsive subjects. Non-human animal consciousness research has also witnessed substantial advances on the specific role of cortical areas and higher order thalamus for consciousness, thanks to important technological enhancements. In addition, much progress has been made in the understanding of non-vertebrate cognition relevant to possible conscious states. Finally, major advances have been made in theories of consciousness, and also in their comparison with the available evidence. Along with reviewing these findings, each author suggests future avenues for research in their field of investigation.
Highlights
Due to many technical and conceptual advances, the neuroscience of consciousness has witnessed considerable progress over the last decade
Several intracranial recordings in humans have shown that temporal and parietal lobe seizure-induced loss of consciousness (LOC) is associated with a widespread increase in neural synchrony (Arthuis et al, 2009; Lambert et al, 2012). These results suggest that LOC in epilepsy could be induced due to neural hypersynchrony, impairing the differentiation of neuronal activity within and between cortical areas
Measures of conscious perception in awake humans distinguish objective performance, such as the ability to discriminate the presence, Neuroimaging studies of the neural correlates of consciousness of conscious contents Over the last decades, many studies have investigated NCCs of conscious contents in healthy awake volunteers (HAVs)
Summary
Due to many technical and conceptual advances, the neuroscience of consciousness has witnessed considerable progress over the last decade. In addition to differences in brain activation and functional connectivity, recent electroencephalography (EEG) studies have revealed that MCS patients, in contrast to VS patients, show preserved “top-down” or recurrent processing in higher-order cortical areas (Boly et al, 2011) (Figure 2).
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