This article challenges the assumption that the science of consciousness can proceed from a theory-neutral foundation. I argue that even ostensibly theory-neutral (or theory-light) programmes inevitably rely on substantive background commitments that cannot be cleanly bracketed. The analysis demonstrates that the aspiration to eliminate or minimize theory-dependence in favour of pure observation risks collapsing into naïve empiricism. More broadly, the paper contends that there is no context-independent scientific method—certainly not one that seeks to purge theoretical commitments from the neuroscience of consciousness without significant epistemic cost.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have rapidly become a central topic in AI and cognitive science, due to their unprecedented performance in a vast array of tasks. Indeed, some even see "sparks of artificial general intelligence" in their apparently boundless faculty for conversation and reasoning. Their sophisticated emergent faculties, which were not initially anticipated by their designers, have ignited an urgent debate about whether and under which circumstances we should attribute consciousness to artificial entities in general and LLMs in particular. The current consensus, rooted in computational functionalism, proposes that consciousness should be ascribed based on a principle of computational equivalence. The objective of this opinion piece is to criticize this current approach and argue in favor of an alternative "behavioral inference principle", whereby consciousness is attributed if it is useful to explain (and predict) a given set of behavioral observations. We believe that a behavioral inference principle will provide an epistemologically valid and operationalizable criterion to assess machine consciousness.

Active inference describes motor action as a prediction-driven inferential process, whereby ascending proprioceptive prediction errors are attenuated to allow the fulfillment of expected movement. Meditative practices typically involve a heightened attention to bodily sensations, begging the question of whether this could partially offset the normal proprioceptive suppression during a simple motor act. In this study, 42 experienced meditators completed a tactile force-matching task, designed to measure somatosensory attenuation. The active group (N=19) performed the task before (T1), during (T2), and three weeks after (T3) an intensive 10-day mindfulness meditation retreat, while a control waiting list group (N=23) was also measured three times, but before participating in the retreat. Analysis of T1 data confirmed the presence of a general somatosensory attenuation effect across groups, which correlated negatively with pre-retreat trait measures of mindfulness, as predicted by our hypothesis. Contrary to our expectations, however, longitudinal analyses did not reveal a global reduction in somatosensory attenuation as an effect of intensive meditation practice. We observed instead a subtler regression-to-the-mean effect at T1, which increased with task repetition in control participants (T1>T2>T3), a training-related phenomenon not previously reported for the force-matching task. Interestingly, this habituation behavior was not shown by the active participants, who maintained the level of regression-to-the-mean observed at baseline at T2, suggesting that the formation of prior expectations about the presented force intensity may be affected by the retreat. We discuss how multiple, opposite effects of meditation on proprioceptive active inference mechanisms, and/or an alteration of prior formation and their influence, may explain these findings.

Dreams have arguably been a source of creative insight for millennia. The specific assertion that dreams during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep promote creative problem-solving, however, has only anecdotal support, lacking strong empirical support from rigorous studies. Experimental manipulations of dream content have been confounded by waking components, such that any boost in creative problem-solving could be attributable to waking cognition rather than sleep cognition. Likewise, correlational evidence cannot unequivocally establish that dreams cause insights. Evidence that memory reactivation during sleep promotes creative problem-solving is also insufficient for implicating dreaming per se. Better methods for directly manipulating REM-sleep dreaming are needed. Here, we studied individuals who frequently have lucid dreams—realizing they are dreaming while still asleep. Participants slept after failing to solve several puzzles that had unique soundtracks, and they were instructed to continue working on a puzzle if they heard its soundtrack in a dream. Half of the soundtracks were played during REM sleep to reactivate memories of corresponding puzzles, with the goal of biasing dreams to connect with those specific puzzles versus the remaining puzzles. Those sound cues reliably increased dreaming about the associated puzzles. Furthermore, a post-hoc analysis showed that, for participants with an increase in cue-related dreaming, cues boosted later puzzle-solving. We thus expanded on a well-known phenomenon, that sounds can be incorporated into dreams and can change dream content, by substantiating experimental procedures to align dreams with the search for creative answers to specific challenges. Results highlight that REM dreams can contribute to next-day problem solving.

Modern technology frequently places the consequences of our actions at a distance (e.g. remote surgery, smart-home control, virtual reality). Does spatial distance between an action and its outcome weaken the sense of agency (SoA) - the feeling of control over one’s actions and consequences? Two recent studies, by Jenkins and Obhi and Mariano et al., answered “yes,” reporting stronger temporal binding (TB) in near than far space and interpreting this as greater implicit agency. A third study - our own work with a similar paradigm - found no distance effect. Here we (i) provide a rigorous side-by-side methodological comparison of the three studies, (ii) argue why a direct test to establish a distance modulation of TB (the Near - Far difference of the Active - Passive delta) should be performed in order to reach meaningful conclusions, and (iii) report new reanalyses of our data and direct tests on the two target studies. Overall, current evidence does not support a distance effect on SoA. Our reassessment provides alternative explanations that converge with available evidence suggesting that distance may influence temporal interval perception, but that effect is independent of action intention and therefore of agency.Public Significance Statement: In our increasingly connected world, we often interact with devices and influence events that are physically distant from us - like controlling smart appliances remotely or engaging in virtual reality experiences. Does the distance between us and the effects of our actions change how much we feel in control of the outcomes of our actions? Recent studies have suggested that we feel less responsible when action outcomes appear in far space compared to near space. However, methodological limitations in these studies, as well as our own results with a similar paradigm, challenge the validity of this claim. We aim to contribute to the crucial debate on the role of spatial distance on humans’ feeling of responsibility by providing a respectful though critical analysis of recent findings and offering recommendations for future research.

Visual imagery and external perception rely on similar representations. However, whether the same processes underpin the subjective appraisal of both percepts and mental images is not yet known. One well-known effect in perceptual detection tasks is that people take longer to report perceptions of absence compared to presence. Vividness reports are detection-like in that participants report the presence or absence of a mental image. We therefore asked whether reports of low vividness share commonalities with reports of target absence. Across five pre-existing datasets, we report a robust inverse correlation between imagery vividness ratings and reaction times: participants take longer to report the vividness of mental images when they are weak. In addition, in one of the two datasets that included detection tasks and trait imagery questionnaires we find that individual differences in detection asymmetries (slower responses for absence versus presence in detection tasks) and trait imagery can predict the strength of this vividness-response time relationship. Our results may be suggestive of a shared mechanism employed across both perception and imagery that evaluates the strength of visual experience. Future research is necessary to fully characterize the mechanisms driving this effect.

Contingency awareness refers to an observer’s ability to identify the association between a conditioned and an unconditioned stimulus (US). A widely held belief in human fear conditioning is that this form of associative learning may occur independently of contingency awareness. To test this hypothesis, in this preregistered study (https://osf.io/vywq7), we recorded electroencephalography during a task, where participants were presented with compounds of a word (drawn from two semantic categories) and tactile stimulation (vibration), followed by either a neutral sound (US−) or a loud noise (US+). Based on interviews, participants were divided into an aware (N = 50) and an unaware (N = 31) group. Only the aware group showed evidence of learning at the neural level, notably a larger stimulus-preceding negativity developing before US+ and a stronger theta response to vibrations predicting the US+. The aware group also showed stronger alpha and beta suppression around the vibrations and a weaker theta response to US+, possibly indicating heightened attention to the cue and the violation/confirmation of expectation. Group differences in alpha and beta suppression were already present before the aversive learning began, suggesting that elevated attention may precede and facilitate awareness. Personality tests showed that elevated anxiety, neuroticism, higher intolerance of uncertainty, or harm avoidance is not predictive of the acquisition of contingency awareness. Our findings support the notion that fear conditioning, as reflected in cortical measures, cannot occur without contingency awareness.

For individuals with sound-touch synesthesia, sounds consistently evoke strong, localized sensations on the body. We systematically investigated the relationship between sound frequency and the characteristics of induced tactile experiences in synesthetes (n = 19) and controls (n = 23). Sound frequency strongly predicted the location of tactile sensations in synesthetes and controls. Synesthetes experienced touch more frequently and tended to report sensations in more spatially focused regions of the body, reflecting a sharper mapping between sound frequency and somatotopy. This spatial distribution of touch according to sound frequency reflects a behavioral mapping between tonotopy and somatotopy suggesting the involvement of early, tonotopically- and somatotopically-organized brain areas. These findings highlight a strong similarity between auditory-tactile mappings in synesthetic and ordinary perception, suggesting that synesthesia only differs in the strength of the mappings and therefore may be on a spectrum with ordinary perception. Furthermore, these findings offer insights into the neural mechanisms of sound-touch mappings, suggesting they rely on cross-modal neural pathways utilized in ordinary perception.

It has been proposed that both conscious and unconscious perception are associated with a feedforward sweep of oscillatory activity in the gamma band (>40 Hz), while conscious perception also requires recurrent feedback via beta band (sim20 Hz) oscillations. To investigate the causal relationship between these oscillations and (un)conscious visual perception, we assessed the effect of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) in the gamma (40 Hz) and beta (20 Hz) bands on the objective and subjective visibility of targets in a metacontrast backward masking task. To capture different aspects of visual experience, we measured objective visibility: participants’ ability to correctly categorize the masked stimulus, and subjective visibility: participants’ self-report of whether they consciously perceived the stimulus. We expected that 40hz-tACS would affect both the objective visibility and subjective visibility. Moreover, we expected that 20 Hz-tACS would selectively affect the subjective visibility. Our results showed that target visibility was selectively compromised by 20 Hz-tACS but, in contrast to our hypothesis, this effect was specific to objective visibility. Although the power of local beta oscillations increased after 20 Hz-tACS, inter-areal beta synchrony could have nevertheless been impaired, a possibility that should be investigated in the future by means of source reconstructed high density electroencephalography recordings. In summary, our findings suggest that 20 Hz tACS may modulate target visibility, indicating a potential relationship between beta-band activity and visual perception. Future studies could build upon this result by investigating other forms of stimulation and other model organisms, further contributing to our knowledge of how conscious access causally depends on brain oscillations.

Non-dual awareness (NDA) refers to a shift in consciousness in which the usual distinction between subject and object dissolves, and experience is no longer structured by conceptual mediation or goal-directed regulation. Meling enactivist model describes NDA as a meditative disclosure of groundlessness—the recognition of emptiness (śūnyatā), that all phenomena lack intrinsic nature. While enactivism explains autonomy through process closure, this article argues that constraint closure, as developed by Nave, extends that framework by making explicit how autonomy is sustained through the continual regeneration of its own relational conditions. This refinement prevents process-closure models from being read in substantialist terms when applied to complex cognitive systems, where stability arises through ongoing transformation rather than fixed organization. Nave’s account builds on Juarrero theory of constraint causality, which replaces intrinsic forces with relational conditions—a view that parallels Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka analysis of dependent origination. Integrating these perspectives, I propose that NDA corresponds to a shift from decoupled to precarious constraints, revealing that cognition and awareness persist not through intrinsic foundations but through the dynamic regeneration of interdependent relations.