EEG microstates reveal distinct network dynamics in lucid and non-lucid REM sleep.

Aphantasia, the strong diminution or complete absence of mental imagery, challenges long-standing views of imagery as central to cognition. Competing accounts variously explain the phenomenon as a failure of sensory reactivation or as unconscious mental imagery. Here, we propose a new framework, the integration model of aphantasia, which argues that reactivated sensory information must undergo multi-stage integration to yield imagery experience. Against unconscious imagery accounts, we argue that the neural activations observed in aphantasics are not imagery but sensory precursors: rudimentary sensory codes that lack perceptual status. Only when sensory precursors are locally integrated do they become perceptual representations, and only when these are further integrated with interoceptive signals do they give rise to conscious imagery experience. We present the integration model as a dual-stream framework that unifies recent attention- and interoception-based accounts, situate it within existing theories of mental imagery and aphantasia, and highlight its clinical relevance. In doing so, we reframe the debate on unconscious imagery and draw attention to the role of multi-stage integration as a key mechanism underlying mental imagery and its absence across different subtypes of aphantasia.

Transpersonal psychology has contributed significantly to the understanding of spiritual emergence and crisis by legitimizing non-ordinary states of consciousness and anomalous experiences. However, many prevailing frameworks continue to rely on intrapsychic explanatory models that lack clear evidential thresholds when confronted with experiences that appear to involve autonomous or external agency. This paper proposes a critical-evidential transpersonal framework that integrates phenomenological insight with empirical standards drawn from parapsychological research. Central to this framework is the construct of Direct Spiritual Intelligent Intrusion (DSII), introduced as a provisional model for investigating spiritual crises that present with convergent subjective and objective indicators not readily accounted for by internal psychological processes alone. Using established transpersonal approaches and contemporary narrative-based therapies as illustrative cases, this paper examines the epistemic limitations of a priori intrapsychic reductionism and argues for the necessity of differential diagnosis in the assessment of spiritual crisis. By emphasizing ontological suspension, graduated evidential assessment, and clinical humility, the framework seeks to bridge the methodological divide between transpersonal psychology and parapsychology while reducing the risk of misclassification, premature pathologization, and explanatory closure.

ABSTRACT In an earlier article, we argued that post-mortem privacy is not sufficiently protected in England and Wales. In this article, we draw from Boonin’s posthumous harm thesis and posthumous wrong thesis to develop a framework and rationale for justifying the recognition and enforcement of a privacy right post-mortem. Essentially, our theoretical framework suggests that, just as a living person can be harmed by an act that does not have any effect on their conscious experience, such as the frustration of their desires, the dead can also suffer unfelt harm. We test and illustrate the analytical and explanatory power of this theoretical framework with a USA post-mortem privacy case and five relevant practical examples. Furthermore, we examine some important cases in England and Wales, and some cases from the ECtHR, to show how the use of our framework could lead to the recognition and justification of a privacy right post-mortem.

ABSTRACT This qualitative study explores pre-service early childhood teachers’ perceptions of preparing and implementing art activities that integrate natural and sustainable materials through holistic and experience-based approaches. Conducted within the Art Education in Early Childhood course offered in a teacher education programme at a state university in Turkey, the research adopted a case study design grounded in the interpretive paradigm. Data were collected from 78 participants through 16 focus group interviews and analyzed using inductive content analysis. The findings revealed that pre-service teachers valued creativity, collaboration, and hands-on learning while recognising the pedagogical and environmental benefits of using natural and sustainable materials. These activities were found to foster imagination, reflective thinking, and awareness of children’s developmental needs. However, participants reported challenges related to material organisation, time management, age-appropriate activity design, and classroom management. The experience further enabled them to link theory with practice and develop a deeper understanding of effective teaching strategies. Overall, the study highlights the importance of experiential and reflective learning in enhancing teacher preparation and underscores that integrating natural and sustainable materials into art-based pedagogies can promote meaningful, cost-effective, and environmentally conscious learning experiences that support teachers’ professional growth.

Conscious experiences appear to play a central role in human behavior, yet most neural processing occurs outside of consciousness. Understanding how the mind prioritizes information for consciousness is, therefore, crucial for theories of cognition. Prior research has largely focused on vision, but generalization is tenuous given the vastly different characteristics of the senses-particularly for audition, which lacks foveation and cannot be intentionally stopped. We examine the affective domain, for which prioritization is not well understood. In three experiments (two preregistered), 101 Hebrew-speaking adults completed a visual task with a stream of auditory pseudowords in the background. Occasionally a meaningful word appeared, and participants were asked about its presence. Using objective and subjective awareness measures, we found that neutral words were prioritized over negative words, regardless of task difficulty, intelligibility, and low-level features. These findings challenge theorizing and modal intuitions, and we discuss ways in which those can be reconciled.

What is the role of subsonic and low-frequency vibration in consciousness, music, and health? This article draws on neurophysiological, evolutionary, and clinical perspectives to examine the Pacini system — the body's subsonic vibratory perceptual system — and its relation to consciousness studies, music perception, and health and well-being. The Pacini system, while commonly overlooked, is structurally and functionally interlinked with various sensory, emotion, and pain processing pathways, and thereby modulates brain function and overall conscious experience. It also plays a key role in music perception, music stimulation, and treatments that rely on these, due to its sensitivity to lower ranges of the auditory system, including mid to low bass ranges. This paper presents a novel music stimulation treatment called High Amplitude Low Frequency Music Impulse Stimulation (HALF-MIS). HALF-MIS purposefully activates the Pacini system via subsonic and low-frequency vibrations, while also incorporating specifically designed, composed, and produced music that delivers an harmonic sonic experience. We will discuss results and potential mechanisms of action from case studies and ongoing clinical trials of HALF-MIS, which provide promising indications of its efficacy in reducing pain, depression, anxiety, and long COVID-19 symptoms.

Acute requirement for the hippocampus in putatively conscious vision revealed by a mouse model of blindsight.

Consciousness science has generated diverse theoretical frameworks, each offering insights into different aspects of conscious experience. However, this diversity has created a fractured landscape: theories operate at different explanatory levels, and a principled account of how conscious phenomena arise from specific neural computations remains largely absent. This work argues that State Space Theory (SST) can serve as a unifying mechanistic framework for consciousness science. SST proposes that consciousness arises from hierarchical delay coordinate embedding (DCE) - the reconstruction of dynamical system structure from time-delayed signals - implemented through recurrent cortical circuits ('DCE engines'), with gain modulation determining which reconstructions achieve system-wide influence. SST identifies these dynamics with consciousness itself, not merely as correlates. We draw on recent empirical and theoretical work to demonstrate the feasibility of this proposal, including empirical demonstrations that recurrent networks learn via embedding and mathematical results linking recurrent dynamics to embedding theory. We identify how major cognitive theories map onto this architecture mechanistically: parallel DCE engines correspond to Dennett's competing "drafts," global broadcasting reflects gain-amplified propagation, recurrent processing enables the temporal integration DCE requires, and the attention schema emerges as a higher-order reconstruction of gain modulation dynamics. SST's fundamentally process-based character provides immunity to the unfolding argument and resolves the temporal paradox facing causal structure theories. The framework generates a number of falsifiable predictions related to topological structure of perceptual dynamics, temporal vulnerability windows, and selective disruption of recurrent timing. SST thus offers a computational foundation for consciousness research that grounds existing theories mechanistically while generating empirical commitments.

Consciousness presents a structural puzzle: a unified, context-sensitive, globally integrated mode of experience emerging from distributed neural dynamics. While classical neuroscience has mapped synaptic, oscillatory, and network-level mechanisms with increasing precision, debate persists as to whether classical formalisms fully capture the integrative and contextual features of conscious processing. This review examines whether quantum principles offer explanatory leverage in two distinct senses: as formal mathematical frameworks for modeling contextual cognition, and as mechanistic hypotheses proposing biologically instantiated non-classical states. We surveyed empirical and theoretical developments spanning zero-quantum-coherence in MRI signals, entanglement-structured learning paradigms, quantum-inspired computational models, and proposed neural substrates, including microtubules, nuclear spins, and photonic architectures. Although certain findings have been interpreted as consistent with a non-classical structure, no study to date has demonstrated entanglement, long-lived coherence, or collapse dynamics in neural tissue under operational criteria comparable to those used in controlled quantum systems. Replication remains limited, biological entanglement witnesses are not yet established, and nonlinear classical dynamics can reproduce many putative quantum signatures. Accordingly, the decisive question is not whether the brain is quantum, but whether its dynamics exceed the explanatory reach of rigorously defined classical models. Progress hinges on replication, adversarial scrutiny, and operational criteria precise enough to discriminate genuine non-classical correlations from classical complexity. Whether quantum mechanisms ultimately prove necessary or refined classical models remain sufficient, this inquiry compels a deeper understanding of integration, contextuality, and the physical constraints shaping conscious experience.

An alternative physics-based metric to gain insights into the Entropic Brain Hypothesis is introduced, where the diversity of neural signals in the brain activity is associated to different states of human consciousness reflected by entropy measurements. The approach is inspired by the properties around a Schwarzschild event horizon in vacuum. In this context, we idealize the brain to be an analogous blackbody in a curved spacetime and identify the boundaries of the Entropic Brain Hypothesis via an “awareness” index [Formula: see text], which could represent a (bio-)marker for the dynamics of the brain. Through this physics picture, an external observer (human or AI agent) may depict the mental-like modulations derived from subjective, personal conscious experiences. In the work, awareness is not equated with consciousness as such. It is defined as the externally accessible projection of internal conscious dynamics.

Uncovering the neural basis of psychedelics' potent effects on brain activity and conscious experience has great potential for understanding their therapeutic effects. Numerous studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) uncovered a strong effect of psychedelics on global properties of fMRI signal, but how they map to underlying neural phenomena remains to be further explored. In this article, we aimed to relate commonly reported findings from functional connectivity studies of psychedelics to changes in the spatio-temporal propagation of activity over the unimodal-transmodal cortical axis. We used data from an openly available dataset including baseline sessions, a control session with administration of methylphenidate, and psilocybin, a 5HT2a agonist. We found that faster propagation speed was related to increased total functional connectivity and a contraction of the principal gradient. The results support the view that these functional connectivity indices obtained from entire signal time courses reflect the modulation of specific global events of propagation. Furthermore, we found that the cortical distribution of 5HT2a receptors could contribute to the modulation of travelling wave propagation by psilocybin. These findings provide a link between macroscopic signatures of neuromodulatory activity, global brain events and receptor action, with relevance for understanding the mechanisms of psychedelic effects.

Perceived sleep depth is a key determinant of subjective sleep quality, traditionally thought to reflect unconsciousness and reduced cortical activation. Here, we combined high-density EEG with a serial awakening paradigm during NREM2 (N2) sleep in healthy human participants to examine its neural and experiential correlates. As expected, deeper sleep was associated with reduced cortical activation, reflected in a lower high-to-low frequency power ratio. Yet, this relationship weakened in the presence of dreaming, indicating that immersive conscious experiences may counteract the impact of cortical activation on perceived depth. Indeed, perceived sleep depth was lowest during minimal forms of awareness characterized by a mere sense of presence, and highest during immersive dreaming or deep unconsciousness. Across the night, physiological sleep pressure and subjective sleepiness declined, but perceived sleep depth rose alongside increasing dream immersiveness. These findings challenge the view that the feeling of deep sleep arises solely from reduced brain activity and suggest instead that immersive dreaming may help sustain the subjective experience of deep sleep as homeostatic pressure wanes.

This mini-review examines research on fetal consciousness, focusing on whether it can be empirically assessed or remains primarily a philosophical construct. A review of theoretical frameworks was conducted. Behavioural evidence from studies of prenatal sensory responsiveness is evaluated, with particular attention to whether observed behaviours are reflexive or intentional actions. Research in this area is frequently inconsistent. Theoretical models differ in how they conceptualise consciousness and in pinpointing when it may first emerge. Some frameworks propose that consciousness requires the integration of three key components: awareness, meaning the capacity to register sensory input; cognition, defined as the ability to acquire, organise and utilise information; and volition, in terms of intentional, goal-directed behaviour. Empirical findings from studies of self-directed fetal movements, behavioural responses to external stimuli, and systematic changes in fetal facial expressions following specific sensory inputs all point towards the presence of elements of conscious states rather than the alternative explanation of reflexive activity. These early capacities appear to be observable during prenatal development. Uncertainty remains regarding the extent to which fetal behaviours evidence full conscious experience. Advancing the field requires controlled experimental research and advanced technology to understand consciousness as it first emerges.

ABSTRACT Illusionism holds that phenomenal consciousness, understood as the intrinsic qualitative character of experience, is an illusion generated by cognitive systems. While attractive in its parsimony, illusionism is often criticized as imcomplete: it denies qualia without explaining why the appear so compelling. This paper develops the Wet Room model as a constructive extenstion, arguing that illusionism requires a more explicit account of the cognitive architecture that generates phenomenal seeming. The model inverts John Searle’s Chinese Room argument. Where Searle claimed that syntax cannot yield semantics, the Wet Room shows that humans themselves are systems governed by biochemical syntax, and that semantics, understanding, and conscious experience are structural appearances produced by rule-following, self-modeling architecture The paper identifies three interacting layers of this architecture: biochemical code, predictive neural dynamics, and recursive narrative construction. These are anchored in emperical research, including studies of unconcious precursors of action, predicitive processing, genetic constraints on cognition, and clinical cases such as confabulation and blindsight. By supplying architectural mechanisms rather than merely reinterpreting experience, the Wet Room advances illusionsism into a constructive explanatory framework, explaining not only why qualia do not exist, but why they inevitably seem to.

Interoception, the sense of the internal state of the body, plays a fundamental role in emotional awareness and self-referential processing. Recently, interoception has been linked to the experience of mental imagery. However, this association has not been empirically characterized. We therefore tested how task-based and self-reported measures of interoception predict individual differences in task-based and self-reported measures of mental imagery. Participants (N = 104) completed two heartbeat detection tasks (heartbeat tracking and heartbeat discrimination; assessing objective (behavioural) interoceptive performance accuracy), and the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) questionnaire, assessing subjective (self-reported) dimensions of interoceptive experience. Behavioural and self-reported aspects of mental imagery were assessed respectively from performance of a mental rotation task and from scores on the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ). Results revealed that, across participants, interoceptive (heartbeat discrimination performance) accuracy predicted mental rotation ability. In contrast, both heartbeat tracking accuracy and self-reported interoceptive awareness (MAIA) predicted self-reported vividness of mental imagery (VVIQ). Interoceptive measures did not predict performance on a control task (2-back working memory task). Together, these findings suggest that distinct components of interoception underpin different aspects of mental imagery: Heightened (cardioceptive) physiological sensitivity facilitates the active deployment of imagery in mental rotation and enhances the vividness of imagery experience. Moreover, people reporting more subjective sensitivity to interoceptive state also perceive greater vividness of mental imagery. These new results underscore the influence of bodily representation in shaping conscious experience through both controlled and spontaneous expressions of mental simulation.

Current theories of consciousness often emphasize its ego-centric functions, highlighting the role of the insular cortex in interoceptive self-modeling and subcortical brain regions in qualitative experience and motivation, aptly described as the ‘hidden spring’ of consciousness. From ecological and pragmatic perspectives, conscious experience may facilitate the self-organization of complex organisms by optimizing goals that are typically parallel, multifaceted, and difficult to reconcile. However, the notion that all forms of conscious experience are ego-centric, or at least grounded in a minimal sense of self, is challenged by credible reports of minimal phenomenal experience (MPE), which occur without any self-referential content. I propose that this apparent duality in conscious experience can be explained by the dual-origin theory of cortical development. This theory suggests a gradual expansion of cortical cytoarchitecture from two distinct subcortical origins. The ‘Amygdala-System’ supports interoceptive self-modeling for habitual interactions with the body and the environment. It expands ventrally from the olfactory system and amygdala, enabling ego-centric processing. In contrast, the ‘Hippocampus-System’, centered on the hippocampus and expanding dorsally, supports allocentric cognition and experiences that are not constrained by self-referential processing. This complementary system allows for open-ended, selfless forms of experience, akin to an ‘endless ocean’. In this framework, MPE may represent a fragile form of consciousness, typically overshadowed by the self-related interoceptive and exteroceptive functions of the Amygdala-System. Finally, I discuss how real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurofeedback could be used to upregulate the Hippocampus-System, potentially enabling the controlled study of MPE in neuroscientific settings.HighlightsEvidence from developmental neuroanatomy suggests two different subcortical origins of the mammalian cerebral cortex, potentially entailing two modes of conscious experience.An amygdala-centered developmental gradient could allow for ego-centric functions relevant for adaptive self-regulation including survival in a physical and social world.A hippocampus-centered system could allow for allo-centric world modeling, which is less constrained by an ego-centric perspective.Several hypotheses are proposed to investigate the neuroanatomical and phenomenological claims by using real-time functional MRI-based neurofeedback in a controlled experimental setting.

The debate over fetal and neonatal pain sits at the intersection of empirical science and ethical judgement. Advances in monitoring have revealed hormonal, neural and behavioural responses to noxious stimulation, even before birth. These responses clearly indicate nociception and physiological stress, but they do not constitute direct evidence of a conscious pain experience. Attributing pain requires interpretation, and disagreement persists regarding when pain capacity emerges. This epistemic uncertainty has important ethical implications. Where analgesia demonstrably improves clinical outcomes, such as reducing morbidity and mortality following surgery, its use can be justified independently of unresolved questions about subjective experience. In these contexts, outcome data provide a stable ethical foundation for intervention. When benefit is unproven or risk is demonstrable, however, uncertainty cannot be ethically bracketed, and the potential harms of analgesia, including physiological instability, pharmacological exposure and procedural delay, must be weighed. The evidentiary position is less secure in fetal medicine, where fetal analgesia has not been assessed as an independent determinant of outcome. The situation is different again in abortion, where no fetal outcome benefit can be demonstrated. Appeals to fetal pain in these contexts often rely on precautionary reasoning and compassionate impulses rather than demonstrable evidence. While such impulses are understandable, they risk introducing additional burdens without clear benefit and may obscure competing ethical considerations. Pain prevention in early life, therefore, remains both a scientific and moral endeavour. Ethical clarity requires honesty about what is known, what is inferred and when interventions primarily serve to reassure caregivers rather than benefit patients.

How the brain generates conscious experiences remains profoundly mysterious. Pharmacological interventions that alter the state of consciousness have been proposed as a tool to investigate the neural mechanisms of consciousness. However, we have recently demonstrated that the sedative Propofol influences both conscious and unconscious neural processing. Altered arousal, and other pharmacological effects, therefore cannot be assumed a priori to provide information specifically on conscious neural processes. Instead, effects on both conscious and unconscious processes need to be considered. Here we investigated the role of noradrenergic activity in conscious and unconscious visuospatial processing. In Study 1 we used Dexmedetomidine, a sedative that specifically targets α2A noradrenergic receptors. In Study 2, we used sleep deprivation as a natural state of altered arousal, which exerts partially overlapping effects on noradrenaline levels. Unlike Propofol, both Dexmedetomidine and sleep deprivation selectively altered brain activity (fMRI BOLD signal change) during conscious processing. However, the two methods produced distinct effects on visuospatial bias during low arousal: while Dexmedetomidine reduced leftward bias, sleep deprivation increased leftward bias. These differential effects on spatial bias were explained by an unexpected increase in sympathetic drive, as indexed by increased activity in the central autonomic network and in heart rate, from sleep deprivation, that indicate increased rather than decreased noradrenaline levels during task performance. Together, these findings emphasize noradrenergic activity as a target for pharmacological manipulations of consciousness, which could open a window to its neurophysiological underpinnings.

Abstract AI has displayed notable originality across the worlds of art, science and gaming. But is it right to say that such machines are creative? This question is bound up with other challenging questions about the capacities of artificial systems. Human creativity typically involves some conscious experience of the creative project. If consciousness is necessary for creativity, then a case could be made that these (presumably) unconscious machines are not really creative. I argue that there is no compelling case for thinking that consciousness is generally necessary for creativity. However, lessons learned from this discussion suggest that a more localised claim about aesthetic creativity has greater promise. I propose that consciousness is required for creativity in projects with aesthetic goals. If an AI lacks consciousness, then it is incapable of aesthetic experience, and without aesthetic experience, it cannot engage in aesthetic creative projects.