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Full-Text Articles in Cognition and Perception
The Rubber Hand Illusion: Top-Down Attention Modulates Embodiment, Rémi Thériault, Mathieu Landry, Amir Raz
The Rubber Hand Illusion: Top-Down Attention Modulates Embodiment, Rémi Thériault, Mathieu Landry, Amir Raz
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
The Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI) creates distortions of body ownership through multimodal integration of somatosensory and visual inputs. This illusion largely rests on bottom-up (automatic multisensory and perceptual integration) mechanisms. However, the relative contribution from top-down factors, such as controlled processes involving attentional regulation, remains unclear. Following previous work that highlights the putative influence of higher-order cognition in the RHI, we aimed to further examine how modulations of working memory load and task instructions—two conditions engaging top-down cognitive processes—influence the experience of the RHI, as indexed by a number of psychometric dimensions. Relying on exploratory factor analysis for assessing this …
Filled/Non-Filled Pairs: An Empirical Challenge To The Integrated Information Theory Of Consciousness, Amber R. Hopkins, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
Filled/Non-Filled Pairs: An Empirical Challenge To The Integrated Information Theory Of Consciousness, Amber R. Hopkins, Kelvin J. Mcqueen
Philosophy Faculty Articles and Research
Perceptual filling-in for vision is the insertion of visual properties (e.g., color, contour, luminance, or motion) into one’s visual field, when those properties have no corresponding retinal input. This paper introduces and provides preliminary empirical support for filled/non-filled pairs, pairs of images that appear identical, yet differ by amount of filling-in. It is argued that such image pairs are important to the experimental testing of theories of consciousness. We review recent experimental research and conclude that filling-in involves brain activity with relatively high integrated information (Φ) compared to veridical visual perceptions. We then present filled/non-filled pairs as …
The Unfolding Argument: Why Iit And Other Causal Structure Theories Cannot Explain Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Kathryn Hess, Michael H. Herzog
The Unfolding Argument: Why Iit And Other Causal Structure Theories Cannot Explain Consciousness, Adrian Doerig, Aaron Schurger, Kathryn Hess, Michael H. Herzog
Psychology Faculty Articles and Research
How can we explain consciousness? This question has become a vibrant topic of neuroscience research in recent decades. A large body of empirical results has been accumulated, and many theories have been proposed. Certain theories suggest that consciousness should be explained in terms of brain functions, such as accessing information in a global workspace, applying higher order to lower order representations, or predictive coding. These functions could be realized by a variety of patterns of brain connectivity. Other theories, such as Information Integration Theory (IIT) and Recurrent Processing Theory (RPT), identify causal structure with consciousness. For example, according to …
Complexities And Challenges Of Nonduality, Elizabeth Stephens
Complexities And Challenges Of Nonduality, Elizabeth Stephens
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
States of consciousness referred to as nonduality, awakening, enlightenment, moksha, peak experience, unitive states, or void states, among other terms, have garnered increasing secular attention and have become a topic of psychological and neuroscientific research. A review of the literature revealed many challenges to studying this set of states, such as inconsistent conceptualizations, a variety of models and theories, and conflicting descriptions indicating that the actual experience may not live up to the superlative descriptions found in historical texts or the expectations put forth by nondual teachers. A great deal more empirical research on this topic is needed, and researchers …
Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs
Consciousness: Where We Are At, Imants Barušs
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
It is useful every couple of years to take a bird’s eye view of consciousness studies and reflect on what we see. When I look, I still see two streams, one of which is the social and political framework for the study of consciousness, and the other of which is the substance of what we know about consciousness. The former is still largely defined by the extent to which the scientific study of consciousness has been freed from a materialist agenda. The latter includes recent research into the clarity of cognitive functioning in the absence of sufficient neurological support for …
Growth And Happiness In The Human Personality, Rien Havens, Allan Combs
Growth And Happiness In The Human Personality, Rien Havens, Allan Combs
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
This paper explores stages and styles of meaning making in a population at Kegan’s (1982) developmental levels 3 through 5. It is a qualitative study of the relationship between adult personality development and how individuals speak about meaning and well-being in their lives. Nineteen participants ranging widely in age and socioeconomic class were selected informally through connections with the researchers, and snowball sampling. They were chosen from an original group of 50, based on informal interviews suggesting that they had achieved Kegan’s developmental levels of “Socialized Mind” (stage 3), or especially “Self-Authoring Mind” (stage 4) or “Self-Transforming Mind” (stage 5). …
The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis Part Ii: The Physiology Of Consciousness, Shelli R. Joye
The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis Part Ii: The Physiology Of Consciousness, Shelli R. Joye
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
A physiology of consciousness is elaborated, based upon implications of the Pribram-Bohm hypothesis (developed in Part I of this series). The model presented here is in sharp contrast to the prevailing conviction among neuroscientists that consciousness will eventually be discovered to be a physiological epiphenomenon of neuronal electrical impulses firing in the brain. In contrast, the Pribram-Bohm theory holds that consciousness, inherent in what Bohm views cosmologically as “the Whole,” manifests as a dynamic conscious energy resonance bridging the explicate space-time domain with the nonlocal, transcendent flux domain termed the “implicate order.” Presented in Part I, the Pribram-Bohm hypothesis posits …
Premises Of A Natural Science Of Consciousness, Ervin Laszlo
Premises Of A Natural Science Of Consciousness, Ervin Laszlo
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
According to the mainstream of modern science, there cannot be a natural science of consciousness because consciousness does not actually exist in nature. It is a product or by-product of the workings of the brain. There is a natural science of brain and the nervous system, for these are bona fide elements of the world, but there cannot be a natural science of a phenomenon of which the very existence is in question. In the prevalent view con2sciousness is something that happens when neurons fire in the brain. This is said to be confirmed by experience. There is no consciousness …
Presence And The Paradox Of Love, Joanne Burtch
Presence And The Paradox Of Love, Joanne Burtch
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
Spiritual experiences often seem unrelated to the intellectual orientation of science. However, some discussion of the laboratory study of spiritual practice does attempt to include the mystery and the human experience in its dialogue. An exploration of the paradox of love demonstrates how it might be possible to find a relationship between the scientific understanding of spirituality and the profundity of spiritual experience.
On The Significance Of Psychodynamic Discourse For The Field Of Consciousness Studies, Robin S. Brown
On The Significance Of Psychodynamic Discourse For The Field Of Consciousness Studies, Robin S. Brown
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
Despite the obvious confluence of concerns between psychodynamic psychology and the emerging field of consciousness studies, the extent to which psychodynamic thinking has factored into the consciousness literature has been limited. With widespread interest in “the unconscious” having significantly diminished, the present paper asks what might be implied in the shift towards the notion of “consciousness”—what about this cross-disciplinary designation has come to attract attention not only within the academic world, but also in the popular press? That the term does indeed invite contributions from a variety of disciplines makes the field both a meeting space, and a battleground. It …
Consciousness Studies – An Overview, Allan Combs
Consciousness Studies – An Overview, Allan Combs
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
This essay is a survey of the field of consciousness studies, its history, scope, and a little about its future. It’s principal focus is on Western thinking about consciousness beginning in classical times and continuing down to the present. It highlights and briefly describes major streams of thought including ideas from ancient Greece, German Idealism, British Empiricism, 20th century European phenomenology, and important contemporary areas of research and scholarship. These include American pragmatism, developmental psychology, transpersonalism, analytic philosophy, computationalism, neural networks, and physics. The essay also briefly explores possible future trends in the study of consciousness.
Reembodying, Human Consciousness In The Earth, John Briggs
Reembodying, Human Consciousness In The Earth, John Briggs
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
For the last 20,000 years or so the dominant mode of human consciousness has been one that divides reality into subjects and objects, and focuses on human desires and needs. This anthropocentric mode of consciousness has invented religions, built civilizations, amassed knowledge, and developed technology and science. It has also disembodied us from the Earth and led to the Anthropocene Era. Still with us is another mode of human consciousness that arguably once existed in a balance with the anthropocentric mode during our long hunter-gatherer, Paleolithic sojourn. This holistic, integrative mode of consciousness experiences the Earth as a mother, and …
The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis, Shelli R. Joye
The Pribram – Bohm Hypothesis, Shelli R. Joye
CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century
A holoflux theory of consciousness as modulated energy is hypothesized and shown to support both local and non-local properties. This thesis emerges from an integral evaluation of evidence drawn from: (1) the holonomic mind/brain theories of Karl Pribram, (2) the ontological interpretation of quantum theory by David Bohm. Applying an integral methodology to superimpose and correlate seemingly disparate concepts from among these sources and others, a composite-theory emerges, a “holoflux” theory of consciousness, after the term favored by Karl Pribram to describe David Bohm’s “holomovement” between an explicate order andan implicate order. This Pribram–Bohm composite holoflux theory is shown to …