Cognitive Neuroscience of Conscious

How do conscious experience, subjectivity, and free will arise from the brain and the body? Even in the late 20th century, consciousness was considered to be beyond the reach of science. Now, understanding the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness is recognized as a key objective for 21st century science. The cognitive neuroscience of consciousness is a fundamentally multidisciplinary enterprise, involving powerful new combinations of functional brain imaging, computational modelling, theoretical innovation, and basic neurobiology. Its progress will be marked by new insights not only into the complex brain mechanisms underlying consciousness, but also by novel clinical approaches to a wide range of neurological and psychiatric disorders.

These innovations are well represented by the contents of the present volume. A target article by Victor Lamme puts forward the contentious position that neural evidence should trump evidence from behaviour and introspection, in any theory of consciousness. This article and its several commentaries advance one of the fundamental debates in consciousness science, namely whether there exists non-reportable phenomenal consciousness, perhaps dependent on local rather than global neural processes. Other articles explore the wider terrain of the new science of consciousness. For example, Maniscalco and colleagues use theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation to selectively impair metacognitive awareness; Massimini and coworkers examine changes in functional connectivity during anesthesi, and Vanhaudenhuyse et al describe innovations in detecting residual awareness following traumatic brain injury.

Together, then contents of this volume exemplify the `grand challenge of consciousness' in combining transformative questions about the human condition with a tractable programme of experimental and theoretical research.

Anil Seth, University of Sussex, UK


Geraint Rees, UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UK

A. Seth, G. Rees, Towards a Cognitive Neuroscience of Consciousness. F. Menzer, A. Brooks, P. Halje, C. Faller, M. Vetterli, O. Blanke, Feeling in Control of Your Footsteps: Conscious Gait Monitoring and the Auditory Consequences of Footsteps. M. Massimini, F. Ferrarelli, M. Murphy, B. Riedner, R. Huber, S. Casarotto, G. Tononi, Cortical Reactivity and Effective Connectivity During REM Sleep in Humans. M-A. Bruno, A. Soddu, A. Demertzi, S. Laureys, O. Gosseries, C. Schnakers, M. Boly, Q. Noirhomme, M. Thonnard, C. Chatelle, A. Vanhaudenhuyse, Disorders of Consciousness: Moving from Passive to Resting State and Active Paradigms. E. Rounis, B. Maniscaclo, J. Rothwell, D. Passingham, L. Hakwan, Theta-burst Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to the Prefrontal Cortex Impairs Metacognitive Visual Awareneness. R. Eramudugolla, J. Mattingley, J. Driver, Biased Figure-ground Assignment Affects Conscious Object Recognition in Unilateral Spatial Neglect. V. Lamme, How Neuroscience Will Change Our View on Consciousness. G. Caplovitz, M. Arcaro, S. Kastner, Stage 3 and What We See. A. Diaz, L. Britto, Consciousness Minus Retrospective Mental Time Travel. A. Ibanez, T. Bekinschtein, Explaining Seeing? Distentangling Qualia from Perceptual Organization. M. Overgaard, How Consciousness Will Change our View on Neuroscience. A. Revonsuo, M. Koivisto, Electrophysiological Evidence for Phenomenal Consciousness. A. Seth, A. Barrett, Neural Theories Need to Account For, Not Discount, Neural Theories. M. Shanahan, Localized Phenomenology: A Recurrent Debate. B. Timmermans, B. Windey, A. Cleeremans, Experiencing More Complexity Than We Can Tell. N. Tsuchiya, J. van Boxtel, Is Recurrent Processing Necessary and/or Sufficient for Consciousness. V. Lamme, Response to Commentaries.