Is the Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness Pseudoscience?

Civil war has broken out in the field of consciousness research. More than 100 consciousness researchers have signed a letter accusing one of the most popular scientific theories of consciousness – the integrated information theory – of being pseudoscience. Immediately, several other figures in the field responded by critiquing the letter as poorly reasoned and…

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A Neurofunctional Schema for Dimensions of Consciousness

Credit: Nature Communications (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-35764-7

There is more to the question of what consciousness is than just philosophy. Researchers are still just beginning to explore how the human brain’s electrochemical activity is able to give rise to conscious experience. Recent research suggests that consciousness is caused by a network of neurons rather than a single location in the brain. On…

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Your Brain Constructs Abstract Concepts With 3 Kinds Of Meaning

Machine learning and human brain scans have revealed the regions of the brain behind how we form abstract concepts, like justice, ethics, and consciousness, researchers report. “Humans have the unique ability to construct abstract concepts that have no anchor in the physical world, but we often take this ability for granted. In this study, we…

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Science As We Know It Can’t Explain Consciousness

Explaining how something as complex as consciousness can emerge from a grey, jelly-like lump of tissue in the head is arguably the greatest scientific challenge of our time. The brain is an extraordinarily complex organ, consisting of almost 100 billion cells – known as neurons – each connected to 10,000 others, yielding some ten trillion…

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Can Alzheimer's Disease Steal One's Consciousness?

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) has been characterized as a “complete loss of self.” Early on when memory begins to fade, the victim has difficulty recalling names, their grocery list or where they put their keys. As the disease progresses, they have trouble staying focused, planning and performing basic daily activities. From the exterior, dementia appears to…

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First Steps toward a Neuroscience of Consciousness

“The brain is a complex system, but that doesn’t mean it’s incomprehensible. Our neural circuits were carved by natural selection to solve problems that our ancestors faced during our species’ evolutionary history. Your brain has been molded by evolutionary pressures just as your spleen and eyes have been. And so has your consciousness. Consciousness developed…

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