From cognition to consciousness

This paper proposes an extension of scientific horizons in the study of animal behavior and cognition to include conscious experiences. From this perspective animals are best appreciated as actors rather than passive objects. A major adaptive function of their central nervous systems may be simple, but conscious and rational, thinking about alternative actions and choosing those the animal believes will get what it wants, or avoid what it dislikes or fears. Versatile adjustment of behavior in response to unpredictable challenges provides strongly suggestive evidence of simple but conscious thinking. And especially significant objective data about animal thoughts and feelings are already available, once communicative signals are recognized as evidence of the subjective experiences they often convey to others. The scientific investigation of human consciousness has undergone a renaissance in the 1990s, as exemplified by numerous symposia, books and two new journals. The neural correlates of cognition appear to be basically similar in all central nervous systems. Therefore other species equipped with very similar neurons, synapses, and glia may well be conscious. Simple perceptual and rational conscious thinking may be at least as important for small animals as for those with large enough brains to store extensive libraries of behavioral rules. Perhaps only in “megabrains” is most of the information processing unconscious. Received: 23 March 1998 / Accepted: 11 April 1998     

New evidence of animal consciousness

This paper reviews evidence that increases the probability that many animals experience at least simple levels of consciousness. First, the search for neural correlates of consciousness has not found any consciousness-producing structure or process that is limited to human brains. Second, appropriate responses to novel challenges for which the animal has not been prepared by genetic programming or previous experience provide suggestive evidence of animal consciousness because such versatility is most effectively organized by conscious thinking. For example, certain types of classical conditioning require awareness of the learned contingency in human subjects, suggesting comparable awareness in similarly conditioned animals. Other significant examples of versatile behavior suggestive of conscious thinking are scrub jays that exhibit all the objective attributes of episodic memory, evidence that monkeys sometimes know what they know, creative tool-making by crows, and recent interpretation of goal-directed behavior of rats as requiring simple nonreflexive consciousness. Third, animal communication often reports subjective experiences. Apes have demonstrated increased ability to use gestures or keyboard symbols to make requests and answer questions; and parrots have refined their ability to use the imitation of human words to ask for things they want and answer moderately complex questions. New data have demonstrated increased flexibility in the gestural communication of swarming honey bees that leads to vitally important group decisions as to which cavity a swarm should select as its new home. Although no single piece of evidence provides absolute proof of consciousness, this accumulation of strongly suggestive evidence increases significantly the likelihood that some animals experience at least simple conscious thoughts and feelings. The next challenge for cognitive ethologists is to investigate for particular animals the content of their awareness and what life is actually like, for them.Donald R. Griffin died on 7 November 2003     

Systema Temporis: A time-based dimensional framework for consciousness and cognition

This study uses a combined categorical-dimensional approach to depict a hierarchical framework for consciousness similar to, and contiguous with, factorial models of cognition (cf., intelligence). On the basis of the longstanding definition of time consciousness, the analysis employs a dimension of temporal extension, in the same manner that psychology has temporally organised memory (i.e., short-term, long-term, and long-lasting memories). By defining temporal extension in terms of the structure of time perception at short timescales (<100 s), memory and time consciousness are proposed to fit along the same logarithmic dimension. This suggests that different forms of time consciousness (e.g., experience, wakefulness, and self-consciousness) are embedded within, or supported by, the ascending timescales of different modes of memory (i.e., short-term, long-term, etc.). A secondary dimension is also proposed to integrate higher-order forms of consciousness/emotion and memory/cognition. The resulting two-dimensional structure accords with existing theories of cognitive and emotional intelligence.     

Consciousness and modality: on the possible preserved visual consciousness in blindsight subjects

In a recent paper, Brogaard (2011) presents counter-arguments to the conclusions of an experiment with blindsight subject GR. She argues that contrary to the apparent findings that GR’s preserved visual abilities relate to degraded visual experiences, she is in fact fully unconscious of the stimuli she correctly identifies. In this paper, we present arguments and evidence why Brogaard’s argument does not succeed in its purpose. We suggest that not only is relevant empirical evidence in opposition to Brogaard’s argument, her argument misconstrues necessary criteria to decide whether a conscious experience is visual or not visual.     

Computation, reduction, and teleology of consciousness

This paper aims to explore mechanistic and teleological explanations of consciousness. In terms of mechanistic explanations, it critiques various existing views, especially those embodied by existing computational cognitive models. In this regard, the paper argues in favor of the explanation based on the distinction between localist (symbolic) representation and distributed representation (as formulated in the connectionist literature), which reduces the phenomenological difference to a mechanistic difference. Furthermore, to establish a teleological explanation of consciousness, the paper discusses the issue of the functional role of consciousness on the basis of the aforementioned mechanistic explanation. A proposal based on synergistic interaction between the conscious and the unconscious is advanced that encompasses various existing views concerning the functional role of consciousness. This two-step deepening explanation has some empirical support, in the form of a cognitive model and various cognitive data that it captures.     

No watershed for overflow: Recent work on the richness of consciousness

A familiar and enduring controversy surrounds the question of whether our phenomenal experience “overflows” availability to cognition: do we consciously see more than we can remember and report? Both sides to this debate have long sought to move beyond naïve appeals to introspection by providing empirical evidence for or against overflow. Recently, two notable studies—Bronfman, Brezis, Jacobson, and Usher (2014) and Vandenbroucke, Sligte, Fahrenfort, Ambroziak, and Lamme (2012)—have purported to provide compelling evidence in favor of overflow. Here I explain why the data from both studies are wholly consistent with a “no overflow” interpretation. Importantly, when framed purely in representational or informational terms, this “no overflow” interpretation agrees with the interpretations respectively offered by both Bronfman et al. (2014) and Vandenbroucke et al. (2012). The difference only emerges when additional assumptions are made concerning which representations correspond to elements in conscious experience. The assumptions made by overflow theorists are contentious and poorly motivated. However, challenging them simply reopens the original controversy. The upshot is a sobering moral: we still do not know how to move beyond appeals to naïve introspection in establishing the nature and limits of our ordinary experience.     

Feelings of control: Contingency determines experience of action

The experience of causation is a pervasive product of the human mind. Moreover, the experience of causing an event alters subjective time: actions are perceived as temporally shifted towards their effects [Haggard, P., Clark, S., & Kalogeras, J. (2002). Voluntary action and conscious awareness. Nature Neuroscience, 5(4), 382-385]. This temporal shift depends partly on advance prediction of the effects of action, and partly on inferential “postdictive” explanations of sensory effects of action. We investigated whether a single factor of statistical contingency could explain both these aspects of causal experience. We studied the time at which people perceived a simple manual action to occur, when statistical contingency indicated a causal relation between action and effect, and when no such relation was indicated. Both predictive and inferential “postdictive” shifts in the time of action depended on strong contingency between action and effect. The experience of agency involves a process of causal learning based on statistical contingency.     

The role of primordial emotions in the evolutionary origin of consciousness

Primordial emotions are the subjective element of the instincts which are the genetically programmed behaviour patterns which contrive homeostasis. They include thirst, hunger for air, hunger for food, pain and hunger for specific minerals etc.There are two constituents of a primordial emotion—the specific sensation which when severe may be imperious, and the compelling intention for gratification by a consummatory act. They may dominate the stream of consciousness, and can have plenipotentiary power over behaviour.It is hypothesized that early in animal evolution complex reflex mechanisms in the basal brain subserving homeostatic responses, in concert with elements of the reticular activating system subserving arousal, melded functionally with regions embodied in the progressive rostral development of the telencephalon. This included the emergent limbic and paralimbic areas, and the insula. This phylogenetically ancient organization subserved the origin of consciousness as the primordial emotion, which signalled that the organisms existence was immediately threatened. Neuroimaging confirms major activations in regions of the basal brain during primordial emotions in humans. The behaviour of decorticate humans and animals is discussed in relation to the possible existence of primitive awareness.Neuroimaging of the primordial emotions reveals that rapid gratification of intention by a consummatory act such as ingestion causes precipitate decline of both the initiating sensation and the intention. There is contemporaneous rapid disappearance of particular regions of brain activation which suggests they may be part of the jointly sufficient and severally necessary activations and deactivations which correlate with consciousness [Crick, F. & Koch, C. (2003). A framework for consciousness. Nature Neuroscience, 6, 119–126].     

Temporal perception in joint action: This is MY action

Here we investigated the temporal perception of self- and other-generated actions during sequential joint actions. Participants judged the perceived time of two events, the first triggered by the participant and the second by another agent, during a cooperative or competitive interaction, or by an unspecified mechanical cause. Results showed that participants perceived self-generated events as shifted earlier in time (anticipation temporal judgment bias) and non-self-generated events as shifted later in time (repulsion temporal judgment bias). This latter effect was observed independently from the kind of cause (i.e., agentive or mechanical) or interaction (i.e., cooperative or competitive). We suggest that this might represent a mental process which allows discriminating events that cannot plausibly be linked to one’s own action. When an event immediately follows a self-generated one, temporal judgment biases operate as self-serving biases in order to separate self-generated events from events of another physical causality.     

Refuting the unfolding-argument on the irrelevance of causal structure to consciousness

The unfolding argument (UA) was advanced as a refutation of prominent theories, which posit that phenomenal experience is determined by patterns of neural activation in a recurrent (neural) network (RN) structure. The argument is based on the statement that any input–output function of an RN can be approximated by an “equivalent” feedforward-network (FFN). According to UA, if consciousness depends on causal structure, its presence is unfalsifiable (thus non-scientific), as an equivalent FFN structure is behaviorally indistinguishable with regards to any behavioral test. Here I refute UA by appealing to computational theory and cognitive-neuroscience. I argue that a robust functional equivalence between FFN and RN is not supported by the mathematical work on the Universal Approximator theorem, and is also unlikely to hold, as a conjecture, given data in cognitive neuroscience; I argue that an equivalence of RN and FFN can only apply to static functions between input/output layers and not to the temporal patterns or to the network’s reactions to structural perturbations. Finally, I review data indicating that consciousness has functional characteristics, such as a flexible control of behavior, and that cognitive/brain dynamics reveal interacting top-down and bottom-up processes, which are necessary for the mediation of such control processes.     

More is still not better: Testing the perturbation model of temporal reference memory across different modalities and tasks

The ability of the perturbation model (Jones & Wearden, 2003) to account for reference memory function in a visual temporal generalization task and auditory and visual reproduction tasks was examined. In all tasks the number of presentations of the standard was manipulated (1, 3, or 5), and its effect on performance was compared. In visual temporal generalization the number of presentations of the standard did not affect the number of times the standard was correctly identified, nor did it affect the overall temporal generalization gradient. In auditory reproduction there was no effect of the number of times the standard was presented on mean reproductions. In visual reproduction mean reproductions were shorter when the standard was only presented once; however, this effect was reduced when a visual cue was provided before the first presentation of the standard. Whilst the results of all experiments are best accounted for by the perturbation model there appears to be some attentional benefit to multiple presentations of the standard in visual reproduction.     

Apes know that hidden objects can affect the orientation of other objects

Four bonobos, seven gorillas, and six orangutans were presented with two small rectangular boards on a platform. One of the boards had a piece of food under it so that it acquired an inclined orientation whereas the other remained flat on the platform. Subjects preferentially selected the inclined board. In another experiment, subjects were initially presented with two inclined boards and a transformation took place in which one of the boards fell flat to the platform while the other remained inclined. Subjects also preferred the board that remained inclined. Two additional experiments highlighted some of the possible limitations of their reasoning in this task. Presented with two inclined boards, one of which was visibly supported by a piece of wood, they failed to systematically select the unsupported one whose only reason for being inclined was the presence of the reward. Another experiment presented two rewards in each trial (instead of the customary one) in one of the following two combinations: large banana vs. small carrot or small banana vs. large carrot. Prior to the test, E presented both rewards to the subject and then hid each of them under one of the boards so that both boards were differentially inclined due to the different sizes of the rewards involved. Although subjects selected the board that showed a greater inclination (thus securing the larger reward), they disregarded the type of food that was involved. This often meant that they chose the large carrot over the small banana even though they reversed such a choice when the rewards were not occluded by the boards. Providing subjects with a 'reminder' of the type of reward hidden under the boards did not alter the original results. There was no evidence of learning throughout the various experiments and control tests ruled out the possibility of inadvertent cuing by the experimenter, poor performance due to a lack of motivation, or good performance due to a predisposition to select objects with sloped surfaces. It is concluded that subjects made some inferences about the reason for the inclined orientation of the boards, and not simply associated an inclined orientation with the presence of the reward.     

The relationship between consciousness,understanding, and rationality

The purpose of the present article is to explore the relationship between consciousness and understanding. To do so, I first briefly review recent work on the nature of both understanding and consciousness within philosophy and psychology. Building off of this work, I then defend the thesis that if one is conscious of a given content then one also understands that content. I argue that this conclusion can be drawn from (1) the fact that understanding is associated with rational intention formation and (2) the fact that conscious access appears to involve the selective routing/broadcasting of representational content to neural systems that integrate information in order to select cognitive/behavioral intentions in conjunction with goals. Based on these premises I illustrate how a disruption to the rationality of a representation’s influence on intention formation (when it becomes consciously accessible) would also remove any evidence that a person was conscious of the content of that representation. I therefore suggest that conscious content (and associated phenomenology) may be determined by the rational, content-appropriate influences an accessed representation has on intention formation (i.e., the influences associated with understanding). I conclude by offering replies to several potential objections to this thesis.     

Wednesday's Meeting Really Is on Friday: A Meta‐Analysis and Evaluation of Ambiguous Spatiotemporal Language

Experimental work has shown that spatial experiences influence spatiotemporal metaphor use. In these studies, participants are asked a question that yields different responses depending on the metaphor participants use. It has been claimed that English speakers are equally likely to respond with either variant in the absence of priming. Related studies testing non‐spatial experiences demonstrate varied results with a wide range of primes. Here, the effects of eye movement and stimuli presentation modality on comprehension of this question are investigated in different formats. In addition, the results of prior reported controls are re‐analyzed in a meta‐analysis to verify reliable ambiguity of the test question. Results suggest that English speakers have a baseline preference for the Moving Ego metaphor variant, with a stronger preference in verbal rather than written presentation. The findings have implications both for (re)interpretation of prior studies' results and future study designs.     

Temporal Binding,Causation, and Agency: Developing a New Theoretical Framework

In temporal binding, the temporal interval between one event and another, occurring some time later, is subjectively compressed. We discuss two ways in which temporal binding has been conceptualized. In studies showing temporal binding between a voluntary action and its causal consequences, such binding is typically interpreted as providing a measure of an implicit or pre-reflective “sense of agency.” However, temporal binding has also been observed in contexts not involving voluntary action, but only the passive observation of a cause–effect sequence. In those contexts, it has been interpreted as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. These two views need not be in conflict with one another, if one thinks of them as concerning two separate mechanisms through which temporal binding can occur. In this paper, we explore an alternative possibility: that there is a unitary way of explaining temporal binding both within and outside the context of voluntary action as a top-down effect on perception reflecting a belief in causality. Any such explanation needs to account for ways in which agency, and factors connected with agency, has been shown to affect the strength of temporal binding. We show that principles of causal inference and causal selection already familiar from the literature on causal learning have the potential to explain why the strength of people's causal beliefs can be affected by the extent to which they are themselves actively involved in bringing about events, thus in turn affecting binding.     

How to, and how not to, bridge computational cognitive neuroscience and Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness

A number of recent attempts to bridge Husserlian phenomenology of time consciousness and contemporary tools and results from cognitive science or computational neuroscience are described and critiqued. An alternate proposal is outlined that lacks the weaknesses of existing accounts.     

Expanding the discussion: Revision of the fundamental assumptions framing the study of the neural correlates of consciousness

The way one asks a question is shaped by a-priori assumptions and constrains the range of possible answers. We identify and test the assumptions underlying contemporary debates, models, and methodology in the study of the neural correlates of consciousness, which was framed by Crick and Koch’s seminal paper (1990). These premises create a sequential and passive conception of conscious perception: it is considered the product of resolved information processing by unconscious mechanisms, produced by a singular event in time and place representing the moment of entry. The conscious percept produced is then automatically retained to be utilized by post-conscious mechanisms. Major debates in the field, such as concern the moment of entry, the all-or-none vs graded nature, and report vs no-report paradigms, are driven by the consensus on these assumptions. We show how removing these assumptions can resolve some of the debates and challenges and prompt additional questions. The potential non-sequential nature of perception suggests new ways of thinking about consciousness as a dynamic and dispersed process, and in turn about the relationship between conscious and unconscious perception. Moreover, it allows us to present a parsimonious account for conscious perception while addressing more aspects of the phenomenon.     

Temporal dynamics of awareness for facial identity revealed with ERP

In this study, we investigated the scalp recorded event-related potential (ERP) responses related to visual awareness. A backward masking procedure was performed while high-density EEG recordings were carried out. Subjects were asked to detect a familiar face, presented at durations that varied parametrically between 16 and 266 ms. ERPs were computed and awareness was assessed using a sensitivity measure from signal detection theory (d'). Modifications in the electrical scalp topographies were found to reflect visual awareness of the stimulus. In particular, an early map topography was found to emerge progressively around 230 ms, showing a pattern of increase similar to the measure of visual awareness. This was followed by an increase in duration of a second, P300-like map. Source localisation for the early awareness-related topography revealed the activation of a distributed network of brain areas including frontal and temporo-occipital regions. Our results suggest that conscious experience emerges in parallel with the activation of a specific neural network that occurs in a time window beginning from about 200 ms.