Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes

The close relationship between attention and consciousness has led many scholars to conflate these processes. This article summarizes psychophysical evidence, arguing that top-down attention and consciousness are distinct phenomena that need not occur together and that can be manipulated using distinct paradigms. Subjects can become conscious of an isolated object or the gist of a scene despite the near absence of top-down attention; conversely, subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects. Furthermore, top-down attention and consciousness can have opposing effects. Such dissociations are easier to understand when the different functions of these two processes are considered. Untangling their tight relationship is necessary for the scientific elucidation of consciousness and its material substrate.     

Phenomenal and access consciousness in olfaction

Contemporary literature on consciousness, with some exceptions, rarely considers the olfactory system. In this article the characteristics of olfactory consciousness, viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal (P)/access (A) distinction, are examined relative to the major senses. The review details several qualitative differences in both olfactory P consciousness (shifts in the felt location, universal synesthesia-like and affect-rich experiences, and misperceptions) and A consciousness (recovery from habituation, capacity for conscious processing, access to semantic and episodic memory, learning, attention, and in the serial-unitary nature of olfactory percepts). The basis for these differences is argued to arise from the functions that the olfactory system performs and from the unique neural architecture needed to instantiate them. These data suggest, at a minimum, that P and A consciousness are uniquely configured in olfaction and an argument can be made that the P and A distinction may not hold for this sensory system.     

从"兼济天下"到"独善其身":魏晋南北朝士阶层社会担当意识的弱化

自汉武帝接受董仲舒"罢黜百家,独尊儒术"的建议后,儒家思想即上升为国家意识形态。儒学是一种带有强烈入世色彩的哲学思想和价值观念系统,在个体与整体的关系上,强调整体至上,公利优先的价值取向,使儒家士大夫具有强烈的社会责任意识和使命意识,但是,这种社会担当意识在魏晋南北朝时期特殊的时代氛围中弱化了。关注自我、及时行乐,成了这一时期士大夫的风尚。这一风尚对于促进个体意识的觉醒具有积极意识,但对于社会秩序的整合与重建来说,却不可避免地具有消极影响。     

Artificial consciousness and the consciousness-attention dissociation

Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial consciousness, with some arguing that it will be achievable once we overcome short-term engineering challenges. We believe, however, that phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines. This becomes clear when considering emotions and examining the dissociation between consciousness and attention in humans. While we may be able to program ethical behavior based on rules and machine learning, we will never be able to reproduce emotions or empathy by programming such control systems—these will be merely simulations. Arguments in favor of this claim include considerations about evolution, the neuropsychological aspects of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness found in humans. Ultimately, we are far from achieving artificial consciousness.     

A physiologically based approach to consciousness

The nature of a scientific theory of consciousness is defined by comparison with scientific theories in the physical sciences. The differences between physical, algorithmic and functional complexity are highlighted, and the architecture of a functionally complex electronic system created to relate system operations to device operations is compared with a scientific theory. It is argued that there are two qualitatively different types of functional architecture: (a) electronic systems have the instruction architecture based on exchange of unambiguous information between functional components, and (b) biological brains have been constrained by natural selection pressures into the recommendation architecture based on exchange of ambiguous information. The mechanisms by which a recommendation architecture could heuristically define its own functionality are described, and compared with memory in biological brains. Dream sleep is interpreted as the mechanism for minimizing information exchange between functional components in a heuristically defined functional system. The functional role of consciousness of self is discussed, and the route by which the experience of that function described at the psychological level can be related to physiology through a functional architecture is outlined.     

Paying attention to consciousness

Despite being much studied by cognitive neuroscience, consciousness has resisted attempts to understand it. Recent neuroscientific papers on the problem have surprisingly neglected attention as a guide to consciousness. A new neural mechanism is proposed here, guided by a control approach to attention, which identifies the source of consciousness, especially that of the ownership of experience.     

Mental Attention, Consciousness, and the Progressive Emergence of Wisdom

I discuss the mental–attentional mechanisms of consciousness, meditation, and the emergence of wisdom. A developmental (neoPiagetian), dynamic flash-light model of mental attention is used. I model the initial stages of consciousness in infancy, showing that the growth of consciousness is influenced by the number of schemes that attention can coordinate. I discuss ordinary consciousness in adults and the stages/levels of adult development in consciousness. Wisdom is defined as an expectable but often missed outcome of adult development. To accelerate access to wisdom, two complementary paths are mentioned: a natural life-experience path and a meditation path. Maturational organismic factors and the role of mental attentional mechanisms in these two paths are discussed, and a constructivist neuropsychological model of what happens in the brain during meditation, and in higher consciousness, is sketched. Processes involved in higher stages of consciousness are then examined from this perspective.     

MIND‐INDEPENDENCE DISAMBIGUATED: SEPARATING THE MEAT FROM THE STRAW IN THE REALISM/ANTI‐REALISM DEBATE

The notion of mind‐independence plays a central role in the contemporary realism/anti‐realism debate, but the notion is severely ambiguous and consequently the source of considerable misunderstanding. In this paper, four kinds of mind‐independence are distinguished: ontological, causal, structural, and individuative independence. Appreciating these distinctions entails that one can reject the individuative independence of the natural world, and still maintain that the natural world is causally and structurally independent of us. This paper argues that so‐called anti‐realists, especially Rorty, Putnam, and Goodman, are not opposed to the causal and structural independence of the natural world, as is frequently alleged, but rather its individuative independence. An acceptance of these points will hopefully put an end to the prevalence of strawmen in the debate, and focus attention on meatier issues.     

On the costs and benefits of faces and words: process characteristics of feature search in highly meaningful stimuli

The authors present a comprehensive consideration of the process characteristics of visual search in contexts that vary in their meaningfulness. The authors frame hypotheses regarding process architecture, stopping rule, capacity, and channel independence, using analytic results and a rigorously specified dynamic system to characterize a set of alternative hypotheses that vary along all of these dimensions. Results of the tests of these hypotheses suggest that process architecture and the stopping rule do not distinguish the processing of meaningful and meaningless forms. The major distinction between configural and nonconfigural processing was with regard to processing capacity, potentially implicating channel interdependencies. All of these conclusions hold for both faces and words.     

Cephalopod consciousness: behavioural evidence

Behavioural evidence suggests that cephalopod molluscs may have a form of primary consciousness. First, the linkage of brain to behaviour seen in lateralization, sleep and through a developmental context is similar to that of mammals and birds. Second, cephalopods, especially octopuses, are heavily dependent on learning in response to both visual and tactile cues, and may have domain generality and form simple concepts. Third, these animals are aware of their position, both within themselves and in larger space, including having a working memory of foraging areas in the recent past. Thus if using a 'global workspace' which evaluates memory input and focuses attention is the criterion, cephalopods appear to have primary consciousness.     

Epilepsy, consciousness and neurostimulation

Consciousness is often disrupted in epilepsy. This may involve altered responsiveness or changes in awareness of self and subjective experiences. Subcortical arousal systems and paralimbic fronto-parietal association cortices are thought to underpin current concepts of consciousness. The Network Inhibition Hypothesis proposes a common neuroanatomical substrate for impaired consciousness during absence, complex partial and tonic-clonic seizures. Neurostimulation in epilepsy remains in its infancy with vagal nerve stimulation (VNS) as the only firmly established technique and a series of other methods under investigation including deep brain stimulation (DBS), intracranial cortical stimulation and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Many of these systems impact on the neural systems thought to be involved in consciousness as a continuous duty cycle although some adaptive (seizure triggered) techniques have been developed. Theoretically, fixed duty cycle neurostimulation could have profound effects on responsiveness, awareness of self and subjective experience. Animal studies suggest vagal nerve stimulation positively influences hippocampal long term potentiation. In humans, a chronic effect of increased alertness in VNS implanted subjects and acute effect on memory consolidation have been reported but convincing data on either improvements or deterioration in attention and memory is lacking. Thalamic deep brain stimulation (DBS) is perhaps the most interesting neurostimulation technique in the context of consciousness. Neither bilateral anterior or centromedian thalamic nucleus DBS seem to affect cognition. Unilateral globus pallidus internus DBS caused transient wakefulness in an anaesthetised individual. As intracranial neurostimulation, particularly thalamic DBS, becomes more established as a clinical intervention, the effects on consciousness and cognition with variations in stimulus parameters will need to be studied to understand whether these secondary effects of neurostimulation make a significant positive (or adverse) contribution to quality of life.     

A strong test of the dual-mode hypothesis

One account of facial cognition, the dual-mode hypothesis, maintains that there are two sources of information in a human face, featural and configural, and that these sources are processed simultaneously and independently of one another. According to the hypothesis, the processing and identification of upright faces relies primarily on configural information, and this information is disrupted to such an extent upon inversion as to result in a reliance on featural information for identifying inverted faces (e.g., Searcy & Bartlett, 1996). When considered in terms of the general characteristics of human information processing, the foundational assumptions of the dual-mode hypothesis are as follows: Facial information processing is accomplished by a parallel self-terminating architecture with unlimited capacity to supercapacity and a preservation of independence between the rates of processing of featural and configural information. Although a number of studies have provided evidence consistent with the dual-mode hypothesis, until now there have been no direct tests of the foundational assumptions of the hypothesis. The present study provides that direct test, providing strong support for three of the assumptions (parallel self-terminating processing with unlimited capacity to supercapacity) while contradicting a fourth (independence in rates).     

Self-focused attention and the experience of alcoholic intoxication

The present study investigates the relationship between self-focused attention and the experience of emotional and bodily concomitants of alcoholic intoxication. It was hypothesized that self-focused attention would amplify salient mood and bodily concomitants of intoxication after alcohol intake and counteract these concomitants after placebo treatment. Self-focused attention was assessed by measures of private body consciousness, private self-consciousness, and of self-awareness. Since alcohol intake did not influence mood, it was not possible to test our main-hypothesis linking self-focused attention with the experience of mood concomitants of intoxication. As to bodily concomitants of intoxication a strong effect of alcohol intake was disclosed. Further analysis revealed the predicted relationship between self-awareness and private body consciousness on one hand and the experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication, on the other. The relationship between private body consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was moderated by the amount of experience with alcohol. No significant relationship between private self-consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was found.     

Class cleavages and ethnic conflict: Coptic Christian communities in modern Egyptian politics

Whereas the political claims of Egyptian Islamists have attracted much attention in Western media and scholarly circles, only rarely have such circles acknowledged the role played by ethno‐religious consciousness among Coptic Christians in Egyptian political life. This article analyzes the development of this consciousness through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the socio‐economic roots of ‘Coptist’ political action. Accorded particular attention is the emergence of an explicitly sectarian political discourse among groups of middle‐class Copts in the 1970s, and the related spread of ethnic consciousness through the Coptic community at large since that time.     

Automatic and controlled semantic processing: a masked prime-task effect

A classical definition of automaticity establishes that automatic processing occurs without attention or consciousness, and cannot be controlled. Previous studies have demonstrated that semantic priming can be reduced if attention is directed to a low-level of analysis. This finding suggests that semantic processing is not automatic since it can be controlled. In this paper, we present two experiments that demonstrate that semantic processing may occur in the absence of attention and consciousness. A negative semantic priming effect was found when a low-level prime-task was required and when a masked lexical decision prime-task was performed (Experiment 1). This paper also discusses the limitations of the inhibitory mechanism involved in negative semantic priming effect.     

The exploration of meditation in the neuroscience of attention and consciousness

Many recent behavioral and neuroscientific studies have revealed the importance of investigating meditation states and traits to achieve an increased understanding of cognitive and affective neuroplasticity, attention and self-awareness, as well as for their increasingly recognized clinical relevance. The investigation of states and traits related to meditation has especially pronounced implications for the neuroscience of attention, consciousness, self-awareness, empathy and theory of mind. In this article we present the main features of meditation-based mental training and characterize the current scientific approach to meditation states and traits with special reference to attention and consciousness, in light of the articles contributed to this issue.     

A global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness

Both the global workspace theory and Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, are central in the current debates about consciousness and the neural correlates of consciousness. In this article, a unifying global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness is proposed. In the model, recurrent neural interactions take place in distinct yet interacting access and phenomenal brain loops. The effectiveness of feedback signaling onto sensory cortical maps is emphasized for the neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness. Two forms of top-down attention, attention for perception and attention for access, play differential roles for phenomenal and access consciousness. The model is implemented in a neural network form, with the simulation of single and multiple visual object processing, and of the attentional blink.     

Inductive parsimony and the Methodological Argument

Studies on so-called Change Blindness and Inattentional Blindness have been taken to establish the claim that conscious perception of a stimulus requires the attentional processing of that stimulus. One might contend, against this claim, that the evidence only shows attention to be necessary for the subject to have access to the contents of conscious perception and not for conscious perception itself. This "Methodological Argument" is gaining ground among philosophers who work on attention and consciousness, such as Christopher Mole. I find that, without the supporting evidence of inaccessible consciousness, this argument collapses into an indefensible form of inductive parsimony. The Methodological Argument is thus shown to be unsuccessful when used against the claim that attention is required for conscious perception, though I suggest that it may be successful against the more ambitious claim that attention is necessary for all conscious experience.     

The Effect of Self‐Consciousness on the Expression of Gender Views1

This study examines the effect of public self‐consciousness on the expression of gender‐role attitudes. It was hypothesized that high publics were more likely to alter their gender‐view expressions to meet situational expectations than were high privates and that, under an activated state of public self‐attention, people were more likely to alter their gender views. Tested in 156 college students in a quasi‐experiment conducted in classrooms, these hypotheses were supported only in work‐related gender‐role attitude expressions, but not in domestic gender‐view expressions The experimental manipulation of public self‐consciousness in a classroom setting might have made work‐related identities more salient. Correspondingly, participants were more responsive to regulating work but not domestic gender views.     

Planning: Theoretical considerations and empirical evidence

Summary A study of processes rather than of abilities characterizes much of Luria's work on cognitive functions. The three major functional organizations in terms of cognitive functions are: arousal, coding, and planning. Each of these has been described with a special emphasis on planning. Tasks appropriate for demonstrating the processes of planning are discussed and the emergence of a planning factor through factor analytic work has been described. Considerations relating to the independence of planning and coding processes in the context of normal and abnormal development are presented next. Finally, planful behavior as an integral part of purposive behavior in humans is considered in the context of consciousness.