This paper proposes a brain-inspired cognitive architecture that incorporates approximations to the concepts of consciousness, emotion, and imagination. To emulate the empirically established cognitive efficacy of conscious as opposed to unconscious information processing in the mammalian brain, the architecture adopts a model of information flow from global workspace theory. Cognitive function...

It appears that consciousness science is progressing soundly, in particular in its search for the neural correlates of consciousness. There are two main approaches to this search, one is content-based (focusing on the contrast between conscious perception of, e.g., faces vs. houses), the other is state-based (focusing on overall conscious states, e.g., the contrast between dreamless sleep vs. t...

'Covert consciousness' is a state in which consciousness is present without the capacity for behavioural response, and it can occur in patients with intraoperative awareness or unresponsive wakefulness syndrome. To detect and prevent this undesirable state, it is critical to develop a reliable neurobiological assessment of an individual's level of consciousness that is independent of behaviour....

Whether or not affect can be unconscious remains controversial. Research claiming to demonstrate unconscious affect fails to establish clearly unconscious stimulus conditions. The few investigations that have established unconscious conditions fail to rule out conscious affect changes. We report two studies in which unconscious stimulus conditions were met and conscious mood changes measured. T...

This paper presents consciousness as the sum of describable processes, without limiting it only to verbal understanding. Consciousness is presented as a buffer space of the unconscious, accessed by any mental decision-taking processes. Consciousness is composed of sequential outputs of non-conscious processes that form, as frames in a picture, the impression of our ego continuity. The functiona...

PURPOSE To identify candidates indicated to undergo induced hypothermic therapy (IHT) among comatose survivors of out-of-hospital cardiopulmonary arrest (CPA) based on a retrospective review of medical charts. METHODS Between 1995 and 2004, 49 patients who recovered from CPA and treated by IHT were analyzed. The subjects were divided into 2 groups. The first group (GR, n = 16) consisted of pa...

OBJECTIVE Validating objective, brain-based indices of consciousness in behaviorally unresponsive patients represents a challenge due to the impossibility of obtaining independent evidence through subjective reports. Here we address this problem by first validating a promising metric of consciousness-the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI)-in a benchmark population who could confirm the prese...

The interplay between consciousness, reasoning, creativity and action is reconsidered in the light of what is now possible with Virtual Reality (VR) technology. I suggest that there are three domains for the design of VR interaction: VR as pure bodily experience, VR as one or more embodiments of abstract knowledge, and VR as a link between the bodily and the abstract in the human participant. I...