Related papers: How the Brain Transitions from Conscious to Sublim…
This paper presents a novel information-theoretic proof demonstrating that the human brain as currently understood cannot function as a classical digital computer. Through systematic quantification of distinguishable conscious states and…
Computational functionalism about consciousness is often criticized for relying on observer-relative interpretations of physical systems. This paper proposes a mathematical refinement of functionalism that avoids this problem. The central…
Deep learning (DL) has big-data processing capabilities that are as good, or even better, than those of humans in many real-world domains, but at the cost of high energy requirements that may be unsustainable in some applications and of…
Cognition is supported by neurophysiological processes that occur both in local anatomical neighborhoods and in distributed large-scale circuits. Recent evidence from network control theory suggests that white matter pathways linking…
Brain functional connectivity alterations, that is, pathological changes in the signal exchange between areas of the brain, occur in several neurological diseases, including neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric ones. They consist in…
Current theoretical and computational models of dopamine-based reinforcement learning are largely rooted in the classical behaviorist tradition, and envision the organism as a purely reactive recipient of rewards and punishments, with…
Examining task-free functional connectivity (FC) in the human brain offers insights on how spontaneous integration and segregation of information relate to human cognition, and how this organization may be altered in different conditions,…
Current advances in neurosciences deal with the functional architecture of the central nervous system, paving the way for holistic theories that improve our understanding of brain activity. From topology, a strong concept comes into play in…
The multifaceted nature of subjective experience poses a challenge to the study of consciousness. Traditional neuroscientific approaches often concentrate on isolated facets, such as perceptual awareness or the global state of consciousness…
Every day, the human brain processes an immense volume of visual information, relying on intricate neural mechanisms to perceive and interpret these stimuli. Recent breakthroughs in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have enabled…
The brain is an assembly of neuronal populations interconnected by structural pathways. Brain activity is expressed on and constrained by this substrate. Therefore, statistical dependencies between functional signals in directly connected…
Cognition is the process of knowing. As carried out by a dynamical system, it is the process by which the system absorbs information into its state. A complex network of agents cognizes knowledge about its environment, internal dynamics and…
The feasibility of wave function collapse in the human brain has been the subject of vigorous scientific debates since the advent of quantum theory. Scientists like Von Neumann, London, Bauer and Wigner (initially) believed that wave…
The brain is composed of electrically excitable neuronal networks regulated by the activity of voltage-gated ion channels. Further portraying the molecular composition of the brain, however, will not reveal anything remotely reminiscent of…
The theoretical base for consciousness, in particular an explanation of how consciousness is defined by the brain, has long been sought by science. We propose a partial theory of consciousness as relations defined by typical data. The…
A phenomenological approach using the states of spin-like observables is developed to understand the nature of consciousness and the totality of experience. The three states of consciousness are taken to form the triplet of eigenstates of a…
This paper critically assesses the anti-functionalist stance on consciousness adopted by certain advocates of integrated information theory (IIT), a corollary of which is that human-level artificial intelligence implemented on conventional…
The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioral and neuronal correlates of experience. However, correlates are not enough if we are to understand even basic neurological fact; nor are they of much help in…
The neural networks of the brain are capable of learning statistical input regularities on the basis of synaptic learning, functional integration into increasingly larger, interconnected neural assemblies, and self organization. This self…
We tackle the problem of consciousness by taking the naturally selected, embodied organism as our starting point. We provide a formalism describing how biological systems such as human bodies self-organize to hierarchically interpret…