We review the central tenets and neuroanatomical basis of the global neuronal workspace
(GNW) hypothesis, which attempts to account for the main scientific observations regarding …

Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep is a peculiar neural state that occupies 20–25% of
nighttime sleep in healthy human adults and seems to play critical roles in a variety of …

A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in
the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition …

This essay addresses Cartesian duality and how its implicit dialectic might be repaired using
physics and information theory. Our agenda is to describe a key distinction in the physical …

This article offers a formal account of curiosity and insight in terms of active (Bayesian)
inference. It deals with the dual problem of inferring states of the world and learning its …

As we start to fall asleep, the sense of self slackens. Images float by, and our awareness
becomes progressively absorbed in them. The impression of being a bounded individual …

This review summarizes the brain mechanisms controlling sleep and wakefulness.
Wakefulness promoting systems cause low-voltage, fast activity in the …

Higher-order theories of consciousness argue that conscious awareness crucially depends
on higher-order mental representations that represent oneself as being in particular mental …

Visual imagery during sleep has long been a topic of persistent speculation, but its private
nature has hampered objective analysis. Here we present a neural decoding approach in …

A capacity for the animal to recover quickly from the impact of physical and social stressors
and disease challenges is likely to improve evolutionary fitness of wild species and welfare …