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Nature Neuroscience Oct 2023Sensing internal bodily signals, or interoception, is fundamental to maintain life. However, interoception should not be viewed as an isolated domain, as it interacts... (Review)
Review
Sensing internal bodily signals, or interoception, is fundamental to maintain life. However, interoception should not be viewed as an isolated domain, as it interacts with exteroception, cognition and action to ensure the integrity of the organism. Focusing on cardiac, respiratory and gastric rhythms, we review evidence that interoception is anatomically and functionally intertwined with the processing of signals from the external environment. Interactions arise at all stages, from the peripheral transduction of interoceptive signals to sensory processing and cortical integration, in a network that extends beyond core interoceptive regions. Interoceptive rhythms contribute to functions ranging from perceptual detection up to sense of self, or conversely compete with external inputs. Renewed interest in interoception revives long-standing issues on how the brain integrates and coordinates information in distributed regions, by means of oscillatory synchrony, predictive coding or multisensory integration. Considering interoception and exteroception in the same framework paves the way for biological modes of information processing specific to living organisms.
Topics: Awareness; Brain; Cognition; Sensation; Interoception; Heart Rate
PubMed: 37697110
DOI: 10.1038/s41593-023-01425-1 -
British Journal of Community Nursing Dec 2022
Topics: Humans; Emotions; Emotional Intelligence; Awareness
PubMed: 36519463
DOI: 10.12968/bjcn.2022.27.12.573 -
Trends in Neurosciences Jan 2020Ordinary human experience is embedded in a web of causal relations that link the brain to the body and the wider environment. However, there might be conditions in which... (Review)
Review
Ordinary human experience is embedded in a web of causal relations that link the brain to the body and the wider environment. However, there might be conditions in which brain activity supports consciousness even when that activity is fully causally isolated from the body and its environment. Such cases would involve what we call islands of awareness: conscious states that are neither shaped by sensory input nor able to be expressed by motor output. This Opinion paper considers conditions in which such islands might occur, including ex cranio brains, hemispherotomy, and in cerebral organoids. We examine possible methods for detecting islands of awareness, and consider their implications for ethics and for the nature of consciousness.
Topics: Awareness; Brain; Consciousness; Humans
PubMed: 31836316
DOI: 10.1016/j.tins.2019.11.003 -
Annals of Internal Medicine Sep 2023International travel can cause new illness or exacerbate existing conditions. Because primary care providers are frequent sources of health advice to travelers, they... (Review)
Review
International travel can cause new illness or exacerbate existing conditions. Because primary care providers are frequent sources of health advice to travelers, they should be familiar with destination-specific disease risks, be knowledgeable about travel and routine vaccines, be prepared to prescribe chemoprophylaxis and self-treatment regimens, and be aware of travel medicine resources. Primary care providers should recognize travelers who would benefit from referral to a specialized travel clinic for evaluation. Those requiring yellow fever vaccination, immunocompromised hosts, pregnant persons, persons with multiple comorbid conditions, or travelers with complex itineraries may warrant specialty referral.
Topics: Female; Pregnancy; Humans; Travel Medicine; Medicine; Ambulatory Care Facilities; Awareness; Chemoprevention
PubMed: 37696033
DOI: 10.7326/AITC202309190 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Aug 2019Meta-awareness appears to be essential to nearly all forms of mindfulness practice, and it plays a key role in processes that are central to therapeutic effects of... (Review)
Review
Meta-awareness appears to be essential to nearly all forms of mindfulness practice, and it plays a key role in processes that are central to therapeutic effects of mindfulness training, including decentering - shifting one's experiential perspective onto an experience itself - and dereification or metacognitive insight - experiencing thoughts as mental events, and not as the things that they seem to represent. Important advances in the conceptualization of meta-awareness in mindfulness have recently been made, yet more clarity is required in order to characterize the type of meta-awareness implicated in the ongoing monitoring of attention and affect, even while attention itself is focused on an explicit object of awareness such as the breath. To enhance research on this form of meta-awareness cultivated in at least some styles of mindfulness, a construct of sustained, non-propositional meta-awareness is proposed.
Topics: Attention; Awareness; Humans; Metacognition; Mindfulness
PubMed: 31374535
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.003 -
Behavioural Processes Jan 2022The capacity to be self-aware is regarded as a fundamental difference between humans and other species. However, growing evidence challenges this notion, indicating that... (Review)
Review
The capacity to be self-aware is regarded as a fundamental difference between humans and other species. However, growing evidence challenges this notion, indicating that many animals show complex signs and behaviors that are consonant with self-awareness. In this review, we suggest that many animals are indeed self-aware, but that the complexity of this process differs among species. We discuss this topic by addressing several different questions regarding self-awareness: what is self-awareness, how has self-awareness been studied experimentally, which species may be self-aware, what are its potential adaptive advantages. We conclude by proposing alternative models for the emergence of self-awareness in relation to species evolutionary paths, indicating future research questions to advance this field further.
Topics: Animals; Awareness; Biological Evolution; Humans; Perception
PubMed: 34800608
DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104543 -
IEEE Pulse 2020Are humans the only species with a sense of consciousness? This question has intrigued me for most of my life. Having kept pets and livestock animals, and observed wild...
Are humans the only species with a sense of consciousness? This question has intrigued me for most of my life. Having kept pets and livestock animals, and observed wild animals from both near and far, I have often wondered just how much they know about their surroundings and their place in it. Do they know how to reason out answers to questions important to them? Are they aware of the consequences of their actions? Can they anticipate what other animals, including those of close kin and other, more remote species, are likely to do in certain situations? Can they see themselves inside their minds, if they do, indeed, have minds? Do they dream?
Topics: Animals; Awareness; Behavior, Animal; Consciousness; Dreams; Emotions; Learning
PubMed: 32386136
DOI: 10.1109/MPULS.2020.2984306 -
Neuropsychologia Aug 2019The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is one of the principal brain regions studied in consciousness. Previous investigations suggest that the PFC is an important neural hub in... (Review)
Review
The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) is one of the principal brain regions studied in consciousness. Previous investigations suggest that the PFC is an important neural hub in both awareness and the manipulation of the content of consciousness. Despite a consensus in the scientific community regarding PFC function in cortico-cortical networks, there is still intense debate as to its role in the thalamocortical network and the formation of content of consciousness. The objective of this research is to provide a comprehensive review of the possible implications of PFC activity in awareness, with a focus on thalamic neural pathways that could explain perceptual alterations in the content of consciousness. We posit that the PFC and its connection with nonspecific thalamic nuclei could be responsible for the functional integration of sensory perception into a unique conscious content. This cortico-thalamocortical neural loop would denote a small closed-loop subnetwork within the thalamocortical system that organizes the flow of temporal and spatial information to maintain a subjective stream of consciousness. In particular, attentional top-down mechanisms between the PFC and the reticular thalamic nucleus could influence the formation of the content of consciousness through their capacity to regulate thalamic activity. Summarizing, the PFC acts as a dynamic and multifunctional neural hub that recalibrates global neural dynamics and regulates interactive brain processes associated with consciousness.
Topics: Attention; Awareness; Consciousness; Humans; Nerve Net; Prefrontal Cortex
PubMed: 31132421
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.05.018 -
Soins; La Revue de Reference Infirmiere 2020
Topics: Awareness; Humans
PubMed: 33160478
DOI: 10.1016/S0038-0814(20)30156-0 -
Restorative Neurology and Neuroscience 2020The most common visual defect to follow a lesion of the retrochiasmal pathways is homonymous hemianopia (HH), whereby patients are blind to the contralesional visual... (Review)
Review
The most common visual defect to follow a lesion of the retrochiasmal pathways is homonymous hemianopia (HH), whereby patients are blind to the contralesional visual field of each eye. Homonymous hemianopia has been studied in terms of its deleterious consequences on perceptual, cognitive and motor tasks as well as because it represents an interesting model of vision loss after a unilateral lesion of the occipital lobe. From a behavioral perspective, in addition to exhibiting a severe deficit in their contralesional visual field, HH patients can also exhibit dissociations between perception and awareness. Firstly, HH patients suffering from anosognosia may be unaware of their visual field defect. Secondly, HH patients can present with unconscious visual abilities in the blind hemifield, a phenomenon referred to as blindsight. Thirdly, recent reports demonstrate that HH patients can suffer from a subtle deficit in their ipsilesional visual field that they are unaware of, a condition called sightblindness (i.e. the reverse case of 'blindsight'). Finally, HH patients may also exhibit visual hallucinations in their blind field; however, such patients are not systematically aware that their perceptions are unreal. In this review, we provide an overview of the visual-field losses in HH patients after a left or right unilateral occipital lesion. Furthermore, we explore the implications of these four phenomena for models of visual processing and rehabilitation of visual field defects in HH patients. Finally, in contrast to the traditional view that HH is solely a visual-field defect, we discuss why this deficit is an interesting model for studying the dissociation between perception and awareness.
Topics: Awareness; Hemianopsia; Humans; Occipital Lobe; Photic Stimulation; Visual Fields; Visual Perception
PubMed: 31929128
DOI: 10.3233/RNN-190951