Consciousness in humans and non-human animals: recent advances and future directions

Boly, Mélanie; Seth, Anil K.; Wilke, Melanie; Ingmundson, Paul; Baars, Bernard J.; Laureys, Steven; Edelman, David B.; Tsuchiya, Naotsugu

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00625

Cited by 200 publications

(150 citation statements)

References 283 publications

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“…With the constraints of behaviorism loosened, animal consciousness is no longer a taboo topic (61)(62)(63)(64)(65)(66). Lacking the conceptual and historical foundations needed to navigate the ambiguous use of fear and the subtle issues that were being grappled with by those who treated fear as a nonsubjective intervening variable, readers today (including scientists, journalists, and lay people) are easily drawn toward the conventional meaning of fear as a conscious feeling and to the everyday belief that fearful feelings cause us to respond in a certain way to threats.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Experiences we label and talk about as fear are not directly tied to the circuits that detect and respond to threats (see Nonconscious Conditioned Fear in Humans), and are not reliably correlated with body responses elicited by threats (130). Claims by some that animals must have conscious feelings because of the continuity of behavior across species (61)(62)(63)(64)(65)(66) assume that behavior and conscious feelings are coupled in the brain. However, if this not the case, and it does not appear to be, we cannot use information about defense responses to tell us whether animals are experiencing fear.…”

Section: Going Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Coming to terms with fear

LeDoux

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

744

555

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The brain mechanisms of fear have been studied extensively using Pavlovian fear conditioning, a procedure that allows exploration of how the brain learns about and later detects and responds to threats. However, mechanisms that detect and respond to threats are not the same as those that give rise to conscious fear. This is an important distinction because symptoms based on conscious and nonconscious processes may be vulnerable to different predisposing factors and may also be treatable with different approaches in people who suffer from uncontrolled fear or anxiety. A conception of so-called fear conditioning in terms of circuits that operate nonconsciously, but that indirectly contribute to conscious fear, is proposed as way forward.Pavlovian conditioning | emotion | survival circuits | global organismic states | consciousness Hunger, like, anger, fear, and so forth, is a phenomenon that can be known only by introspection. When applied to another. . .species, it is merely a guess about the possible nature of the animal's subjective state.Nico Tinbergen (1) Neuroscientists use "fear" to explain the empirical relation between two events: for example, rats freeze when they see a light previously associated with electric shock. Psychiatrists, psychologists, and most citizens, on the other hand, use. . ."fear" to name a conscious experience of those who dislike driving over high bridges or encountering large spiders. These two uses suggest. . .several fear states, each with its own genetics, incentives, physiological patterns, and behavioral profiles.Jerome Kagan (2) M y research focuses on how the brain detects and responds to threats, and I have long argued that these mechanisms are distinct from those that make possible the conscious feeling of fear that can occur when one is in danger (3-6). However, I, and others, have called the brain system that detects and responds to threats the fear system. This was a mistake that has led to much confusion. Most people who are not in the field naturally assume that the job of a fear system is to make conscious feelings of fear, because the common meaning of fear is the feeling of being afraid. Although research on the brain mechanisms that detect and respond to threats in animals has important implications for understanding how the human brain feels fear, it is not because the threat detection and defense responses mechanisms are fear mechanisms. It is instead because these nonconscious mechanisms initiate responses in the brain and body that indirectly contribute to conscious fear.In this article, I focus on Pavlovian fear conditioning, a procedure that has been used extensively to study the so-called fear system. I will propose and defend a different way of talking about this research, one that focuses on the actual subject matter and data (threat detection and defense responses) and that is less likely to compel the interpretation that conscious states of fear underlie defense responses elicited by conditioned threats. It will not be easy to give up the term fear condi...

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Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Going Forwardmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coming to terms with fear

LeDoux

2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

744

555

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“…Within the general framework of the aforementioned models, gating mechanisms are in place that selectively allow active neural representations to be "broadcast" or "routed" (Zylberberg et al, 2011(Zylberberg et al, , 2010 to a broad frontal-parietal control network associated with sequential, goal-directed deliberation and action selection (Andersen and Cui, 2009). Only when selectively "routed" to this network can those representations be maintained/manipulated within working memory (Dehaene, 2014), and also integrated together to resolve conflicts between competing control processes in guiding deliberative action selection (including actions involving verbal reports; Boly et al, 2013;Morsella, 2005;Morsella et al, in press;Tononi and Koch, 2015). If an active neural representation is not made "access conscious" by being selectively broadcast within this network, its associated content/phenomenology will not be verbally reportable, nor will it be capable of guiding the selection of other such controlled, goal-directed actions (See Figure 1).…”

Section: B3 Conscious Access To Emotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With more recent light-stimulation procedures afforded by optogenetics as well as viral insertion of artificial receptors into neuronal subtypes in specific brain regions, one can stimulate those regions through peripheral administration of receptor agonists, offering the grand potential of DREADD (Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs) approaches to localized brain stimulation(Urban and Roth, 2015). Such technologies provide the possibility of a more detailed 2 nd generation of cross species affective neuroscience research(Anderson, 2012;Boly et al, 2013;Tovote et al, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on the brain basis of emotional experience

Panksepp

Lane

Solms

et al. 2017

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

114

107

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“…This conclusion is hardly surprising, since even in situations where people are not conscious the existence of feature binding is expected. Currently there is an intense debate about the possibility that some animals may have consciousness (Baars, 2005;Boly et al, 2013;Droege & Braithwaite, 2015;Fabbro et al, 2015;Seth et al, 2005). Although this discussion is still in progress, there is no doubt that many animals are capable of forming one integral image of objects observed in the environment.…”

Section: Relation With Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%