Theories of consciousness and psychiatric disorders – A comparative analysis

Stefanelli, Riccardo

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2023.105204

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 117 publications

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“…The construct-first approach invites a 'back to basics' attitude that focuses on dissecting existing theories to analyze their central assumptions and the theoretical constructs they utilize. Using these constructs as dimensions of a construct space offers a new tool that can be a true alternative of existing approaches that focus on theory comparison from the perspectives of empirical predictions (Melloni et al, 2021(Melloni et al, , 2023Doerig et al, 2021;Cogitate et al, 2023a), explanatory targets (Seth and Bayne, 2022;Northoff and Lamme, 2020) or specific cases and conditions like infant consciousness (Bayne et al, 2023) or mental disorder (Stefanelli, 2023). The construct-first approach neither assumes nor is motivated to establish the primacy of any one existing theoretical framework over the others.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A construct-first approach to consciousness science

Fazekas,

Cleeremans,

Overgaard

2023

Preprint

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We propose a new approach to consciousness science that instead of comparing complex theoretical positions deconstructs existing theories, takes their core assumptions while disregarding their auxiliary hypotheses, and focuses its investigations on the main constructs that these core assumptions rely on (like global workspace, recurrent processing, metarepresentation). Studying how these main constructs are anchored in lower-level constructs characterizing underlying neural processing will not just offer an alternative to theory comparisons but will also take us one step closer to empirical resolutions. Moreover, exploring the compatibility and possible combinations of the lower-level constructs will allow for new theoretical syntheses. This construct-first approach will improve our ability to understand the commitments of existing theories and pave the way for moving beyond them.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A construct-first approach to consciousness science

Fazekas,

Cleeremans,

Overgaard

2023

Preprint

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“…Whereas some decades ago few respected experimental scientists would consider the investigation of consciousness a worthy scientific pursuit, recent years have seen a surge in the study of consciousness, with natural implications for neuroscience, philosophy, neurology, psychiatry and psychology. As a result of this surge, we are now faced with a surfeit of consciousness theories (Rosenthal, 2020;Seth & Bayne, 2022;Stefanelli, 2023). Some may perceive the abundance of theories as a healthy sign of thinking about consciousness, however, "growth is not always benign […] Cancer is a good example", as said by philosopher Robert Chis-Ciure in a talk on consciousness theories.…”

Section: Introduction -A Flood Of Theories and The Need For Unificationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unifying consciousness theories with MaxCon: maximizing configurations of the brain web

Velazquez,

Mateos,

Wennberg

et al. 2023

Preprint

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There is such a vast proliferation of theories and conceptual frameworks of consciousness and cognition that it is worrying some scholars. There are even competitions to test different theories, and the results are inconclusive. Consciousness research, far from converging toward a unifying framework, is becoming more discordant than ever. We do not need more theories but rather integration across theories to facilitate a comprehensive view on consciousness andcognition and on how normal nervous system dynamics can develop into pathological states. In dealing with what is considered an extremely complex matter, we try to adopt a perspective from which the subject appears in relative simplicity. Grounded in experimental and theoretical observations, we advance an encompassing theory, MaxCon, which incorporates aspects of several main existing theories, finding convergence points in an attempt to simplify and to understand how cellular collective activity is organized to fulfill the dynamic requirements of the diverse theories our proposal comprises. In essence, our proposal derived from the level of description of the interactions among cell networks highlights the tendency to maximise the number of configurations of neural network connections ―constrained by neuroanatomy, biophysical features and the environment― for conscious awareness and proper sensorimotor transformations.

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