Neurodynamics of Mind: The Arrow Illusion of Conscious Intentionality as Downward Causation

A synergetic turn in cognitive neuroscience of brain diseases

Despite significant improvements in our understanding of brain diseases, many barriers remain. Cognitive neuroscience faces four major challenges: complex structure-function associations; disease phenotype heterogeneity; the lack of transdiagnostic models; and oversimplified cognitive approaches restricted to the laboratory. Here, we propose a synergetics framework that can help to perform the necessary dimensionality reduction of complex interactions between the brain, body, and environment. The key solutions include low-dimensional spatiotemporal hierarchies for brain-structure associations, whole-brain modeling to handle phenotype diversity, model integration of shared transdiagnostic pathophysiological pathways, and naturalistic frameworks balancing experimental control and ecological validity. Creating whole-brain models with reduced manifolds combined with ecological measures can improve our understanding of brain disease and help identify novel interventions. Synergetics provides an integrated framework for future progress in clinical and cognitive neuroscience, pushing the boundaries of brain health and disease toward more mature, naturalistic approaches.

Phenomenal Consciousness and Emergence: Eliminating the Explanatory Gap

The role of emergence in the creation of consciousness has been debated for over a century, but it remains unresolved. In particular there is controversy over the claim that a "strong" or radical form of emergence is required to explain phenomenal consciousness. In this paper we use some ideas of complex system theory to trace the emergent features of life and then of complex brains through three progressive stages or levels: Level 1 (life), Level 2 (nervous systems), and Level 3 (special neurobiological features), each representing increasing biological and neurobiological complexity and ultimately leading to the emergence of phenomenal consciousness, all in physical systems. Along the way we show that consciousness fits the criteria of an emergent property-albeit one with extreme complexity. The formulation Life + Special neurobiological features → Phenomenal consciousness expresses these relationships. Then we consider the implications of our findings for some of the philosophical conundrums entailed by the apparent "explanatory gap" between the brain and phenomenal consciousness. We conclude that consciousness stems from the personal life of an organism with the addition of a complex nervous system that is ideally suited to maximize emergent neurobiological features and that it is an example of standard ("weak") emergence without a scientific explanatory gap. An "experiential" or epistemic gap remains, although this is ontologically untroubling.

Social neuroscience: undoing the schism between neurology and psychiatry

Multiple disorders once jointly conceived as "nervous diseases" became segregated by the distinct institutional traditions forged in neurology and psychiatry. As a result, each field specialized in the study and treatment of a subset of such conditions. Here we propose new avenues for interdisciplinary interaction through a triangulation of both fields with social neuroscience. To this end, we review evidence from five relevant domains (facial emotion recognition, empathy, theory of mind, moral cognition, and social context assessment), highlighting their common disturbances across neurological and psychiatric conditions and discussing their multiple pathophysiological mechanisms. Our proposal is anchored in multidimensional evidence, including behavioral, neurocognitive, and genetic findings. From a clinical perspective, this work paves the way for dimensional and transdiagnostic approaches, new pharmacological treatments, and educational innovations rooted in a combined neuropsychiatric training. Research-wise, it fosters new models of the social brain and a novel platform to explore the interplay of cognitive and social functions. Finally, we identify new challenges for this synergistic framework.

The compatibility between sociological and cognitive neuroscientific ideas on consciousness: is a neurosociology of consciousness possible?

This article considers the possibility of integrating sociological and cognitive neuroscience ideas on consciousness and developing a new research area: neurosociology of consciousnesses. Research was conducted taking into account the limited knowledge on consciousness produced in these disciplines and the necessity of finding ways to study the social roles concerning the neural correlates of consciousness. Applying several ideas on consciousness from these disciplines (intersubjectivity, close connection with collective forms representations, deriving awareness from the brain's processes, and so on), I show that it is difficult to reconcile the differences in the treatment of consciousness through the simple combination of the different ideas. The integration should be pursued in light of the neuroscientific findings concerning consciousness in different social contexts (role behavior, social interactions, and so on). In integrating the concepts, I predicted the role of time delay in conscious awareness in decision making, synchronization of neural oscillations under conscious perception, and the activations of certain brain zones in correspondence to different conscious cognitive processes for understanding in face-to-face situations. The study reveals that the optimal path for neurosociological research on consciousness is in its primary development without a rigid binding to either sociology or neuroscience.

Does consciousness exist?--In what sense?

This commentary on Barutta et al. (IPBS: Integrative Psychological & Behavioral Science 44:2, 2010) elaborates the authors' ideas from a new angle. The following positions of the authors are presented and analyzed: emergetism, two different languages of the description of the phenomena, and the notion of "efficient causality". A different approach to the issue of mind-brain interaction is suggested. The key idea of the approach is based not on posing select characteristics which the mind, the brain, or the human consciousness is supposed to have, but on the description of the logic of the activity of this global system, and of the structures that make this characteristics possible to exist.