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Chen B, Ciria LF, Hu C, Ivanov PC. Ensemble of coupling forms and networks among brain rhythms as function of states and cognition. Commun Biol 2022; 5:82. [PMID: 35064204 PMCID: PMC8782865 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-03017-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/26/2021] [Accepted: 12/23/2021] [Indexed: 01/02/2023] Open
Abstract
The current paradigm in brain research focuses on individual brain rhythms, their spatiotemporal organization, and specific pairwise interactions in association with physiological states, cognitive functions, and pathological conditions. Here we propose a conceptually different approach to understanding physiologic function as emerging behavior from communications among distinct brain rhythms. We hypothesize that all brain rhythms coordinate as a network to generate states and facilitate functions. We analyze healthy subjects during rest, exercise, and cognitive tasks and show that synchronous modulation in the micro-architecture of brain rhythms mediates their cross-communications. We discover that brain rhythms interact through an ensemble of coupling forms, universally observed across cortical areas, uniquely defining each physiological state. We demonstrate that a dynamic network regulates the collective behavior of brain rhythms and that network topology and links strength hierarchically reorganize with transitions across states, indicating that brain-rhythm interactions play an essential role in generating physiological states and cognition.
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Affiliation(s)
- Bolun Chen
- Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology, Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - Luis F Ciria
- Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology, Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
- Mind, Brain and Behaviour Research Center, Department of Experimental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, University of Granada, Campus de la Cartuja, Granada, 18071, Spain
| | - Congtai Hu
- Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology, Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA
| | - Plamen Ch Ivanov
- Keck Laboratory for Network Physiology, Department of Physics, Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, USA.
- Division of Sleep Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
- Institute of Biophysics and Biomedical Engineering, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Acad. Georgi Bonchev Str. Block 21, Sofia, 1113, Bulgaria.
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Fallon F, Blackmon JC. IIT's Scientific Counter-Revolution: A Neuroscientific Theory's Physical and Metaphysical Implications. ENTROPY (BASEL, SWITZERLAND) 2021; 23:942. [PMID: 34441082 PMCID: PMC8394989 DOI: 10.3390/e23080942] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/28/2021] [Revised: 06/21/2021] [Accepted: 06/25/2021] [Indexed: 11/16/2022]
Abstract
IIT includes commitments about the very nature of physical reality, a fact both highly unusual for an empirical theory within neuroscience, and surprisingly underappreciated within the literature. These commitments are intimately tied to the theory; they are not incidental. This paper demonstrates as much by raising certain objections in a "naive" way, and then exposing how the principled IIT responses would rely upon metaphysical positions. Along the way we draw on the IIT literature for support for these interpretations, but also point to a need for elaboration and clarification. Section 1 applies the Placement Argument in a way that leads to problem involving zombies, treated in Section 2. Section 3 frames the zombie problem as an apparent dilemma, and addresses that dilemma by drawing on claims in the IIT literature concerning physical reality. Section 4 raises a related dilemma and treats it in a way that dovetails with the treatment in Section 3 of physical reality. All of this underscores not just the breadth of IIT, but the relevance of this breadth to a full consideration of IIT's merits.
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Affiliation(s)
- Francis Fallon
- Philosophy Department, St. John’s University, New York, NY 11439, USA
| | - James C. Blackmon
- Department of Philosophy, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA
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Scalabrini A, Xu J, Northoff G. What COVID-19 tells us about the self: The deep intersubjective and cultural layers of our brain. Psychiatry Clin Neurosci 2021; 75:37-45. [PMID: 33305486 DOI: 10.1111/pcn.13185] [Citation(s) in RCA: 13] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Submit a Manuscript] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/05/2020] [Revised: 11/24/2020] [Accepted: 12/03/2020] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
Abstract
The COVID-19 crisis is affecting our sense of self and touches upon our existential fears. This extends to the self-other relationship, as there is both being infected and infecting the other. What does this pandemic crisis tell us about our self and relatedness, its cultural differences, and how these are rooted in the brain's relation to the world? First, we discuss the psychological and neuronal features of self and self-other relation and how they are rooted in a deeper layer of the brain's neural activity complementing its cognitive surface layer. Second, we demonstrate cultural differences of Eastern and Western concepts of the self (i.e., independency and interdependency) and how these reflect the manifestation of the brain's neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment. Finally, we highlight the intersubjective and cultural nature of the self and its surface in the COVID-19 crisis. Discussing various lines of empirical data showing the brain's intimate alignment to both social and ecological environmental contexts, our results support the assumption of the brain's deep layer features by laying bare a continuum of different degrees of neuro-social and neuro-ecological alignment. This entails a two-stage model of self with neuro-social-ecological and psychological levels that extends the previously suggested basis model of self-specificity. We conclude that the current pandemic shows the importance of the deeper intersubjective and cultural layers of both the self and brain; their neglect can be life-threatening for the self and others and, paradoxically, might reduce, rather than enlarge, the self's sense of freedom and independence.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrea Scalabrini
- Department of Psychological Health and Territorial Sciences (DiSPuTer), G. d'Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy
| | - Jiawei Xu
- Department of Philosophy, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
| | - Georg Northoff
- Mental Health Centre, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, China.,Centre for Cognition and Brain Disorders, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, China.,Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics Research Unit, The Royal's Institute of Mental Health Research & University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.,Centre for Neural Dynamics, Faculty of Medicine, Brain and Mind Research Institute, University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
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Kirchhoff MD, Kiverstein J. Attuning to the World: The Diachronic Constitution of the Extended Conscious Mind. Front Psychol 2020; 11:1966. [PMID: 32982832 PMCID: PMC7475699 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01966] [Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/29/2020] [Accepted: 07/15/2020] [Indexed: 12/16/2022] Open
Abstract
It is a near consensus among materialist philosophers of mind that consciousness must somehow be constituted by internal neural processes, even if we remain unsure quite how this works. Even friends of the extended mind theory have argued that when it comes to the material substrate of conscious experience, the boundary of skin and skull is likely to prove somehow to be privileged. Such arguments have, however, typically conceived of the constitution of consciousness in synchronic terms, making a firm separation between proximate mechanisms and their ultimate causes. We argue that the processes involved in the constitution of some conscious experiences are diachronic, not synchronic. We focus on what we call phenomenal attunement in this paper—the feeling of being at home in a familiar, culturally constructed environment. Such a feeling is missing in cases of culture shock. Phenomenal attunement is a structure of our conscious experience of the world that is ubiquitous and taken for granted. We will argue that it is constituted by cycles of embodied and world-involving engagement whose dynamics are constrained by cultural practices. Thus, it follows that an essential structure of the conscious mind, the absence of which profoundly transforms conscious experience, is extended.
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Affiliation(s)
- Michael D Kirchhoff
- Department of Philosophy, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, Australia
| | - Julian Kiverstein
- Department of Psychiatry, Amsterdam University Medical Center, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands
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Northoff G, Wainio-Theberge S, Evers K. Spatiotemporal neuroscience - what is it and why we need it. Phys Life Rev 2020; 33:78-87. [PMID: 32684435 DOI: 10.1016/j.plrev.2020.06.005] [Citation(s) in RCA: 41] [Impact Index Per Article: 10.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/11/2020] [Accepted: 06/12/2020] [Indexed: 11/19/2022]
Abstract
The excellent commentaries to our target paper hint upon three main issues, (i) spatiotemporal neuroscience; (ii) neuro-mental relationship; and (iii) mind, brain, and world relationship. (i) We therefore discuss briefly the history of Spatiotemporal Neuroscience. Distinguishing it from Cognitive Neuroscience and related branches (like Affective, Social, etc. Neuroscience), Spatiotemporal Neuroscience can be characterized by focus on brain activity (rather than brain function), spatiotemporal relationship (rather than input-cognition-output relationship), and structure (rather than stimuli/contents). (ii) Taken in this sense, Spatiotemporal Neuroscience allows one to conceive the neuro-mental relationship in dynamic spatiotemporal terms that complement and extend (rather than contradict) their cognitive characterization. (iii) Finally, more philosophical issues like the need to dissolve the mind-body problem (and replace it by the world-brain relation) and the question for different levels of time including their nestedness are discussed.
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Affiliation(s)
- Georg Northoff
- Mental Health Center, Zhejiang University School of Medicine, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China; Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics, Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada; Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden. http://www.georgnorthoff.com
| | - Soren Wainio-Theberge
- Mind, Brain Imaging and Neuroethics, Institute of Mental Health Research, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada
| | - Kathinka Evers
- Centre for Research Ethics & Bioethics, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden
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