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+41 +1
Becoming Conscious: A Neurosurgeon Discusses His Transformational Experience
In 2008, neurosurgeon Eben Alexander, MD, woke up in excruciating pain. Within hours, he was in full grand mal seizure and was rushed to the hospital. The diagnosis was a rare and usually fatal form of E. coli bacterial meningitis, and his prognosis was grim. For seven days he lay in a deep coma. Despite the overwhelming odds against his survival, he not only woke up, but...
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+21 +1
Do Honeybees Feel? Scientists Are Entertaining the Idea
An Australian scientist and a philosopher propose that the structure of insect brains suggests they have the capacity for basic awareness. By James Gorman.
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+13 +1
Surfing Uncertainty
Do our dynamic brains predict the world? Andy Clark’s masterly book overturns traditional views about our brains, arguing they make internal models of reality which they then compare with incoming data. By Anil Ananthaswamy.
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+26 +1
Ravens’ fear of unseen snoopers hints they have theory of mind
The cunning birds hide their food more quickly if they think they are being watched, suggesting they can attribute mental states to others. By Sam Wong.
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+35 +1
To oblivion and beyond: art and science at the edge of consciousness
From William Blake’s vision of a soul leaving the body to Goshka Macuga’s creepy somnambulist, a new exhibition explores the mysteries of the mind – but are we any closer to finding the answers Descartes was seeking when he dissected a human brain more than 350 years ago?
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+40 +1
The ability to control dreams may help us unravel the mystery of consciousness
About half of us will experience at least one lucid dream in our lives, where we are aware and may be able to take control of it. What can this tell us about consciousness? By Dan Denis and Giulia Poerio.
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+42 +1
10 Ways Plants are More Like Animals Than You Think
Recently, scientists have found evidence that these a lot of the plants all around us behave more like creatures rather than inanimate objects. Once considered to be at the bottom of the food chain, plants are slowly rising to the status of a legitimate living thing.
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+22 +1
Consciousness Wars
The western esoteric tradition has been a victim of what we might call a “consciousness war,” which has been taking place over the last several centuries. By Gary Lachman.
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+19 +1
Animal minds
The inner lives of animals are hard to study. But there is evidence that they may be a lot richer than science once thought.
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+33 +1
Can Integrated Information Theory Explain Consciousness?
A radical new solution to the mind-body problem poses problems of its own. By John Horgan.
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+35 +1
Do we underestimate the power of plants and trees?
Are scientists right to argue that plants and trees are “intelligent”, and if so, what can we learn from them?
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+29 +1
How and why exactly did consciousness become a problem?
For dualists, there was no 'problem' of consciousness – it was simply a separate realm of being. But the emergence of modern science came packaged with materialism, a philosophy that implicitly brought the soul back to earth. Scientists, however, were content ignoring subjectivity and focusing on the objective processes of material nature, until quantum physics made it clear that the mind plays a central role in bringing forth the world under investigation. How consciousness became a problem:
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+33 +1
Read Before Riding: Horses Have Consciousness
Horses have been domesticated for 5,000 years, but we’re still learning about how they think. By Simon Worrall.
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+28 +1
Why Sleep? Why Dream?
When you sleep, where does your consciousness go? By Robert Lawrence Kuhn.
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You Are Not Just Your Brain
For some time now, I've been skeptical about the neuroscience of consciousness. Not so much because I doubt that consciousness is affected by neural states and processes, but because of the persistent tendency on the part of some neuroscientists to think of consciousness itself as a neural phenomenon.
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+47 +1
Leading theory of consciousness rocked by oddball study
Scientists show that widespread activity occurs in the brain even during unconscious processing – which shouldn't happen if our theories of consciousness are correct.
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