Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC)

[Alex]

http://www.theassc.org 

The ASSC is an academic society that promotes rigorous research directed toward understanding the nature, function, and underlying mechanisms of consciousness. The ASSC includes members working in the fields of cognitive science, medicine, neuroscience, philosophy, and other relevant disciplines in the sciences and humanities.

The ASSC web site has several main functions:
•co-ordinating annual conferences on aspects of the scientific study of consciousness
•promotion of other activities in the field (smaller conferences, mailing lists, bibliographic resource, etc.
•facilitate consciousness research with awards for new investigators
•publication of papers relevant to the scientific study of consciousness in the inter-disciplinary journal Psyche.


PSYCHE is the free electronic journal of ASSC.

[Alex]

The Neural Correlates of Perceptual Awareness
Alberto Capurro and Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
University of Leicester
Department of Engineering
NeuroEngineering Lab
Psyche http://journalpsyche.org/ojs-2.2/index.php/psyche/article/viewFile/2676/2685

Several researchers are now experimentally addressing the study of the neural correlates of the different aspects of consciousness. This issue was considered to be an exclusive matter of philosophy until a short time ago. Consciousness or awareness can, in principle, be defined as the occurrence of perceptions, thoughts and feelings. A precise definition, however, remains elusive, because covering every aspect of the conscious experience is difficult. For instance, speaking about the perception of something that we see and recognize is not the same as speaking about our self consciousness, or about the different levels of awareness that we experience during the sleep-wake cycle. To begin with, we must distinguish between the factors that enable consciousness to occur (such as the ascending activation system of the brainstem and basal forebrain, or the glutamatergic neurotransmission) from the so called content of consciousness, that is, the formation of specific percepts. In this review we will address this last issue through evidence of neural correlates underling visual perceptual awareness. ...

Causal Relations Between Neural Activity and Awareness
The evidence that neural activity in the ventral stream is correlated with visual perception of faces or places leads to the issue of the underlying causal structure. In other words, is there a causal relationship between neuronal firing and perception, or just mere correlation? Evidence for a causal connection was provided by experiments using cortical micro-stimulation in a cluster of face neurons of monkeys trained to report the presence of a face in images degraded by visual noise. When the cluster of face neurons was stimulated, the monkeys were more likely to report faces, even when only visual noise was presented. ...