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consciousness

Featured Neuroscience Open Neuroscience Articles

·May 5, 2025·5 min read

Out-of-Body Experiences Offer New Clues About Consciousness

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are often dismissed as hallucinations or brain malfunctions, but a new study gives voice to those who have lived them. Through in-depth interviews, participants described their OBEs as vivid, often peaceful, and undeniably real—sometimes more real than waking life.

Featured Neuroscience

·May 2, 2025·5 min read

Study Challenges Leading Theories On Consciousness Origins

A landmark study tested two leading theories of consciousness — Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) — but found neither definitively explained conscious experience. While IIT emphasizes deep integration of brain regions and GNWT highlights widespread broadcasting of information, data from 256 human subjects did not fully support either.

This shows a head, a brain, and a clock.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 24, 2025·6 min read

Why Do Our Minds Sometimes Go Blank?

Mind blanking—the experience of thinking about nothing—has often been misunderstood or lumped together with mind wandering. However, new research suggests it’s a distinct mental state linked to physiological arousal levels, with its own brain and body signatures.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 22, 2025·7 min read

Reading Brainwaves to Fine-Tune Consciousness in Surgeries

A new clinical trial shows that using EEG to guide anesthesia in children significantly reduces the amount of anesthetic needed while improving post-surgery recovery. By monitoring brain wave patterns, anesthesiologists maintained safe unconsciousness with lower doses of sevoflurane, leading to faster awakening and fewer cases of post-anesthesia delirium.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 21, 2025·3 min read

Lucid Dreaming Reveals a New Layer of Conscious Brain Activity

Lucid dreaming, where people become aware they are dreaming, has long fascinated both scientists and dreamers. A new study with the largest dataset of its kind has identified distinct brain activity patterns that separate lucid dreaming from both REM sleep and wakefulness.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 12, 2025·5 min read

What Are Thoughts? Exploring the Mystery of the Mind

The nature of thought remains one of philosophy's greatest mysteries, with deep implications for neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Two main theories compete: materialism, which sees thoughts as brain states, and dualism, which holds that thoughts are non-physical entities. While neuroscience has mapped correlations between brain activity and mental states, it cannot yet explain how physical matter gives rise to conscious experience.

Featured Neuroscience

·April 3, 2025·6 min read

Key Brain Gateway to Conscious Perception Identified

A new study using intracranial recordings in humans reveals that the thalamus, particularly its higher-order regions, plays a central role in triggering conscious perception. By monitoring brain activity during a visual task, researchers found that the intralaminar and medial thalamic nuclei activated before the prefrontal cortex, suggesting the thalamus initiates conscious awareness.

Featured Neurology Neuroscience

·March 3, 2025·6 min read

Sleep Brain Waves Linked to Consciousness in Coma

A new study finds that sleep spindles—bursts of brain activity during sleep—may predict recovery in unresponsive patients with recent brain injuries. Researchers analyzed EEG recordings of 226 comatose patients and found that those with sleep spindles were significantly more likely to regain consciousness and functional independence.

This shows a person floating in a dream.

Featured Neuroscience Psychology

·February 19, 2025·5 min read

Why Some People Remember Dreams and Others Don’t

A new study explores why some people vividly recall dreams while others forget them. Researchers found that dream recall is influenced by personality traits, sleep patterns, and even seasonal changes. People who frequently daydream and have a positive attitude toward dreams were more likely to remember them.

Featured Neuroscience

·January 2, 2025·6 min read

How Altered States of Consciousness Change Time Perception

Time perception varies depending on context, often slowing in emergencies or unfamiliar settings and speeding up during absorption or as we age. Time expansion experiences (Tees) occur when seconds stretch into minutes, frequently in accidents, sports, or moments of calm.

Featured Neuroscience

·October 7, 2024·8 min read

How Conscious Thought Fades Under Anesthesia

A new study has shown that conscious thought relies on synchronized brain rhythms to maintain communication between sensory and cognitive brain regions. Under general anesthesia, this rhythm-based communication breaks down, disrupting the brain's ability to detect and process surprising stimuli.

Featured Neuroscience

·September 9, 2024·3 min read

How Propofol Disrupts Consciousness Pathways

Researchers have mapped how propofol, a widely used anesthetic, alters brain connectivity to induce unconsciousness. Using fMRI, they found that propofol disrupts connections in the thalamus, reducing complex information processing and limiting sensory integration.