Recent years have seen a blossoming of theories about the biological and physical basis of consciousness. Good theories guide empirical research, allowing us to interpret data, develop new ...

One of the deepest mysteries about cognition is how human thought differs from that of humanity’s close primate relatives. This question targets the core of human nature itself, simultaneously ...

Humans are unrivalled in the area of cognition. After all, no other species has sent probes to other planets, produced lifesaving vaccines or created poetry. How information is processed in the human ...

The conscious experience of our surroundings involves several forms of attention, from bottom-up automatic attention to a more focused top-down attention. These forms of attention all rely on neural ...

The brain's ability to process information is known to be supported by intricate connections between different neuron populations. A key objective of neuroscience research has been to delineate the ...

This is Part 4 of a five-part series. Integrated information theory (IIT) is a theory of consciousness. It was first formulated by the neuroscientist and psychiatrist Giulio Tononi in the early 2000s ...

Many of us swing through gates every day—points of entry and exit to a space like a garden, park or subway. Electronics have gates too. These control the flow of information from one place to another ...