Consciousness and the prefrontal parietal network: insights from attention, working memory, and chunking

Consciousness has of late become a “hot topic” in neuroscience. Empirical work has centered on identifying potential neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), with a converging view that the prefrontal parietal network (PPN) is closely associated with this process. Theoretical work has primarily sought to explain how informational properties of this cortical network could account for phenomenal properties of consciousness. However, both empirical and theoretical research has given less focus to the psychological features that may account for the NCCs. The PPN has also been heavily linked with cognitive processes, such as attention. We describe how this literature is under-appreciated in consciousness science, in part due to the increasingly entrenched assumption of a strong dissociation between attention and consciousness. We argue instead that there is more common ground between attention and consciousness than is usually emphasized: although objects can under certain circumstances be attended to in the absence of conscious access, attention as a content selection and boosting mechanism is an important and necessary aspect of consciousness. Like attention, working memory and executive control involve the interlinking of multiple mental objects and have also been closely associated with the PPN. We propose that this set of cognitive functions, in concert with attention, make up the core psychological components of consciousness. One related process, chunking, exploits logical or mnemonic redundancies in a dataset so that it can be recoded and a given task optimized. Chunking has been shown to activate PPN particularly robustly, even compared with other cognitively demanding tasks, such as working memory or mental arithmetic. It is therefore possible that chunking, as a tool to detect useful patterns within an integrated set of intensely processed (attended) information, has a central role to play in consciousness. Following on from this, we suggest that a key evolutionary purpose of consciousness may be to provide innovative solutions to complex or novel problems

Charmonium at CLEO

At CLEO, charmonium spectroscopy is pursued both thorugh e+e- annihilation data taken in the Upsilon region and more recently at psi(2S). A nmber of first observations (eta_c', h_c, pi and K form factors) have been made, and numerous high precision measurements have been made in radiative and hadronic decays of charmonium resonances. A brief report of these contributions is presented.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures, plenary talk contributed to XI International Conference On Hadron Spectroscopy (HADRON05), 21-26 Aug 2005, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi

Exciting Developments in Hadron Spectroscopy

There has been a renaissance in hadron spectroscopy during the last couple of years. Long lost states have been tracked down. Unexpected states are showing up all over, and numerous measurements with unprecedented precision are being reported. A review is presented.Comment: 11 pages, 10 figures, plenary talk contributed to XI International Conference On Hadron Spectroscopy (HADRON05), 21-26 Aug 2005, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi

The grand challenge of consciousness

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Hyperfine Interaction in Quarkonia

The recent experimental developments in the measurement of hyperfine splittings in the bound states of charmonium and bottomonium are presented. Their implications for the hyperfine interactions in the heavy quark systems are discussed.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figures, presented at 19th International IUPAP Conference on Few-Body Problems in Physics, Aug. 31 - Sept. 5, 2009, University of Bonn, German

The cybernetic Bayesian brain: from interoceptive inference to sensorimotor contingencies

Is there a single principle by which neural operations can account for perception, cognition, action, and even consciousness? A strong candidate is now taking shape in the form of “predictive processing”. On this theory, brains engage in predictive inference on the causes of sensory inputs by continuous minimization of prediction errors or informational “free energy”. Predictive processing can account, supposedly, not only for perception, but also for action and for the essential contribution of the body and environment in structuring sensorimotor interactions. In this paper I draw together some recent developments within predictive processing that involve predictive modelling of internal physiological states (interoceptive inference), and integration with “enactive” and “embodied” approaches to cognitive science (predictive perception of sensorimotor contingencies). The upshot is a development of predictive processing that originates, not in Helmholtzian perception-as-inference, but rather in 20th-century cybernetic principles that emphasized homeostasis and predictive control. This way of thinking leads to (i) a new view of emotion as active interoceptive inference; (ii) a common predictive framework linking experiences of body ownership, emotion, and exteroceptive perception; (iii) distinct interpretations of active inference as involving disruptive and disambiguatory—not just confirmatory—actions to test perceptual hypotheses; (iv) a neurocognitive operationalization of the “mastery of sensorimotor contingencies” (where sensorimotor contingencies reflect the rules governing sensory changes produced by various actions); and (v) an account of the sense of subjective reality of perceptual contents (“perceptual presence”) in terms of the extent to which predictive models encode potential sensorimotor relations (this being “counterfactual richness”). This is rich and varied territory, and surveying its landmarks emphasizes the need for experimental tests of its key contributions