This volume examines the neuroscience of visual consciousness, drawing on the phenomenon of binocular rivalry. It provides overviews of brain structure and function, the visual system, and neuroscientific methodologies, and then focuses on binocular rivalry from multiple perspectives: historical, psychophysical, electrophysiological, brain-imaging, brain stimulation, clinical and computational, with a glimpse also into the future of research in this exciting field. This is the first collected volume on binocular rivalry in nearly a decade and will be of special interest to researchers, scholars and students in the vision sciences, and more broadly in the psychological and clinical sciences. In addition, it lays foundations for a forthcoming interdisciplinary volume in this series on the constitution of phenomenal consciousness, making it essential reading for anyone interested in the science and philosophy of consciousness.

Philosophers of mind have been arguing for decades about the nature of phenomenal consciousness and the relation between brain and mind. More recently, neuroscientists and philosophers of science have entered the discussion. Which neural activities in the brain constitute phenomenal consciousness, and how could science distinguish the neural correlates of consciousness from its neural constitution? At what level of neural activity is consciousness constituted in the brain and what might be learned from well-studied phenomena like binocular rivalry, attention, memory, affect, pain, dreams and coma? What should the science of consciousness want to know and what should explanation look like in this field? How should the constitution relation be applied to brain and mind and are other relations like identity, supervenience, realization, emergence and causation preferable? Building on a companion volume on the constitution of visual consciousness (AiCR 90), this volume addresses these questions and related empirical and conceptual territory. It brings together, for the first time, scientists and philosophers to discuss this engaging interdisciplinary topic.

Binocular rivalry is often considered an experimental window on the neural processes of consciousness. We propose three distinct approaches to exploit this window. First, one may look through the window, using binocular rivalry as a passive tool to dissociate unaltered sensory input from wavering perceptual output. Second, the mechanisms underlying binocular rivalry may yield detailed knowledge of the neuronal underpinnings of binocular vision and increase the value of rivalry as a tool to study consciousness. Finally, smart experimental manipulations allow experimenters to 'reach through the window' and interact with mechanisms of conscious visual perception. Within this distinction, we discuss the major open questions in binocular rivalry research and examine how recent technological developments may be incorporated in future studies...

Consciousness and Physicalism: A Defense of a Research Program explores the nature of consciousness and its place in the world, offering a revisionist account of what it means to say that consciousness is nothing over and above the physical. By synthesizing work in the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and philosophy of science from the last twenty years and forging a dialogue with contemporary research in the empirical sciences of the mind, Andreas Elpidorou and Guy Dove advance and defend a novel formulation of physicalism. Although physicalism has been traditionally understood to be a metaphysical thesis, Elpidorou and Dove argue that there is an alternative and indeed preferable understanding of physicalism that both renders physicalism a scientifically informed explanatory project and allows us to make important progress in addressing the ontological problem of consciousness. Physicalism, Elpidorou and Dove hold, is best viewed not as a thesis (metaphysical or otherwise) but as an interdisciplinary research program that aims to compositionally explain all natural phenomena that are central to our understanding of our place in nature. Consciousness and Physicalism is replete with philosophical arguments and informed, through and through, by findings in many areas of scientific research. It advances the debate regarding the ontological status of consciousness. It will interest students and scholars in philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of cognitive science, and philosophy of science. And it will challenge both foes and friends of physicalism.

Contrasting conditions with and without conscious experience has served consciousness research well. However, research based on this simple contrast has led to controversies about the neural basis of conscious experience. One key reason for these ongoing debates seems to be that the simple contrast between conditions with and without consciousness is not specific for unraveling the neural basis of conscious experience, but rather also leads to other processes that precede or follow it. Acknowledging this methodological problem implies that some of the previous research findings about the neural underpinnings of conscious experience are actually reflecting the prerequisites and consequences rather than the direct correlates of conscious perception. Thus, it is required to re-evaluate the previous results to find out which of them are telling us anything about the neural basis of consciousness. But first and foremost, to overcome this methodological problem we need new experimental paradigms that go beyond the simple contrastive analysis or find the ways how some older but well forgotten paradigms may foster a new look at this emerging problem. Accordingly, this research topic is looking for empirical and theoretical contributions that: 1) envision new and suitable experimental approaches to study consciousness that are free from the limitations of the simple contrastive analysis; 2) provide empirical data that help to separate the neural correlates of conscious experience from the prerequisites and consequences of it; 3) help to re-assess previous research findings about the neural correlates of conscious perception in the light of the methodological problems with the traditional contrastive analysis. We hope that the theoretical insights and experimental approaches collected within this Research Topic help us to gain a more refined understanding of the neural basis of conscious experience.

The empirical study of consciousness is in constant progress. New ideas and approaches arise, methods are being debated and refined, and experimental research over the last two decades has produced a rich body of data, acquired in the aim to better understand consciousness and its neural underpinnings. This volume synthesises this data, focusing on how to understand the relations and transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness alongside exploring and distinguishing conscious experience of sensory stimuli and unconscious states. Bringing together leading academics and promising young scientists from across the fields of psychology and neuroscience, Transitions between Consciousness and Unconsciousness discusses controversial topics and ideas, providing an overview of current research trends and opinions, as well as perspectives on theoretical and methodological questions. This is an essential volume for consciousness researchers and students from across psychology, neuroscience and philosophy, as well as those researching modes of visual processing.

The second edition of The Neurology of Consciousness is a comprehensive update of this ground-breaking work on human consciousness, the first book in this area to summarize the neuroanatomical and functional underpinnings of consciousness by emphasizing a lesional approach offered by the study of neurological patients. Since the publication of the first edition in 2009, new methodologies have made consciousness much more accessible scientifically, and, in particular, the study of disorders, disruptions, and disturbances of consciousness has added tremendously to our understanding of the biological basis of human consciousness. The publication of a new edition is both critical and timely for continued understanding of the field of consciousness. In this critical and timely update, revised and new contributions by internationally renowned researchers—edited by the leaders in the field of consciousness research—provide a unique and comprehensive focus on human consciousness. The new edition of The Neurobiology of Consciousness will continue to be an indispensable resource for researchers and students working on the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness and related disorders, as well as for neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and neurologists contemplating consciousness as one of the philosophical, ethical, sociological, political, and religious questions of our time. - New chapters on the neuroanatomical basis of consciousness and short-term memory, and expanded coverage of comas and neuroethics, including the ethics of brain death - The first comprehensive, authoritative collection to describe disorders of consciousness and how they are used to study and understand the neural correlates of conscious perception in humans. - Includes both revised and new chapters from the top international researchers in the field, including Christof Koch, Marcus Raichle, Nicholas Schiff, Joseph Fins, and Michael Gazzaniga