Consciousness beyond the human case.

There is growing interest in the relationship been AI and consciousness. Joseph LeDoux and Jonathan Birch thought it would be a good moment to put some of the big questions in this area to some leading experts. The challenge of addressing the questions they raised was taken up by Kristin Andrews, Nicky Clayton, Nathaniel Daw, Chris Frith, Hakwan Lau, Megan Peters, Susan Schneider, Anil Seth, Thomas Suddendorf, and Marie Vanderkerckhoeve.

Consciousness, (meta)cognition, and culture.

Our conscious experience is determined by a combination of top-down processes (e.g., prior beliefs) and bottom-up processes (e.g., sensations). The balance between these two processes depends on estimates of their reliability (precision), so that the estimate considered more reliable is given more weight. We can modify these estimates at the metacognitive level, changing the relative weights of priors and sensations. This enables us, for example, to direct our attention to weak stimuli. But there is a cost to this malleability. For example, excessive weighting of top-down processes, as in schizophrenia, can lead to perceiving things that are not there and believing things that are not true. It is only at the top of the brain's cognitive hierarchy that metacognitive control becomes conscious. At this level, our beliefs concern complex, abstract entities with which we have limited direct experience. Estimates of the precision of such beliefs are more uncertain and more malleable. However, at this level, we do not need to rely on our own limited experience. We can rely instead on the experiences of others. Explicit metacognition plays a unique role, enabling us to share our experiences. We acquire our beliefs about the world from our immediate social group and from our wider culture. And the same sources provide us with better estimates of the precision of these beliefs. Our confidence in our high-level beliefs is heavily influenced by culture at the expense of direct experience.

The mystery of the brain-culture interface.

Nature and culture work together to shape who we are. We are embedded in culture and are profoundly influenced by what those around us say and do. The interface between minds occurs at the level of explicit metacognition, which is at the top of our brain's control hierarchy. But how do our brains do this?

Animacy and the prediction of behaviour.

To survive, all animals need to predict what other agents are going to do next. We review neural mechanisms involved in the steps required for this ability. The first step is to determine whether an object is an agent, and if so, how sophisticated it is. This involves brain regions carrying representations of animate agents. The movements of the agent can then be anticipated in the short term based solely on physical constraints. In the longer term, taking into account the agent's goals and intentions is useful. Observing goal directed behaviour activates the neural action observation network, and predicting future goal directed behaviour is helped by the observer's own action generating mechanisms. Intentions are critically important in determining actions when interacting with other agents, as several intentions can lie behind an action. Here, interpretation is helped by prior beliefs about the agent and the brain's mentalising system is engaged. Biologically-constrained computational models of action recognition exist, but equivalent models for understanding intentional agents remain to be developed.

Precision and the Bayesian brain.

Scientific thinking about the minds of humans and other animals has been transformed by the idea that the brain is Bayesian. A cornerstone of this idea is that agents set the balance between prior knowledge and incoming evidence based on how reliable or 'precise' these different sources of information are - lending the most weight to that which is most reliable. This concept of precision has crept into several branches of cognitive science and is a lynchpin of emerging ideas in computational psychiatry - where unusual beliefs or experiences are explained as abnormalities in how the brain estimates precision. But what precisely is precision? In this Primer we explain how precision has found its way into classic and contemporary models of perception, learning, self-awareness, and social interaction. We also chart how ideas around precision are beginning to change in radical ways, meaning we must get more precise about how precision works.

Helping the waiter to hold his tray: Rigid haptic linkage promotes inter-personal motor coordination.

When a glass is lifted from a tray, there is a challenge for the waiter. He must quickly compensate for the reduction in the weight of the tray to keep it balanced. This compensation is easily achieved if the waiter lifts the glass himself. Because he has, himself, initiated the action, he can predict the timing and the magnitude of the perturbation of the tray and respond (via the holding hand) accordingly. In this study, we examined coordination when either one or two people hold the tray while either one of them or a third person removes the glass. Our results show that there is exquisite coordination between the two people holding the tray. We suggest that this coordination depends upon the haptic link provided by the rigid platform that both people are holding. We conclude that the guest at a reception should not lift his drink from the waiter's tray until they have the waiter's attention but, if too thirsty to wait, should lend a hand holding the tray.

The neural basis of consciousness.

Consciousness has evolved and is a feature of all animals with sufficiently complex nervous systems. It is, therefore, primarily a problem for biology, rather than physics. In this review, I will consider three aspects of consciousness: level of consciousness, whether we are awake or in a coma; the contents of consciousness, what determines how a small amount of sensory information is associated with subjective experience, while the rest is not; and meta-consciousness, the ability to reflect upon our subjective experiences and, importantly, to share them with others. I will discuss and compare current theories of the neural and cognitive mechanisms involved in producing these three aspects of consciousness and conclude that the research in this area is flourishing and has already succeeded to delineate these mechanisms in surprising detail.

Pandemics and the great evolutionary mismatch.

Dezecache et al. argue that affiliation and contact-seeking are key responses to danger. These natural social tendencies are likely to hinder the observance of physical distancing during the current pandemic. We need internet access at this time, not only to promote freedom of expression, but also to promote public health.

I haven't a clue! Expectations based on repetitions and hints facilitate perceptual experience of ambiguous images.

In recent years, the role of top-down expectations on perception has been extensively researched within the framework of predictive coding. However, less attention has been given to the different sources of expectations, how they differ, and how they interact. In this article, we examined the effects of informative hints on perceptual experience and how these interact with repetition-based expectations to create a long-lasting effect. Over 7 experiments, we used verbal hints and multiple presentations of ambiguous 2-tone images. We found that vividness ratings increased from 1 presentation to the next, even after the object in the image had been identified. In addition, vividness ratings significantly increased when images were introduced with a hint, and this boost was greater for more detailed hints. However, the initial increase in vividness did not always carry over to the next presentation. When recognition of the image in the presentation was hard because of memory load, inconsistent presentation, or noise level of the image, the initial advantage in vividness was attenuated. This was most apparent when participants were primed with a grayscale version of the 2-tone image. A computational model based on evidence accumulation was able to recover these patterns of perceptual experience, suggesting that the effect of hints is short lived if it cannot be encoded in memory for future presentations. This notion highlights the different contributions of attention, memory, and their interactions on forming expectations for perception. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The Global Workspace Needs Metacognition.

The two leading cognitive accounts of consciousness currently available concern global workspace (a form of working memory) and metacognition. There is relatively little interaction between these two approaches and it has even been suggested that the two accounts are rival and separable alternatives. Here, we argue that the successful function of a global workspace critically requires that the broadcast representations include a metacognitive component.

Hyper- and Hypomentalizing in Patients with First-Episode Schizophrenia: fMRI and Behavioral Studies.

BACKGROUND: Historically, research investigating neural correlates of mentalizing deficits in schizophrenia has focused on patients who have been ill for several years with lengthy exposure to medication. Little is known about the neural and behavioral presentations of theory-of-mind deficits in schizophrenia, shortly after the first episode of psychosis. METHODS: We investigated social cognition in 17 recently diagnosed first-episode schizophrenia (FES) patients with little or no exposure to antipsychotic medication and 1:1 matched healthy controls. We recorded behavioral and neural responses to the Animated Triangles Task (ATT), which is a nonverbal validated mentalizing task that measures the ascription of intentionality to the movements of objects. RESULTS: FES patients under-interpreted social cues and over-interpreted nonsocial cues. These effects were influenced by current intelligence (IQ). Control group and FES neural responses replicated earlier findings in healthy adults. However, a region of anterior medial prefrontal cortex (amPFC) of FES patients showed a different response pattern to that of controls. Unlike healthy controls, patients increased activity in this social cognition region while studying "random" movements of shapes, as compared to the study of movements normally interpreted as "intentional". CONCLUSIONS: Mentalizing deficits in FES consists of hypo- and hypermentalizing. The neural pattern of FES patients is consistent with deficits in the ability to switch off mentalizing processes in potentially social contexts, instead increasing them when intentionality is not forthcoming. Overall, results demonstrate complexities of theory of mind deficits in schizophrenia that should be considered when offering social cognitive training programs.

The Predictive Coding Account of Psychosis.

Fueled by developments in computational neuroscience, there has been increasing interest in the underlying neurocomputational mechanisms of psychosis. One successful approach involves predictive coding and Bayesian inference. Here, inferences regarding the current state of the world are made by combining prior beliefs with incoming sensory signals. Mismatches between prior beliefs and incoming signals constitute prediction errors that drive new learning. Psychosis has been suggested to result from a decreased precision in the encoding of prior beliefs relative to the sensory data, thereby garnering maladaptive inferences. Here, we review the current evidence for aberrant predictive coding and discuss challenges for this canonical predictive coding account of psychosis. For example, hallucinations and delusions may relate to distinct alterations in predictive coding, despite their common co-occurrence. More broadly, some studies implicate weakened prior beliefs in psychosis, and others find stronger priors. These challenges might be answered with a more nuanced view of predictive coding. Different priors may be specified for different sensory modalities and their integration, and deficits in each modality need not be uniform. Furthermore, hierarchical organization may be critical. Altered processes at lower levels of a hierarchy need not be linearly related to processes at higher levels (and vice versa). Finally, canonical theories do not highlight active inference-the process through which the effects of our actions on our sensations are anticipated and minimized. It is possible that conflicting findings might be reconciled by considering these complexities, portending a framework for psychosis more equipped to deal with its many manifestations.

Learning rapidly about the relevance of visual cues requires conscious awareness.

Humans have been shown to be capable of performing many cognitive tasks using information of which they are not consciously aware. This raises questions about what role consciousness actually plays in cognition. Here, we explored whether participants can learn cue-target contingencies in an attentional learning task when the cues were presented below the level of conscious awareness and how this differs from learning about conscious cues. Participants' manual (Experiment 1) and saccadic (Experiment 2) response speeds were influenced by both conscious and unconscious cues. However, participants were only able to adapt to reversals of the cue-target contingencies (Experiment 1) or changes in the reliability of the cues (Experiment 2) when consciously aware of the cues. Therefore, although visual cues can be processed unconsciously, learning about cues over a few trials requires conscious awareness of them. Finally, we discuss implications for cognitive theories of consciousness.

Volition and the Brain - Revisiting a Classic Experimental Study.

In 1983 Libet et al. demonstrated that brain activity associated with a voluntary act precedes conscious experience of the intention to act by several hundred milliseconds. The implication that it is the brain, rather than 'free will', that initiates voluntary acts has been discussed ever since by philosophers and lawyers, as well as by scientists. We show here how Libet's original study gave rise to an entire research field of experimental investigations of volition.

Neural computations underpinning the strategic management of influence in advice giving.

Research on social influence has focused mainly on the target of influence (e.g., consumer and voter); thus, the cognitive and neurobiological underpinnings of the source of the influence (e.g., politicians and salesmen) remain unknown. Here, in a three-sided advice-giving game, two advisers competed to influence a client by modulating their own confidence in their advice about which lottery the client should choose. We report that advisers' strategy depends on their level of influence on the client and their merit relative to one another. Moreover, blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the temporo-parietal junction is modulated by adviser's current level of influence on the client, and relative merit prediction error affects activity in medial-prefrontal cortex. Both types of social information modulate ventral striatum response. By demonstrating what happens in our mind and brain when we try to influence others, these results begin to explain the biological mechanisms that shape inter-individual differences in social conduct.

Making better decisions in groups.

We review the literature to identify common problems of decision-making in individuals and groups. We are guided by a Bayesian framework to explain the interplay between past experience and new evidence, and the problem of exploring the space of hypotheses about all the possible states that the world could be in and all the possible actions that one could take. There are strong biases, hidden from awareness, that enter into these psychological processes. While biases increase the efficiency of information processing, they often do not lead to the most appropriate action. We highlight the advantages of group decision-making in overcoming biases and searching the hypothesis space for good models of the world and good solutions to problems. Diversity of group members can facilitate these achievements, but diverse groups also face their own problems. We discuss means of managing these pitfalls and make some recommendations on how to make better group decisions.

Anatomical Modularity of Verbal Working Memory? Functional Anatomical Evidence from a Famous Patient with Short-Term Memory Deficits.

Cognitive skills are the emergent property of distributed neural networks. The distributed nature of these networks does not necessarily imply a lack of specialization of the individual brain structures involved. However, it remains questionable whether discrete aspects of high-level behavior might be the result of localized brain activity of individual nodes within such networks. The phonological loop of working memory, with its simplicity, seems ideally suited for testing this possibility. Central to the development of the phonological loop model has been the description of patients with focal lesions and specific deficits. As much as the detailed description of their behavior has served to refine the phonological loop model, a classical anatomoclinical correlation approach with such cases falls short in telling whether the observed behavior is based on the functions of a neural system resembling that seen in normal subjects challenged with phonological loop tasks or whether different systems have taken over. This is a crucial issue for the cross correlation of normal cognition, normal physiology, and cognitive neuropsychology. Here we describe the functional anatomical patterns of JB, a historical patient originally described by Warrington et al. (1971), a patient with a left temporo-parietal lesion and selective short phonological store deficit. JB was studied with the H215O PET activation technique during a rhyming task, which primarily depends on the rehearsal system of the phonological loop. No residual function was observed in the left temporo-parietal junction, a region previously associated with the phonological buffer of working memory. However, Broca's area, the major counterpart of the rehearsal system, was the major site of activation during the rhyming task. Specific and autonomous activation of Broca's area in the absence of afferent inputs from the other major anatomical component of the phonological loop shows that a certain degree of functional independence or modularity exists in this distributed anatomical-cognitive system.