In this review, Panagiotaropoulos reviews empirical evidence suggesting that the prefrontal cortex (PFC) plays a critical role in consciousness. In particular, the convergence of multiple phenomena related to consciousness in the PFC suggests its integrative role ..read more

Here, Nicholas Schiff reviews several entry points for innovations aimed at recovery of consciousness after coma. Opportunities for rescuing latent capacities in partially damaged human neurons are considered across a range of recoveries from coma to chronic cognitive impairment ..read more

Cellular and systems neuroscience points to a thalamic contribution to consciousness. Matrix-thalamocortical loops support wakefulness and perceptual threshold, and core-thalamocortical loops maintain content and enable perceptual constancy. The mesoscale architecture of these loops may explain general properties of conscious contents ..read more

Stanislas Dehaene is a cognitive neuroscientist elucidating the biological mechanisms that give rise to human perception and cognition. In a conversation with Neuron, he talks about his ongoing interest in consciousness research, the role of theory in neuroscience, and his current work on education and the science of learning ..read more

In this talk with Neuron, Christof Koch, a physicist and neuroscientist, advocates for a pragmatic program to track the footprints of consciousness in the brain and for team science, explains the recent pseudo-controversy regarding integrated information theory of consciousness, and speaks about the joy of exploring the mysteries around us ..read more

Conscious experiences in infants remain poorly understood. In this NeuroView, Passos-Ferreira discusses recent evidence for and against consciousness in newborn babies. She argues that the weight of evidence from neuroimaging and behavioral studies supports the thesis that newborn infants are conscious ..read more

Interest in the neurobiological substrates of consciousness has risen dramatically over the last few decades. This is reflected both in the steady increase in the number of papers published and in the recent surge of adversarial collaborations, in which researchers with opposing assumptions join forces to develop experiments to settle controversies and advance the field. Given this progress, we are enthusiastic to present this Neuron special issue on consciousness, with numerous reviews and commentaries each addressing a different area of consciousness research ..read more

The paper by Tononi et al. discusses what sleep reveals about the substrate of consciousness, how experience can vanish during sleep, and how dreams can be supported by a brain largely disconnected from the environment, unreflective, and forgetful ..read more

In this perspective, Mudrik et al. call for more naturalistic studies of consciousness, given the artificial nature of most experimental manipulations. Despite the entailed challenges, they argue that this will increase ecological validity, generate new questions, and yield stronger effects ..read more

In the 19th century, the discovery of general anesthesia revolutionized medical care. In the 21st century, anesthetics have become indispensable tools to study consciousness. Here, I review key aspects of the relationship between anesthesia and the neurobiology of consciousness, including interfaces between sleep and anesthetic mechanisms, anesthesia and primary sensory processing, the effects of anesthetics on large-scale functional brain networks, and mechanisms of arousal from anesthesia. I discuss the implications of data derived from the anesthetized state for the science of consciousness ..read more