Bernard J Baars | The Neurosciences Institute (original) (raw)

Papers by Bernard J Baars

Psychological Bulletin, 2010

Keywords: consciousness, spontaneous thought, experience monitoring, resting state, default stat... more Keywords: consciousness, spontaneous thought, experience monitoring, resting state, default state
DOI: 10.1037/a0018726

What scientists expect their subjects to do may not be what those subjects end up doing. This point may be critical when researchers study spontaneous thoughts by assigning people a competing task, especially one that may be personally unimportant. The spontaneous stream of thought has been studied using thought reports concurrent with signal-detection tasks, asking subjects for both “task-related” and “task-unrelated” thoughts (Antrobus, 1999; Singer, 1993). Yet a tricky question emerges: When is the experimenter entitled to define task-relevance? After all, being in an experiment is only a fleeting episode in the subject’s life. When we use the term mind wandering for task-unrelated thoughts, we may be falling into the trap of believing that spontaneous thoughts are task unrelated in a deeper sense. A similar stigma is attached to terms like cognitive failures, resting state, rumination, distraction, attentional failures, absent-mindedness, repetitiveness, mind lapses, going AWOL in the brain, cortical idling, and the like (Smallwood, O’Connor, & Sudberry, 2007; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Indeed, the spontaneous activity of the brain during rest breaks from an experimental task was initially called a “default” or “resting state,” when it is in fact an extremely active state and one that is plausibly in pursuance of fundamental life tasks (Dehaene & Changeux, 2005; Delamillieure et al., 2009).
Are we being misled by such tendentious labels? I believe we often are. William James remarked, when he was accused of being absent-minded, that he was really just present-minded to his own thoughts (Barzun, 1983). Smallwood and Schooler (2006) made a similar point by suggesting that “mind-wandering can be seen as a goal driven process” (p. 946). Nevertheless, Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, and Schooler (2009) wrote that “neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness” (p. 8719). The problem is that human beings are likely to be the most deeply absorbed and hence the least self-aware during the most important experiences of their lives. The absence of self-consciousness at such times may not be mind-wandering but rather, as James called it, present-mindedness to what is most important.
The stream of spontaneous thought is remarkably rich and self-relevant, reflecting one’s greatest personal concerns, interpersonal feelings, unfulfilled goals and unresolved challenges, worries and hopes, inner debates, self-monitoring, feelings of knowing, visual imagery, imaginary social interactions, recurrent beliefs, coping reactions, intrusive memories, daydreams and fantasies, future plans, and more—all of which are known to guide the stream of thought. Spontaneous ideation goes on during all of one’s waking hours, according to randomly timed thought-monitoring studies (Klinger, 1999; Singer & Salovey, 1999). However, it continues even during sleep. All humans have 90–120 min per night of REM dreams, which involve vivid, emotional, and dramatic experiences, judging by both brain activity and immediate reports (Payne, Stickgold, Swanberg, & Kensinger, 2008). Surprisingly, even slow-wave sleep shows reportable inner speech,
1
APA

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1997

Pain, 2006

Seth AK, Baars BJ, Edelman DB. Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals. Conscious ... more Seth AK, Baars BJ, Edelman DB. Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals. Conscious Cogn 2005;14:119–39. Slater R, Cantarella A, Gallella S, Worley A, Boyd S, Meek J, et al. Cortical pain responses in human infants. J Neurosci 2006;26:3662–6. Taddio A, Shah V, Gilbert-MacLeod C, Katz J. Conditioning and hyperalgesia in newborns exposed to repeated heel lances. J Am Med Assoc 2002;288:857–61.

Can we make progress exploring consciousness? Or is it forever beyond human reach? In science we ... more Can we make progress exploring consciousness? Or is it forever beyond human reach? In science we never know the ultimate outcome of the journey. We can only take whatever steps our current knowledge affords. This paper explores today's evidence from the viewpoint of Global Workspace (GW) theory. 1 First, we ask what kind of evidence has the most direct bearing on the question. The answer given here is 'contrastive analysis' — a set of paired comparisons between similar conscious and unconscious processes. This body of evidence is already quite large, and constrains any possible theory (Baars, 1983; 1988; 1997). Because it involves both conscious and unconscious events, it deals directly with our own subjective experience, as anyone can tell by trying the demonstrations in this article. One dramatic contrast is between the vast number of unconscious neural processes happen- ing in any given moment, compared to the very narrow bottleneck of conscious capacity. The narrow l...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Cognitive Neuroscience, 2020

ABSTRACT Doerig et al. point out that there is now a great deal of evidence bearing directly on o... more ABSTRACT Doerig et al. point out that there is now a great deal of evidence bearing directly on our understanding of consciousness. However, they argue that the multiplicity of theories suggest that we have a ‘lack of stringent criteria specifying how empirical data constrains ToCs.’

In the Theater of Consciousness, 1997

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014

Neurofeedback (NFB) is emerging as a promising technique that enables self-regulation of ongoing ... more Neurofeedback (NFB) is emerging as a promising technique that enables self-regulation of ongoing brain oscillations. However, despite a rise in empirical evidence attesting to its clinical benefits, a solid theoretical basis is still lacking on the manner in which NFB is able to achieve these outcomes. The present work attempts to bring together various concepts from neurobiology, engineering, and dynamical systems so as to propose a contemporary theoretical framework for the mechanistic effects of NFB. The objective is to provide a firmly neurophysiological account of NFB, which goes beyond traditional behaviorist interpretations that attempt to explain psychological processes solely from a descriptive standpoint whilst treating the brain as a "black box". To this end, we interlink evidence from experimental findings that encompass a broad range of intrinsic brain phenomena: starting from "bottom-up" mechanisms of neural synchronization, followed by "top-do...

Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 2013

Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including... more Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including perception, memory, attention, action selection, learning, and others. Psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence each contribute alternative and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the supervening problem of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Current efforts toward a broad-based, systems-level model of minds cannot await theoretical convergence in each of the relevant subfields. Such work therefore requires the formulation of tentative hypotheses, based on current knowledge, that serve to connect cognitive functions into a theoretical framework for the study of the mind. We term such hypotheses “conceptual commitments” and describe the hypotheses underlying one such model, the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) Model. Our intention is to initiate a discussion among AGI researchers about which conceptual commitments are essential, or particularly useful, tow...

Physics of Life Reviews, 2012

International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 2009

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Cognitive Neuropsychology, 2004

A recent theory of lexical access in picture naming maintains that all nonword errors are generat... more A recent theory of lexical access in picture naming maintains that all nonword errors are generated during the retrieval of phonemic segments from the lexicon (Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997b). This theory is challenged by "dual origin" theories that postulate a second, post-lexical mechanism, whose disruption gives rise to "phonemic paraphasias" bearing close resemblance to the target. We tested the dual origin theory in a corpus of 457 nonword errors drawn from 18 subjects with fluent aphasia. The corpus was divided into two parts, based on degree of phonological overlap between error and target, and these parts were separately examined for proposed diagnostic characteristics of the postlexical error mechanism: serial order effects across the word, sensitivity to target length, and insensitivity to target frequency. Results did not support the dual origin theory but were consistent with a single, lexical origin account in which segment retrieval operates from left to right, rather than in parallel. Findings from this study also shed new light on how individual differences in the severity of the retrieval deficit modulate the expression of phonological errors in relation to target characteristics.

Experimental slip and human error: Exploring the …, 1992

APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...

AAAI 2006 Spring Symposium Series Sponsor: American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, 2006

In an attempt to illustrate the application of cognitive science principles to hard AI problems i... more In an attempt to illustrate the application of cognitive science principles to hard AI problems in machine learning we propose the LIDA technology, a cognitive science based architecture capable of more human-like learning. A LIDA based software agent or cognitive robot will be capable of three fundamental, continuously active, humanlike learning mechanisms: 1) perceptual learning, the learning of new objects, categories, relations, etc., 2) episodic learning of events, the what, where, and when, 3) procedural learning, the ...

Psychological Bulletin, 2010

Keywords: consciousness, spontaneous thought, experience monitoring, resting state, default stat... more Keywords: consciousness, spontaneous thought, experience monitoring, resting state, default state
DOI: 10.1037/a0018726

What scientists expect their subjects to do may not be what those subjects end up doing. This point may be critical when researchers study spontaneous thoughts by assigning people a competing task, especially one that may be personally unimportant. The spontaneous stream of thought has been studied using thought reports concurrent with signal-detection tasks, asking subjects for both “task-related” and “task-unrelated” thoughts (Antrobus, 1999; Singer, 1993). Yet a tricky question emerges: When is the experimenter entitled to define task-relevance? After all, being in an experiment is only a fleeting episode in the subject’s life. When we use the term mind wandering for task-unrelated thoughts, we may be falling into the trap of believing that spontaneous thoughts are task unrelated in a deeper sense. A similar stigma is attached to terms like cognitive failures, resting state, rumination, distraction, attentional failures, absent-mindedness, repetitiveness, mind lapses, going AWOL in the brain, cortical idling, and the like (Smallwood, O’Connor, & Sudberry, 2007; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006). Indeed, the spontaneous activity of the brain during rest breaks from an experimental task was initially called a “default” or “resting state,” when it is in fact an extremely active state and one that is plausibly in pursuance of fundamental life tasks (Dehaene & Changeux, 2005; Delamillieure et al., 2009).
Are we being misled by such tendentious labels? I believe we often are. William James remarked, when he was accused of being absent-minded, that he was really just present-minded to his own thoughts (Barzun, 1983). Smallwood and Schooler (2006) made a similar point by suggesting that “mind-wandering can be seen as a goal driven process” (p. 946). Nevertheless, Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, and Schooler (2009) wrote that “neural recruitment in both default and executive network regions was strongest when subjects were unaware of their own mind wandering, suggesting that mind wandering is most pronounced when it lacks meta-awareness” (p. 8719). The problem is that human beings are likely to be the most deeply absorbed and hence the least self-aware during the most important experiences of their lives. The absence of self-consciousness at such times may not be mind-wandering but rather, as James called it, present-mindedness to what is most important.
The stream of spontaneous thought is remarkably rich and self-relevant, reflecting one’s greatest personal concerns, interpersonal feelings, unfulfilled goals and unresolved challenges, worries and hopes, inner debates, self-monitoring, feelings of knowing, visual imagery, imaginary social interactions, recurrent beliefs, coping reactions, intrusive memories, daydreams and fantasies, future plans, and more—all of which are known to guide the stream of thought. Spontaneous ideation goes on during all of one’s waking hours, according to randomly timed thought-monitoring studies (Klinger, 1999; Singer & Salovey, 1999). However, it continues even during sleep. All humans have 90–120 min per night of REM dreams, which involve vivid, emotional, and dramatic experiences, judging by both brain activity and immediate reports (Payne, Stickgold, Swanberg, & Kensinger, 2008). Surprisingly, even slow-wave sleep shows reportable inner speech,
1
APA

Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 1997

Pain, 2006

Seth AK, Baars BJ, Edelman DB. Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals. Conscious ... more Seth AK, Baars BJ, Edelman DB. Criteria for consciousness in humans and other mammals. Conscious Cogn 2005;14:119–39. Slater R, Cantarella A, Gallella S, Worley A, Boyd S, Meek J, et al. Cortical pain responses in human infants. J Neurosci 2006;26:3662–6. Taddio A, Shah V, Gilbert-MacLeod C, Katz J. Conditioning and hyperalgesia in newborns exposed to repeated heel lances. J Am Med Assoc 2002;288:857–61.

Can we make progress exploring consciousness? Or is it forever beyond human reach? In science we ... more Can we make progress exploring consciousness? Or is it forever beyond human reach? In science we never know the ultimate outcome of the journey. We can only take whatever steps our current knowledge affords. This paper explores today's evidence from the viewpoint of Global Workspace (GW) theory. 1 First, we ask what kind of evidence has the most direct bearing on the question. The answer given here is 'contrastive analysis' — a set of paired comparisons between similar conscious and unconscious processes. This body of evidence is already quite large, and constrains any possible theory (Baars, 1983; 1988; 1997). Because it involves both conscious and unconscious events, it deals directly with our own subjective experience, as anyone can tell by trying the demonstrations in this article. One dramatic contrast is between the vast number of unconscious neural processes happen- ing in any given moment, compared to the very narrow bottleneck of conscious capacity. The narrow l...

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Cognitive Neuroscience, 2020

ABSTRACT Doerig et al. point out that there is now a great deal of evidence bearing directly on o... more ABSTRACT Doerig et al. point out that there is now a great deal of evidence bearing directly on our understanding of consciousness. However, they argue that the multiplicity of theories suggest that we have a ‘lack of stringent criteria specifying how empirical data constrains ToCs.’

In the Theater of Consciousness, 1997

Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2014

Neurofeedback (NFB) is emerging as a promising technique that enables self-regulation of ongoing ... more Neurofeedback (NFB) is emerging as a promising technique that enables self-regulation of ongoing brain oscillations. However, despite a rise in empirical evidence attesting to its clinical benefits, a solid theoretical basis is still lacking on the manner in which NFB is able to achieve these outcomes. The present work attempts to bring together various concepts from neurobiology, engineering, and dynamical systems so as to propose a contemporary theoretical framework for the mechanistic effects of NFB. The objective is to provide a firmly neurophysiological account of NFB, which goes beyond traditional behaviorist interpretations that attempt to explain psychological processes solely from a descriptive standpoint whilst treating the brain as a "black box". To this end, we interlink evidence from experimental findings that encompass a broad range of intrinsic brain phenomena: starting from "bottom-up" mechanisms of neural synchronization, followed by "top-do...

Journal of Artificial General Intelligence, 2013

Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including... more Significant debate on fundamental issues remains in the subfields of cognitive science, including perception, memory, attention, action selection, learning, and others. Psychology, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence each contribute alternative and sometimes conflicting perspectives on the supervening problem of artificial general intelligence (AGI). Current efforts toward a broad-based, systems-level model of minds cannot await theoretical convergence in each of the relevant subfields. Such work therefore requires the formulation of tentative hypotheses, based on current knowledge, that serve to connect cognitive functions into a theoretical framework for the study of the mind. We term such hypotheses “conceptual commitments” and describe the hypotheses underlying one such model, the Learning Intelligent Distribution Agent (LIDA) Model. Our intention is to initiate a discussion among AGI researchers about which conceptual commitments are essential, or particularly useful, tow...

Physics of Life Reviews, 2012

International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 2009

Frontiers in Psychology, 2013

Cognitive Neuropsychology, 2004

A recent theory of lexical access in picture naming maintains that all nonword errors are generat... more A recent theory of lexical access in picture naming maintains that all nonword errors are generated during the retrieval of phonemic segments from the lexicon (Dell, Schwartz, Martin, Saffran, & Gagnon, 1997b). This theory is challenged by "dual origin" theories that postulate a second, post-lexical mechanism, whose disruption gives rise to "phonemic paraphasias" bearing close resemblance to the target. We tested the dual origin theory in a corpus of 457 nonword errors drawn from 18 subjects with fluent aphasia. The corpus was divided into two parts, based on degree of phonological overlap between error and target, and these parts were separately examined for proposed diagnostic characteristics of the postlexical error mechanism: serial order effects across the word, sensitivity to target length, and insensitivity to target frequency. Results did not support the dual origin theory but were consistent with a single, lexical origin account in which segment retrieval operates from left to right, rather than in parallel. Findings from this study also shed new light on how individual differences in the severity of the retrieval deficit modulate the expression of phonological errors in relation to target characteristics.

Experimental slip and human error: Exploring the …, 1992

APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser c... more APA PsycNET Our Apologies! - The following features are not available with your current Browser configuration. - alerts user that their session is about to expire - display, print, save, export, and email selected records - get My ...

AAAI 2006 Spring Symposium Series Sponsor: American Association for Artificial Intelligence. Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA, 2006

In an attempt to illustrate the application of cognitive science principles to hard AI problems i... more In an attempt to illustrate the application of cognitive science principles to hard AI problems in machine learning we propose the LIDA technology, a cognitive science based architecture capable of more human-like learning. A LIDA based software agent or cognitive robot will be capable of three fundamental, continuously active, humanlike learning mechanisms: 1) perceptual learning, the learning of new objects, categories, relations, etc., 2) episodic learning of events, the what, where, and when, 3) procedural learning, the ...