Tracking rivalry with neural rhythms: multivariate SSVEPs reveal perception during binocular rivalry.

The contents of awareness can substantially change without any modification to the external world. Such effects are exemplified in binocular rivalry, where a different stimulus is presented to each eye causing instability in perception. This phenomenon has made binocular rivalry a quintessential method for studying consciousness and the necessary neural correlates for awareness.

Arousal coherence, uncertainty, and well-being: an active inference account.

Here we build on recent findings which show that greater alignment between our subjective experiences (how we feel) and physiological states (measurable changes in our body) plays a pivotal role in the overall psychological well-being. Specifically, we propose that the alignment or 'coherence' between affective arousal (e.g.

Investigation of advanced mindfulness meditation "cessation" experiences using EEG spectral analysis in an intensively sampled case study.

Mindfulness meditation is a contemplative practice informed by Buddhism that targets the development of present-focused awareness and non-judgment of experience. Interest in mindfulness is burgeoning, and it has been shown to be effective in improving mental and physical health in clinical and non-clinical contexts. In this report, for the first time, we used electroencephalography (EEG) combined with a neurophenomenological approach to examine the neural signature of "cessation" events, which are dramatic experiences of complete discontinuation in awareness similar to the loss of consciousness, which are reported to be experienced by very experienced meditators, and are proposed to be evidence of mastery of mindfulness meditation.

Cessations of consciousness in meditation: Advancing a scientific understanding of nirodha samāpatti.

Absence of consciousness can occur due to a concussion, anesthetization, intoxication, epileptic seizure, or other fainting/syncope episode caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. However, some meditation practitioners also report that it is possible to undergo a total absence of consciousness during meditation, lasting up to 7 days, and that these "cessations" can be consistently induced. One form of extended cessation (i.

Insight and the selection of ideas.

Perhaps it is no accident that insight moments accompany some of humanity's most important discoveries in science, medicine, and art. Here we propose that feelings of insight play a central role in (heuristically) selecting an idea from the stream of consciousness by capturing attention and eliciting a sense of intuitive confidence permitting fast action under uncertainty. The mechanisms underlying this Eureka heuristic are explained within an active inference framework.

Restructuring insight: An integrative review of insight in problem-solving, meditation, psychotherapy, delusions and psychedelics.

Occasionally, a solution or idea arrives as a sudden understanding - an insight. Insight has been considered an "extra" ingredient of creative thinking and problem-solving. Here we propose that insight is central in seemingly distinct areas of research.

The illusion of insight: detailed warnings reduce but do not prevent false "Aha!" moments.

False "Aha!" moments can be elicited experimentally using the False Insight Anagram Task (FIAT), which combines semantic priming and visual similarity manipulations to lead participants into having "Aha!" moments for incorrect anagram solutions. In a preregistered experiment ( = 255), we tested whether warning participants and explaining to them exactly how they were being deceived, would reduce their susceptibility to false insights. We found that simple warnings did not reduce the incidence of false insights.

Thinking style and psychosis proneness do not predict false insights.

The FIAT paradigm (Grimmer et al., 2021) is a novel method of eliciting 'Aha' moments for incorrect solutions to anagrams in the laboratory, i.e.

Irrelevant insights make worldviews ring true.

Our basic beliefs about reality can be impossible to prove and yet we can feel a strong intuitive conviction about them, as exemplified by insights that imbue an idea with immediate certainty. Here we presented participants with worldview beliefs such as "people's core qualities are fixed" and simultaneously elicited an aha moment. In the first experiment (N = 3000, which included a direct replication), participants rated worldview beliefs as truer when they solved anagrams and also experienced aha moments.

Eliciting false insights with semantic priming.

The insight experience (or 'Aha moment') generally evokes strong feelings of certainty and confidence. An 'Aha' experience for a false idea could underlie many false beliefs and delusions. However, for as long as insight experiences have been studied, false insights have remained difficult to elicit experimentally.

From many to (n)one: Meditation and the plasticity of the predictive mind.

How profoundly can humans change their own minds? In this paper we offer a unifying account of deconstructive meditation under the predictive processing view. We start from simple axioms. First, the brain makes predictions based on past experience, both phylogenetic and ontogenetic.

Getting a grip on insight: real-time and embodied Aha experiences predict correct solutions.

Insight experiences are sudden, persuasive, and can accompany valuable new ideas in science and art. In this preregistered experiment, we aim to validate a novel visceral and continuous measure of insight problem solving and to test whether and embodied feelings of insight can predict correct solutions. We report several findings.

The dark side of Eureka: Artificially induced Aha moments make facts feel true.

Some ideas that we have feel mundane, but others are imbued with a sense of profundity. We propose that Aha! moments make an idea feel more true or valuable in order to aid quick and efficient decision-making, akin to a heuristic. To demonstrate where the heuristic may incur errors, we hypothesized that facts would appear more true if they were artificially accompanied by an Aha! moment elicited using an anagram task.

How to Detect Insight Moments in Problem Solving Experiments.

Arguably, it is not possible to study insight moments during problem solving without being able to accurately detect when they occur (Bowden and Jung-Beeman, 2007). Despite over a century of research on the insight moment, there is surprisingly little consensus on the best way to measure them in real-time experiments. There have also been no attempts to evaluate whether the different ways of measuring insight converge.

Can observing a Necker cube make you more insightful?

It is a compelling idea that an image as simple as a Necker cube, or a duck-rabbit illusion, can reveal something about a person's creativity. Surprisingly, there are now multiple examples showing that people who are better at discovering 'hidden' images in a picture, are also better at solving some creative problems. Although this idea goes back at least a century, little is known about how these two tasks-that seem so different on the surface-are related to each other.