Neurophenomenology: Integrating Subjective Experience and Brain Dynamics in the Science of Consciousness

Evan Thompson

Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science and the Embodied Mind
Department of Philosophy
York University
Toronto, Ontario
Canada

Abstract:

This lecture will present the research program of neurophenomenology in the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. A number of cognitive neuroscientists have recently drawn attention to the need to make systematic use of introspective phenomenological reports in studying the brain basis of consciousness. Neurophenomenology takes the further step of incorporating ‘first-person methods’—precise methods subjects can use to increase the threshold of their awareness of their experience from moment to moment, and thereby provide more refined first-person reports. The target is to create experimental situations that produce “reciprocal constraints” between first-person phenomenological data and third-person cognitive-neuroscientific data: The subject is actively involved in generating and describing specific and stable, experiential or phenomenal categories; and the neuroscientist can be guided by these first-person data in the analysis and interpretation of the large-scale neural processes of consciousness. To establish such reciprocal constraints, both an appropriate candidate for the neural basis of consciousness and an adequate theoretical framework to characterize it are needed. Hence neurophenomenology favours the synergistic use of three fields of knowledge:

1. First-person data from the careful examination of experience with specific first-person methods.
2. Formal models and analytical tools from dynamical systems theory, grounded on an embodied approach to cognition.
3. Neurophysiological data from measurements of large-scale, integrative processes in the brain.


Keywords:
first-person methods, neural dynamics, neurophenomenology

References:
Lutz, A. (2002) Toward a neurophenomenology as an account of generative passages: a first empirical case study. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1, 133-167.

Luz, A. and Thompson, E. (2003) Neurophenomenology: integrating subjective experience and brain dynamics in teh science of consciousness. Forthcoming.

Lutz, A. et al. (2002) Guiding the study of brain dynamics by using first-person data: synchrony patterns correlate with ongoing conscious states during a simple visual task. Proceeedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. 99, 1586-1591.

Thompson, E. and Varela, F.J. (2001) Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 5, 418-425.

Varela, F.J. (1996) Neurophenomenology: a methodological remedy to the hard problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3, 330-350.