When prefrontal regions are either surgically removed or fall prey to some calamity, patients continue to see, hear, and sense. Deficits affect the higher mental faculties, resulting in apathy, a lack of curiosity about the world, and a disability in planning, introspecting, reasoning, and regulating emotions. Patients perseverate or consistently

Modernity frowns on stillness, on simply being and watching the world go by, and favors busyness. This comes at a cost to well-being.

It is known that the likelihood of long-term therapeutic gains increases with the likelihood of the subject having a mystical experience, prima facie evidence favoring a critical role for subjectivity. It is precisely the high emotional impact of the memories of the vivid and highly unusual psychedelic experience that serves as the primary source

When I dream, I exist for myself, although without any insight into my condition, as the "self" is muted during dreaming. When transitioning into a deep, dreamless sleep, I cross the Great Divide of Being. My consciousness ceases to exist. Likewise when I become comatose following a stroke or accident. I am still alive, albeit on life support, but

if you believe in computational functionalism, then a sufficiently accurate simulation of your connectome will be conscious (whether it will be your mind, let alone a sane rather than a mad mind, is a different matter). If you believe that consciousness is a structure of causal relationships, an essential aspect of reality tied to its physical

We are speaking apes, linguistic creatures through and through. So when GPT-5 or -6 will write the literary equivalent of War and Peace or The Lord of the Rings, it will be difficult to deny it sentience, particularly because of our inborn urge to attribute mind to other creatures. But we should, because it is all imitation. Its consciousness is as

Dreams feel as real as life—the primary distinction between dreaming and waking consciousness is an absence of a sense of self, insight, self-reflection. You aren't surprised that you can fly, walk through walls, or meet long-dead animal companions, lovers, parents, or siblings. You are along for the ride, watching a movie that someone else is

The experience of self is as real as any other conscious experience, such as pain or pleasure. What is illusory, as emphasized by Buddhism, is the idea of a permanent and fixed essence that constitutes the "true self," the "real me."

A large region in the back of the neocortex, including temporal, parietal, and occipital neighborhoods, is closely linked to subjective experiences of sight, hearing, touch, and sensing of the body and the self. Because of its close association with consciousness, this region, the current best NCC candidate, is termed the posterior hot zone.