The Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science publishes research in a wide range of journals and other scientific publications.
Featured Article
Trait phenomenological control predicts experience of mirror synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion
Lush, P., Botan, V., Scott, R.B., Seth, A.K., Ward, J., Dienes, Z
Published: 25.09.2020
Nature Comms 11:4853
Much excitement in psychology has surrounded observations that people’s experiences of their bodies is remarkably changeable. In the rubber hand illusion, for example, touch can be felt on a fake hand, and in mirror synaesthesia, just seeing somebody being hurt can lead to feelings of pain. A common explanation here is that these unusual experiences are evidence for multisensory integration - but is that really what’s going on? Another possibility, explored in our recent study is that such experiences are imaginative suggestion effects which occur when participants work out what experiences they are expected to have while undergoing the experiences. Imaginative suggestion has been extensively studied within the context of hypnosis (e.g., following a hypnotic induction), but response to imaginative suggestion does not require the hypnotic context, and imaginative suggestions can be indirect (that is the suggestion may arise from indirect cues rather than verbal instruction). People differ in the degree to which they can successfully respond to imaginative suggestion with changes in experience. Therefore, measuring relationships between response to direct imaginative suggestions and response to the rubber hand illusion or mirror synaesthesia tests may indicate the degree to which these effects are suggestion effects. This paper reports that how people respond to hypnotic imaginative suggestion substantially predicts their reports of unusual experience in rubber hand illusion and mirror synaesthesia studies, indicating that striking changes in experience in psychology experiments may be imaginative suggestion effects.
Forthcoming and recent publications
- Bayne, T., Seth, A.K., Massimini, M. (in press) Complexity as an explanatory correlate of consciousness: Reply to ‘Islands of awareness or islands of cortical complexity?’ Trends in Neurosciences
- Boonstra, E.A., van Schouwenburg, M.R., Seth, A.K., Bauer, M., Zantvoord, J.B., Kemper, E.M., Lansink, C.S. & Slagter, H.A., (in press) Conscious perception and the modulatory role of dopamine: no effect of the dopamine D2 agonist cabergoline on visual masking, the attentional blink, and probabilistic discrimination. Psychopharmacology
- Lush, P. (2020) Demand characteristics confound the rubber hand illusion. Collabra: Psychology 6 (1) 22
- Lush, P., Botan, V., Scott, R.B., Seth, A.K., Ward, J., Dienes, Z. Trait phenomenological control predicts experience of mirror synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion Nature Comms 11:4853
- Paciorek, A., & Skora, L. I. (2020) Vagus nerve stimulation as a gateway to interoception. Frontiers in Psychology
- Rahnev, D., Desender, K., Lee, A. L., Adler, W. T., Aguilar-Lleyda, D., Akdoğan, B., ..., Sherman, M.T., … & Bègue, I. (2020). The confidence database. Nature human behaviour, 1-8
- Roseboom, W. (2019) Serial dependence in timing perception. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance 45:1,100-110
- Rosas, F.E., Mediano, P.A.M., Jensen, H.J., Seth, A.K., Barrett, A.B., Carhart-Harris, R.L.& Bor, D. (2020) Reconciling emergences: An information-theoretic approach to identify causal emergence in multivariate data. PLoS Computational Biology.
- Rothen, N., Berry, C., Seth, A.K., Oligschläger, S., Ward, J. (2020) A Single System Account of Enhanced Recognition Memory in Synaesthesia. Memory and Cognition 48: 188-199
- Seth, A.K., Hohwy, J. (2020) Predictive processing as an empirical theory for consciousness science. Cognitive Neuroscience
- Skora, L.I, Scott, R.B. (2021) Instrumental conditioning requires conscious awareness
- Skora, L.I., Seth, A.K., Scott, R, (2021) Sensorimotor predictions shape reported conscious visual experience in a breaking continuous flash suppression task. Neuroscience of Consciousness: 1
- Suzuki, K., (2020) Virtual Reality and Altered Conscious Experiences (in Japanese), Psychology World, 88, 17-20, The Japanese Psychological Association eds
- Tschantz, A., Seth, A.K., Buckley, C. (2020) Learning action-oriented models through active inference. PLoS: Computational Biology. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007805