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
- Bromis, K., Raykov, P., Wickens, L., Roseboom, W., & Bird., C. (in press). The neural representation of events is dominated by elements that are most reliably present. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Fountas, Z., Sylaidi, A., Nikiforou, K., Seth, A.K., Shanahan, M., Roseboom, W. (in press) A predictive processing model of episodic memory and time perception. Neural Computation
- Franken, J.C., Beerendonk, L., Molenaar, D., Fahrenfort, J.J., Kiverstein, J.D., Seth, A.K., van Gaal, S. (in press) An academic survey on theoretical foundations, common assumptions and the current state of consciousness science. Neuroscience of Consciousness.
- Lush, P., Seth, A.K. (2022) Reply to: No specific relationship between hypnotic suggestibility and the rubber hand illusion. Nature Comms 13:563
- Oblak, A., Randall,H. & Schwartzman, D. (2021) “Becoming the Color.” Synesthetic Gesture in a Case Study of Multiple Forms of Synesthesia. Phainomena 30: 118-119
- Mediano, P.A.M., Rosas, F.E., Bor, D., Seth, A.K., Barrett, A.B. (in press) The Strength of Weak Integrated Information Theory. Trends in Cognitive Science
- Mediano, P.A.M., Rosas, F.E., Luppi, A.I., Jensen, H.J., Seth, A.K., Barrett A.B., Carhart-Harris, R.L., Bor, D. (2022) Greater than the parts: A review of the information decomposition approach to causal emergence. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
- Ramstead, M. J. D., Seth, A. K., Hesp, C., Sandved-Smith, L., Mago, J., Lifshitz, M., . . . Constant, A. (2022). From Generative Models to Generative Passages: A Computational Approach to (Neuro) Phenomenology. Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1-29.
- Roseboom, W. & Lush, P. (2022) Serious problems with interpreting rubber hand “illusion” experiments. Collabra: Psychology 8 (1): 32274
- Seth, A.K., Bayne, T. (in press) Theories of consciousness. Nature Reviews: Neuroscience.
- Sherman, M.T., Fountas, Z., Seth, A.K., Roseboom, W. (in press) Trial-by-trial predictions of subjective time from human brain activity. PLOS Computational Biology
- Sherman, M., Wang, H-T., Garfinkel, S.N, Critchley, H.D. (2022) The Cardiac Timing Toolbox (CaTT): Testing for physiologically plausible effects of cardiac timing on behaviour. Biological Psychology 170: 108291
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Tschantz, A., Barcab, L., Maistoc, D., Buckley, C.L., Seth, A.K., Pezzulob, G. (2022) Simulating homeostatic, allostatic and goal-directed forms of interoceptive control using active inference. Biologiical Psychology: 169