Trends in cognitive sciences
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Trends Cogn. Sci. (Regul. Ed.) · Aug 2008
ReviewMeasuring consciousness: relating behavioural and neurophysiological approaches.
The resurgent science of consciousness has been accompanied by a recent emphasis on the problem of measurement. Having dependable measures of consciousness is essential both for mapping experimental evidence to theory and for designing perspicuous experiments. ⋯ We identify possible and actual conflicts among measures that can stimulate new experiments, and we conclude that measures must prove themselves by iteratively building knowledge in the context of theoretical frameworks. Advances in measuring consciousness have implications for basic cognitive neuroscience, for comparative studies of consciousness and for clinical applications.
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The perception of pain is sensitive to various mental processes such as the feelings and beliefs that someone has about pain. It is therefore not exclusively driven by the noxious input. ⋯ Recent findings indicate an engagement of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex during more complex modulation, leading to a change or reappraisal of the emotional significance of pain. Taking placebo-induced analgesia as an example, we discuss the contribution of attention, expectation and reappraisal as three basic mechanisms that are important for the cognitive modulation of pain.