The entire universe may have an internal mind—or the whole idea of consciousness could be a sham. Here’s why scientists still can’t agree.

Under the influence of psychedelics, many report that plants seem to be alive. Is it wrong to assume we’re the only sentient ...

A peer-reviewed paper published in Frontiers in Psychology proposes that consciousness is not simply a byproduct of brain activity but instead acts as a top-down force that shapes neural processes.

When I was in junior high school, I did not know that there was such a thing as a “mind-body” problem. Back then, I thought that being conscious just meant “being alive”—that is, that consciousness ...

To understand the nature of consciousness, it is necessary to forego the notion that we are either conscious or unconscious. Some consciousness "stuff" does not suddenly get added to our other brain ...

Researchers believe other species could help explain the mysterious origins of our consciousness. One new paper argues that consciousness evolved in distinct waves from environmental pressures, like a ...

Michael Pollan explores theories of consciousness in animals, plants and machines, examining the “hard problem” of subjective experience in his new book “A World Appears”.

What if your conscious experiences were not just the chatter of neurons, but were connected to the hum of the universe? In a paper published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, I present new evidence ...

Consciousness is the ultimate question of existence. Nothing is more essential than our experience. Yet we have no consensus, and perhaps no clue, about what it actually is. The trouble, in part, is ...

After writing a book about how using psychedelics in a therapeutic setting can change your consciousness, that's the question journalist Michael Pollan found himself struggling to answer. "There's ...

Of all of the top contenders for the hardest problem in science, perhaps the most important to our lived experience is this: What, exactly, is consciousness? Humans have a highly complex brain and, ...