Andrew And Alexander Fingelkurts

This study investigated the intraindividual stability and reliability of the three core aspects of the Selfhood triumvirate (‘Self’, ‘Me’, and ‘I’) as well as their mutual relationship (the Selfhood triumvirate configuration/pattern) by measuring the within-subjects reproducibility of functional integrity within three operational modules (OMs) of the brain’s self-referential network (SRN), each associated with one of these aspects, upon repeat testing (test–retest reliability). Our findings revealed statistically robust, moderate-to-high intraindividual test–retest reliability for the individual aspects (‘Self’, ‘Me’, and ‘I’), and exceptionally high reliability for their overall functional configuration (i.e., the relative proportion of expression among the three aspects). Importantly, the analyses did not provide evidence that the duration between assessments, participants’ age, or the presence of somatic or psychopathological conditions moderated these reliability measures. Taken together, the results suggest that the ‘Self’, ‘Me’, and ‘I’ aspects of the Selfhood triumvirate, as well as their overall functional configuration, exhibit trait-like properties, albeit to varying degrees, measured as the stability of functional integrity within the corresponding SRN OMs across time, age, and normative versus pathological conditions. Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are discussed.

Cardeña et al. have made an ambitious and much-needed contribution with their proposed consensus taxonomy of altered (non-ordinary) states of consciousness (ASCs). In conclusion, Cardeña et al. have succeeded in laying a conceptual foundation that may help consolidate ASC research across disciplines. Their taxonomy introduces structure without sacrificing complexity and opens the door to data driven neurophenomenological inquiry. The central challenge ahead lies in embracing the very ambiguity that makes ASCs so compelling: They often refuse to sit comfortably in just one categorical “box.” Rather than a flaw, this may be the most revealing essence of consciousness itself.

Neutral hypnosis offers a valuable state for researchers interested in the nature of consciousness. By minimizing external influences and suggestions, it allows for the investigation of the intrinsic qualities of hypnotic consciousness and its relationship to normal waking states. Studies have shown that neutral hypnosis can result in a significant shift in self-perception. Self-consciousness in neutral hypnosis is often characterized by distortions in the sense of self, fluctuations in self-awareness, and alterations in the experience of agency and body ownership. However, despite these clear effects, the field has largely overlooked the importance of these self-alterations, leading to a notable gap in the literature. In this chapter, we aim to address this gap by examining the existing research on self-consciousness in neutral hypnosis, emphasizing the need for more focused and well-structured studies utilizing the neurophenomenological methodology. Specifically, we propose to apply the neurophysiological three-dimensional model of complex experiential Selfhood, which conceptualizes the self as composed of three dynamically interacting aspects – first-person agency, embodiment, and narrative-reflection – each associated with three distinct sub-networks of the brain’s self-referential network. These sub-networks are assessed through EEG operational synchrony analysis, providing a functional measure of their integration. Additionally, we outline several promising avenues for future research, accompanied by testable predictions regarding neurophenomenological alterations in Selfhood as a function of the depth of neutral hypnosis.

In this conceptual review, we explore how alterations in the configuration and expression of the three core aspects of experiential Selfhood—‘Self,’ ‘Me’, and ‘I’—both reflect and shape an individual’s susceptibility to neuropsychopathology. Drawing on empirical neurophenomenological evidence and theoretical insights, we examine a range of psychiatric and neurological disorders through the lens of the Selfhood triumvirate. Our findings indicate that, despite variations in the expression of Selfhood aspects across different pathologies, their proportional configuration remains remarkably stable in most conditions, with the ‘Self’ aspect consistently dominant, followed by the ‘Me’ aspect, and finally the ‘I’ aspect. This stability suggests a fundamental neurophenomenological hierarchy in Selfhood organization, which seems to be disrupted only in extreme cases such as vegetative (unresponsive) states and also schizophrenia. Ultimately, we propose that all neuropsychopathologies are best understood as disorders of Selfhood, where disruptions in the dynamic balance and configuration of the ‘Self’, ‘Me’, and ‘I’ aspects accompany neurophenomenological manifestations in distinct dysfunctions and pathologies.

In this first-of-its-kind neurophenomenological study we investigated the dynamic configuration and the levels of variability of the “Self”-, “Me”-, and “I”- components that comprise a complex experiential Selfhood across 16 distinct modes covering a range of healthy-normal, altered, and pathological brain states. The phenomenology was addressed by examining the mental structures of subjective self-experience, and for the neurophysiological counterpart, we used electroencephalogram analysis to gather data on three subnets of the self-referential brain network that correspond to the three components of Selfhood. This methodological approach allowed us to uncover peculiarities and generalities in the dynamic of the Selfhood triad across a wide range of modes that could not be seen in a single study. We showed that any given Selfhood state is determined by varying proportions of “Self”, “Me”, and “I”-components depending on the phenomenological manifestation of a particular mode. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the “Self”-component has more leeway in expressing various pathological modes while having a very narrow window for variance in norm. The “I”-component, on the other hand, exhibits the opposite tendency, with a wide range of normal modes and only a narrow window for true pathological expression. Finally, the “Me”-component expresses a position intermediate between the “Self”- and “I”-components (though closer to the “I”-component). The findings are discussed with an emphasis on their theoretical, conceptual, philosophical, and clinical implications.

Unprecedented advancements in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) have given rise to ethical questions about how to recognize and respect autonomy and a sense of agency of the personhood when those capacities are themselves disordered, as they typically are in patients with DoC. At the intersection of these questions rests the distinction between consciousness and unconsciousness. Indeed, evaluations of consciousness levels and capacity for recovery have a significant impact on decisions regarding whether to discontinue or prolong life-sustaining therapy for DoC patients. However, in the unconsciousness domain, there is the confusing array of terms that are regularly used interchangeably, making it quite challenging to comprehend what unconsciousness is and how it might be empirically grounded. In this opinion paper, we will provide a brief overview of the state of the field of unconsciousness and show how a rapidly evolving electroencephalogram (EEG) neuroimaging technique may offer empirical, theoretical, and practical tools to approach unconsciousness and to improve our ability to distinguish consciousness from unconsciousness and also nonconsciousness with greater precision, particularly in cases that are borderline (as is typical in patients with DoC). Furthermore, we will provide a clear description of three distant notions of (un)consciousness (unconsciousness, nonconsciousness, and subconsciousness) and discuss how they relate to the experiential selfhood which is essential for comprehending the moral significance of what makes life worth living.

Medical well-regarded policy recommendations for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC) are almost exclusively relied on behavioural examination and evaluation of higher-order cognition, and largely disregard the patients’ self. This is so because practically establishing the presence of self-awareness or Selfhood is even more challenging than evaluating the presence of consciousness. At the same time, establishing the potential (actual physical possibility) of Selfhood in DoC patients is crucialy important from clinical, ethical, and moral standpoints because Selfhood is the most central and private evidence of being an independent and free agent that unites intention, embodiment, executive functions, attention, general intelligence, emotions and other components within the intra-subjective frame (first-person givenness). The importance of Selfhood is supported further by the observation that rebooting of self-awareness is the first step to recovery after brain damage. It seems that complex experiential Selfhood can be plausibly conceptualized within the Operational Architectonics (OA) of brain-mind functioning and reliably measured by quantitative electroencephalogram (qEEG) operational synchrony.

While there is still a limited understanding of the Selfhood phenomenon, an emerging consensus is that the experiential Selfhood refers to a sense of the undergoing experience in its implicit first-person mode of givenness that is immediately and tacitly given as “mine”. It is also evident that there are phenomenological disruptions within self-consciousness ranging from normal everyday short-lived dissociative episodes to pathological, intense and prolonged forms of dissociative experience classified as depersonalization disorder (DD). In the present study we explored the neurophenomenology of Selfhood (using the recently introduced neurophysiological three-dimensional construct model of experiential Selfhood, Fingelkurts et al., 2020) in a newly diagnosed and untreated 29-year-old female who suffers from DD. According to the triad model of Selfhood, three major components of Selfhood (phenomenal first-person agency – “Self”, embodiment – “Me”, and reflection/narration – “I”) are related to three operational modules (OMs) of the self-referential brain network (reliably estimated by electroencephalogram operational synchrony analysis). We have found that subject with DD exhibited a strong enhancement of functional integrity of the brain Self-module, a moderate decrease in the functional integrity of Me-module, and a pronounced decrease in the functional integrity of I-module, – all of which were associated with severity of specific DD symptoms.

This study investigates eight case reports of spontaneously emerging, brief episodes of vivid altered states of Selfhood (ASoSs) that occurred during mental exercise in six long-term meditators by using a neurophenomenological electroencephalography (EEG) approach. In agreement with the neurophenomenological methodology, first-person reports were used to identify such spontaneous ASoSs and to guide the neural analysis, which involved the estimation of three operational modules of the brain self-referential network (measured by EEG operational synchrony). The result of such analysis demonstrated that the documented ASoSs had unique neurophenomenological profiles, where several aspects or components of Selfhood (measured neurophysiologically and phenomenologically) are affected and expressed differently, but still in agreement with the neurophysiological three-dimensional construct model of the complex experiential Selfhood proposed in our earlier work (Fingelkurts et al. in Conscious Cogn, 2020).

Recently, a three-dimensional construct model for complex experiential Selfhood has been proposed (Fingelkurts et al., 2016b,c). According to this model, three specific subnets (or modules) of the brain self-referential network (SRN) are responsible for the manifestation of three aspects/features of the subjective sense of Selfhood. Follow up multiple studies established a tight relation between alterations in the functional integrity of the triad of SRN modules and related to them three aspects/features of the sense of self; however, the causality of this relation is yet to be shown. In this article we approached the question of causality by exploring functional integrity within the three SRN modules that are thought to underlie the three phenomenal components of Selfhood while these components were manipulated mentally by experienced meditators in a controlled and independent manner. Participants were requested, in a block-randomised manner, to mentally induce states representing either increased (up-regulation) or decreased (down-regulation) sense of (a) witnessing agency (“Self”), or (b) body representational-emotional agency (“Me”), or (c) reflective/narrative agency (“I”), while their brain activity was recorded by an electroencephalogram (EEG). This EEG-data was complemented by first-person phenomenological reports and standardised questionnaires which focused on subjective contents of three aspects of Selfhood. The results of the study strengthen the case for a direct causative relationship between three phenomenological aspects of Selfhood and related to them three modules of the brain SRN. Furthermore, the putative integrative model of the dynamic interrelations among three modules of the SRN has been proposed.

The Operational Architectonics (OA) of brain-mind functioning is a theory that unifies brain and mind through nested and dynamic hierarchy of electromagnetic brain fields. Recently, it has been enriched by concepts from physics like time, space, entropy, and self-organized criticality. This review paper advances OA theory further by delving into the foundations of quantum physics and Eastern metaphysics in relation to mind function. We aim to show that the brain-mind OA is the boundary between and integration point of quantum physics and Eastern metaphysics, and that it may inspire building a richer and more inclusive paradigm of the brain-mind relation, where quantum physics and Eastern metaphysics are inherently intertwined.

Human beings are in the midst of very powerful shifts in our understanding of what it means to be a human. There is a non-trivial chance that sometime in the future humanity will transform itself, leading to an emergence of posthumans with God-like qualities – Homo Deificatio. Such a transformation has great potential for both good and bad. Posthumanism seeks to improve human nature, increase the human life- and health-span, extend its cognitive and physical capacities, and broaden its mastery over the environment. As such, the notion of posthumanism implies a radical breaking off from, and reconceptualisation of, the state of being human. As neuroscientists, we aim to bring a neuroscientific perspective to this debate. Current scientific and technologic developments (related to brain and its augmentation) clearly demonstrate that what was formerly considered to be science fiction is slowly but firmly becoming a scientific reality.

While the presence or absence of consciousness plays the central role in the moral/ethical decisions when dealing with patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC), recently it is criticized as not adequate due to number of reasons, among which are the lack of the uniform definition of consciousness and consequently uncertainty of diagnostic criteria for it, as well as irrelevance of some forms of consciousness for determining a patient’s interests and wishes. In her article, Dr. Specker Sullivan reexamined the meaning of consciousness in the DOC taxonomy and proposed to go away from the routinely used clinical definition of consciousness as “wakeful awareness”, and adopt the meaning that is common in the Eastern tradition which is a form of “pure experience” (Specker Sullivan 2018). She further argued that understanding consciousness as a “pure experience” is ethically relevant for DOC patients. This suggestion is original, novel and important since it preserves the importance of the notion of consciousness for the clinical practice while simultaneously offering an additional ethical tool for the moral decisions in medicine. At the same time, without placing such Eastern notion in the Western tradition it is difficult to see how pure experience could be usefully operationalized to make sense in the clinical practice with DOC patients. It is so because pure experience is a subjective phenomenon which is completely inaccessible in noncommunicative DOC patients and also it does not express behaviorally (Monti et al 2010), therefore some objective-like operationalization is needed. This is why the fusion of Eastern and Western traditions is required to gain the full potential of Dr. Specker Sullivan’s suggestion. We propose that such fusion could be achieved on the basis of the Operational Architectonics (OA) theory of brain-mind functioning (Fingelkurts et al. 2010; 2013a) which suits ideally the purpose due its compatibility with both Western and Eastern traditions of consciousness.

The interaction between brain and language has been investigated by a vast amount of research and different approaches, which however do not offer a comprehensive and unified theoretical framework to analyze how brain functioning performs the mental processes we use in producing language and in understanding speech. This Special Issue addresses the need to develop such a general theoretical framework, by fostering an interaction among the various scientific disciplines and methodologies, which centres on investigating the functional architecture of brain, mind and language, and is articulated along the following main dimensions of research: (a) Language as a regulatory contour of brain and mental processes; (b) Language as a unique human phenomenon; (c) Language as a governor of human behaviour and brain operations; (d) Language as an organizational factor of ontogenesis of mentation and behaviour

Despite allowing for the unprecedented visualization of brain functional activity, modern neurobio-logical techniques have not yet been able to provide satisfactory answers to important questions about the relationship between brain and mind. The aim of this paper is to show how two different but complementary approaches, Mind Operational Semantics (OS) and Brain Operational Architectonics (OA), can help bridge the gap between a specific kind of mental activity—the higher-order reflective thought or linguistic thought—and brain. The fundamental notion that allows the two different ap-proaches to be jointly used under a common framework is that of operation. According to OS, which is based on introspection and linguistic data, the meanings of words can be analyzed in terms of elemental mental operations (EOMC), amongst which those of attention play a key role. Linguistic thought is made possible by special kinds of elements, which OS calls “correlators”, which have the function of tying together the other elements of thought, which OS calls “correlata” (a "correlational network” that is, a sentence, is so formed). Therefore, OS conceives of linguistic thought as a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity. Likewise, according to OA, which is based on the joint analysis of cognitive and electromagnetic data (EEG and MEG), every conscious phenomenon is brought to existence by the joint operations of many functional and transient neuronal assemblies in the brain. According to OA, the functioning of the brain is always operational (made up of operations), and its structure is characterized by a hierarchy of operations of increasing complexity: single neurons, single assemblies of neurons, syn-chronized neuronal assemblies or Operational Modules (OM), integrated or complex OMs. The authors put forward the hypothesis that the whole level of OS’s description (EOMC, correlators, and correlational networks) corresponds to the level of OMs (or set of them) of different complexity within OA’s theory: EOMC could correspond to simple OMs, correlators to complex OMs and the correlational network to a set of simple and complex OMs. Finally, a set of experiments is proposed to verify the putative correspondence between OS and OA and prove the existence of an integrated continuum between brain and mind.

The discrepancy between syntax and semantics is a painstaking issue that hinders a better comprehension of the underlying neuronal processes in the human brain. In order to tackle the issue, we at first describe a striking correlation between Wittgenstein's Tractatus, that assesses the syntactic relationships between language and world, and Perlovsky's joint language-cognitive computational model, that assesses the semantic relationships between emotions and “knowledge instinct”. Once established a correlation between a purely logical approach to the language and computable psychological activities, we aim to find the neural correlates of syntax and semantics in the human brain. Starting from topological arguments, we suggest that the semantic properties of a proposition are processed in higher brain's functional dimensions than the syntactic ones. In a fully reversible process, the syntactic elements embedded in Broca's area project into multiple scattered semantic cortical zones. The presence of higher functional dimensions gives rise to the increase in informational content that takes place in semantic expressions. Therefore, diverse features of human language and cognitive world can be assessed in terms of both the logic armor described by the Tractatus, and the neurocomputational techniques at hand. One of our motivations is to build a neuro-computational framework able to provide a feasible explanation for brain's semantic processing, in preparation for novel computers with nodes built into higher dimensions.

Background and Objective: Understanding how trauma impacts the self-structure of individuals suffering from the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) symptoms is a complex matter and despite several attempts to explain the relationship between trauma and the “Self”, this issue still lacks clarity. Therefore, adopting a new theoretical perspective may help understand PTSD deeper and to shed light on the underlying psychophysiological mechanisms. Methods: In this study, we employed the “three-dimensional construct model of the experiential selfhood” where three major components of selfhood (phenomenal first-person agency, embodiment, and reflection/narration) are related to three Operational Modules (OMs) of the self-referential brain network. These modules can be reliably estimated through operational synchrony analysis of the Electroencephalogram (EEG). Six individuals with PTSD symptoms and twenty-nine sex-, age- and demographic- (race, education, marital status) matched healthy controls underwent resting state EEG signal acquisition with the following estimation of the synchrony strength within every OM. Results: Our results indicate that subjects with PTSD symptoms had significantly stronger EEG operational synchrony within anterior and right posterior OMs as well as significantly weaker EEG operational synchrony within left posterior OM compared to healthy controls. Moreover, increased the functional integrity of the anterior OM was positively associated with hyperactivity symptoms, reduced synchrony of the left posterior OM was associated with greater avoidance, and increased right posterior OM integrity was positively correlated with intrusion and mood symptoms. Conclusion: The results are interpreted in light of the triad model of selfhood and its theoretical and clinical implications (including a new treatment approach) are discussed.

The target paper of Schoeller, Perlovsky, and Arseniev is an essential and timely contribution to a current shift of focus in neuroscience aiming to merge neurophysiological, psychological and physical principles in order to build the foundation for the physics of mind. Extending on previous work of Perlovsky et al. and Badre, the authors of the target paper present interesting mathematical models of several basic principles of the physics of mind, such as perception and cognition, concepts and emotions, instincts and learning. Their conceptualization helps to clarify the distinction between conscious and unconscious aspects of mind that is often neglected and further provide a clear description of the mental hierarchy, which extends from physical objects in the physical world to abstract ideas in the mental/subjective realm. While we agree that identification of a few fundamental principles is a first step toward developing the physics of the mind, and we concur with the selection of those principles in the target review paper, we think that the theory of the physics of mind would much benefit from considering also the most basic principles that are common for the physics/matter/brain and the mind/subjectivity/cognition. In this respect, such basic principles as time and space, as well as criticality, self-organization, and emergence seem to be the most interesting.

Dr. Vukov analyzing patients with disorders of consciousness, proposed that medical well-regarded policy recommendations cannot be justified by looking solely to patients’ actual levels of consciousness (minimally conscious state – MCS versus vegetative state – VS), but that they can be justified by looking to patients’ potential for consciousness. One objective way to estimate this potential (actual physical possibility) is to consider a neurophysiologically informed strategy. Ideally such strategy would utilize objective brain activity markers of consciousness/unconsciousness. The Operational Architectonics (OA) theory of brain-mind functioning is an example of such a strategy. Besides being mathematically simple, neurophysiologically accurate, and compatible with the cognitive/phenomenal perspectives on consciousness, application of OA strategy to quantitative EEG analysis of patients in VS and MCS revealed that the absence of consciousness in VS is paralleled by impairment of overall EEG operational architecture. Specifically, neuronal assemblies become smaller, their life span shortened, and they became highly unstable and functionally disconnected (desynchronized). At the same time, fluctuating (minimal) awareness in patients in MCS was paralleled by partial restoration of EEG operational architecture (increased size, life span, and stability of neuronal assemblies, together with an increased number and strength of functional connections among them), approaching the level found in healthy fully conscious participants. Moreover OA strategy to EEG analysis allowed predicting the emergence of consciousness in VS patients after six years following the brain trauma. Therefore, the OA methodology could reliably predict which patients may regain consciousness, and thus determine which patients may have the potential for consciousness.

First of all, we would like to gratefully thank all commentators for the attention and effort they have put into reading and responding to our review paper [this issue] and for useful observations that suggest novel applications for our framework. We understand and accept that some of our claims might appear controversial and raise skepticism, because the overall neural framework we have proposed is difficult to frame in established categories, given its strong multidisciplinary character. To make an example, Elsevier is publishing the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) 2017 Special Issue Collection. However, our paper could not fully fit in any of their Special Issues—attention, motivation, behavior; sensory and motor systems; novel treatments and translational neuroscience; genetics and epigenetics; learning and memory; neurodegenerative disorders and ageing; developmental neuroscience; neuronal, glial and cellular mechanisms; neuroendocrine and autonomic nervous systems; psychiatry and mental health; methods and techniques. Perhaps because our paper was mathematically, physically, biologically (neuroscientifically), and phenomenologically motivated from the start? Nevertheless, venturing in novel, fresh, testable proposals is badly needed in contemporary neuroscience, so to break into “the utter darkness of the inner mechanism of psychic acts… during the production of the concomitant phenomena of perception and thought, namely, feelings, consciousness and volition”—as Cajal had already observed in his opus magnus ‘Textura’. But as he soberly confessed: “This ideal is still very distant” (Ramon y Cajal, 1899-1904, p. 1,141). In the pursuit of that very ideal, neuroscience and psychology have had, and continue to have, a plethora of movements and schools of thought: behaviorism, cognitivism, neural Darwinism, social constructivism, Bayesian optimization...In our paper, we propose to go a step further, via the notion of topodynamics, towards “projectionism.” In what follows, trying to elucidate the main features of this Emperor’s new clothing, we proceed with the responses to the comments received.

The brain displays both the anatomical features of a vast amount of interconnected topological mappings as well as the functional features of a nonlinear, metastable system at the edge of chaos, equipped with a phase space where mental random walks tend towards lower energetic basins. Nevertheless, with the exception of some advanced neuro-anatomic descriptions and present-day connectomic research, very few studies have been addressing the topological path of a brain embedded or embodied in its external and internal environment. Herein, by using new formal tools derived from algebraic topology, we provide an account of the metastable brain, based on the neuro-scientific model of Operational Architectonics of brain-mind functioning. We introduce a “topodynamic” description that shows how the relationships among the countless intertwined spatio-temporal levels of brain functioning can be assessed in terms of projections and mappings that take place on abstract structures, equipped with different dimensions, curvatures and energetic constraints. Such a topodynamical approach, apart from providing a biologically plausible model of brain function that can be operationalized, is also able to tackle the issue of a long-standing dichotomy: it throws indeed a bridge between the subjective, immediate datum of the naïve complex of sensations and mentations and the objective, quantitative, data extracted from experimental neuro-scientific procedures. Importantly, it opens the door to a series of new predictions and future directions of advancement for neuroscientific research.

In this report, we describe the case of a patient who has remained in a comatose state for more than one year after a traumatic and hypoxic brain injury. This state, which we refer to as long-lasting coma (LLC), may be a disorder of consciousness with significantly different features from those of conventional coma, the vegetative state, or brain death. On the basis of clinical, neurophysiological and neuroimaging data, we hypothesize that a multilevel involvement of the ascending reticular activating system is required in LLC. This description may be useful for the identification of other patients suffering from this severe disorder of consciousness, which raises important ethical issues.

Although several studies propose that the integrity of neuronal assemblies may underlie a phenomenon referred to as awareness, none of the known studies have explicitly investigated dynamics and functional interactions among neuronal assemblies as a function of consciousness expression. In order to address this question EEG operational architectonics analysis (Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, 2001, 2008) was conducted in patients in minimally conscious (MCS) and vegetative states (VS) to study the dynamics of neuronal assemblies and operational synchrony among them as a function of consciousness expression. We found that in minimally conscious patients and especially in vegetative patients neuronal assemblies got smaller, their life-span shortened and they became highly unstable. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the extent/volume and strength of operational synchrony among neuronal assemblies was smallest or even absent in VS patients, intermediate in MCS patients and highest in healthy fully-conscious subjects. All findings were similarly observed in EEG alpha as well as beta1 and beta2 frequency oscillations. The presented results support the basic tenets of Operational Architectonics theory of brain-mind functioning and suggest that EEG operational architectonics analysis may provide an objective and accurate means of assessing signs of (un)consciousness in patients with severe brain injuries. Therefore this methodological approach may complement the existing “gold standard” of behavioral assessment of this population of challenging patients and inform the diagnostic and treatment decision-making processes.

Instead of using low-level neurophysiology mimicking and exploratory programming methods commonly used in the machine consciousness field, the hierarchical Operational Architectonics (OA) framework of brain and mind functioning proposes an alternative conceptual-theoretical framework as a new direction in the area of model-driven machine (robot) consciousness engineering. The unified brain-mind theoretical OA model explicitly captures (though in an informal way) the basic essence of brain functional architecture, which indeed constitutes a theory of consciousness. The OA describes the neurophysiological basis of the phenomenal level of brain organization. In this context the problem of producing man-made “machine” consciousness and “artificial” thought is a matter of duplicating all levels of the operational architectonics hierarchy (with its inherent rules and mechanisms) found in the brain electromagnetic field. We hope that the conceptual-theoretical framework described in this paper will stimulate the interest of mathematicians and/or computer scientists to abstract and formalize principles of hierarchy of brain operations which are the building blocks for phenomenal consciousness and thought.

Adequate assessment of (un)consciousness is not only of theoretical interest but also has a practical and ethical importance, especially when it comes to disorders of consciousness (DOC). Accurately determining the presence or absence of consciousness in patients with DOC allows informed decisions to be made about long-term care support, referral for rehabilitation, pain management and withdrawal of life support. We believe that a theoretical account of what conscious experience is and how it emerges within the brain will advance the search for appropriate neuromarkers of the presence or absence of consciousness in non-communicative brain-damaged patients.

Based on previous studies implicating increased functional connectivity within the self-referential brain network in major depressive disorder (MDD), and considering the functional roles of three distinct modules of such brain net (responsible for three-dimensional components of Selfhood) together with the documented abnormalities of self-related processing in MDD, we tested the hypothesis that patients with depression would exhibit increased connectivity within each module of the self-referential brain network and that the strength of these connections would correlate positively with depression severity. Applying the electroencephalogram (EEG) operational synchrony analysis to extract three modules of the self-referential brain network in 12 medication-free depressive outpatients and 10 control subjects we have found an increase in the strength of EEG synchrony within all three modules in depressive patients (though non-significant for the right module). Furthermore, multiple regression analysis that used 3 factors (values of synchrony strength for all three modules) as input indicated that combined increase in the strength of synchrony in all three modules was positively associated with severity of depression. Taken together the findings of this study suggest that depression is primarily associated with hypersynchrony in all three modules of the brain self-referential network (the anterior module been responsible for “witnessing observation and first–person perspective”, the left posterior module been responsible for “reflective agency and narration” and the right posterior module been responsible for “bodily representational-emotional agency”), thus contributing to excessive self-focus, rumination, and body tension.

This paper briefly review a current trend in neuroscience aiming to combine neurophysiological and physical concepts in order to understand the emergence of spatio-temporal patterns within brain activity by which brain constructs knowledge from multiple streams of information. The authors further suggest that the meanings, which subjectively are experienced as thoughts or perceptions can best be described objectively as created and carried by large fields of neural activity within the operational architectonics of brain functioning

In our contribution we will observe phenomenal architecture of a mind and operational architectonics of the brain and will show their intimate connectedness within a single integrated metastable continuum. The notion of operation of different complexity is the fundamental and central one in bridging the gap between brain and mind: it is precisely by means of this notion that it is possible to identify what at the same time belongs to the phenomenal conscious level and to the neurophysiological level of brain activity organization, and what mediates between them. Implications for linguistic semantics, self-organized distributed computing algorithms, artificial machine consciousness, and diagnosis of dynamic brain diseases will be discussed briefly.