Neuroscience – Lifeboat News: The Blog

Jun 16
2026

New studies suggest consciousness exists in organisms without brains

How does a physical system such as the brain produce the ineffable phenomenon of conscious experience? Philosopher David Chalmers famously named this the “Hard Problem of Consciousness” in 1995. Proponents argue that, while cognitive functions such as categorisation or information integration might be explained mechanistically in the central nervous system, the origins of subjective experience resist such explanation. Detractors suggest that the Hard Problem is merely a collection of lesser puzzles that have yet to be solved through greater material understanding of the brain.

The heart of this controversy may lie in its core premise: that consciousness arises from a neuronal system organized around a brain. The deep entrenchment of this preconception isn’t surprising, given that our own consciousness is the only one we have access to. But this “brain-centrism” pervades the cognitive sciences, shaping our understanding of other beings and approaches to research. It’s one of several kinds of scientific chauvinism that currently limit the field of enquiry and hamper our scientific approach to other kinds of minds.

Jun 15
2026

Brain circuit needed to incorporate new information may be linked to schizophrenia

One of the symptoms of schizophrenia is difficulty incorporating new information about the world. This can lead people with schizophrenia to struggle with making decisions and, eventually, to lose touch with reality.

MIT neuroscientists have now identified a gene mutation that appears to give rise to this type of difficulty. In a study of mice, the researchers found that the mutated gene impairs the function of a brain circuit that is responsible for updating beliefs based on new input.

This mutation, in a gene called grin2a, was originally identified in a large-scale screen of patients with schizophrenia. The new study suggests that drugs targeting this brain circuit could help with some of the cognitive impairments seen in people with schizophrenia.

Jun 15
2026

We May Be Surrounded by Trillions of Conscious Beings, Research Suggests—And They Aren’t Human

We might need to reconsider our position in the consciousness hierarchy.

Jun 15
2026

Brain keeps familiar routes intact as new experiences get layered on top, study suggests

Every time we move through a familiar environment, the hippocampus consults an internal map, a detailed spatial representation built up through repeated experience. But what happens when something unexpected occurs on a well-known route? Researchers at the University Hospital Bonn (UKB) and the University of Bonn demonstrated in a mouse model that the brain does not redraw its maps from scratch. Instead, it annotates them, preserving the underlying spatial layout while overlaying new information on top of the existing map. The paper is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The hippocampus, the brain’s working memory, is shaped like a seahorse and is located in the temporal lobe of both the left and right hemispheres. Hippocampal CA3 circuits, which link information and support the recognition of memories, keep their spatial maps stable while layering new annotations on top, much like a navigation app that preserves your route while flagging an incident ahead.

A Bonn-based research team arrived at these findings by recording the activity of CA3 axons in mice traversing a familiar linear running route. At a fixed point along the route, the scientists introduced a mildly aversive but harmless air puff stimulus, comparable to an unexpected obstacle on a road, and tracked how the hippocampal network updated its representation before, during and after the event.

Jun 15
2026

Blog

Category: neuroscience – Page 26

New studies suggest consciousness exists in organisms without brains

Brain circuit needed to incorporate new information may be linked to schizophrenia

We May Be Surrounded by Trillions of Conscious Beings, Research Suggests—And They Aren’t Human

Brain keeps familiar routes intact as new experiences get layered on top, study suggests

Your Consciousness Emerges From a Vast ‘Invisible’ Network, a Breakthrough Study Suggests

Reading Confusing Code Triggers Linguistic Correction Brain Waves

Takuya Isomura introduces his research at RIKEN CBS Brain Intelligence Theory Unit

We now know how to make the lab-grown tiny brains conscious

Scientists Revived Activity in a Disembodied Human Brain

Bay Area startup claims it developed 2-way communication between people via dreams