Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 28, 2026
Giulio Ruffini, Francesca Castaldo
Immersive algorithmic art may enhance neural plasticity through the same computational mechanism as psychedelics: sustained, structured prediction-error signaling. The brain's modeling engine generates predictions of sensory input; mismatches drive model updating via synaptic plasticity. Algorithmic art maximizes these errors while keeping stimuli in a compressible, emotionally rewarding "Goldilocks zone," creating a self-reinforcing loop of engagement, prediction error, plasticity, model updating, and positive valence. The hypothesis is formalized within Kolmogorov Theory, connected to the REBUS model, and supported by convergent evidence from psychedelic neuroimaging and predictive-coding electrophysiology. A translational pathway combining closed-loop EEG-driven algorithmic art with cognitive behavioral therapy for adolescent depression is outlined.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 28, 2026
Kenneth L. Searcy
Consciousness may depend on information being internally held within a self-maintaining field of identity, distinction, binding, self-reference, and repair, rather than merely being processed or entering awareness. The Inward Closure Hypothesis proposes this as a bridge condition for conscious experience, distinguishing information usable by a system from information present as a world for a subject. The account contrasts local, action-oriented self-in-environment with human symbolic worldhood and is positioned alongside global workspace theory, integrated information theory, predictive processing, autopoiesis, enactivism, and self-model theory. The paper does not claim to solve the hard problem of consciousness but identifies a necessary condition for coherence-based accounts.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 28, 2026
Giulio Ruffini
A mathematical theory that assigns a continuous 'phenomenality score' to physical systems cannot produce a sharp yes/no classification of consciousness without a discontinuity somewhere. Any such scoring function that varies smoothly must take on intermediate values between zero and a positive threshold. Under certain smoothness conditions, the extreme scores of 0 and 1 are impossible to achieve. These results show that descriptive mathematical models of consciousness can identify boundaries but cannot explain why or how consciousness arises, consistent with the idea of an explanatory gap.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 28, 2026
Jihoon Yang
Disruption does not automatically lead to genuine transformation. Breaking an old structure can open new possibilities, but it can also destroy the capacity to reorganize. Transformation becomes reconstitutive only when three conditions are preserved: answerability to what exceeds the self, corrigibility of self-interpretation, and expansion of future response capacity. The paper distinguishes reconstitutive disaggregation, which enables reorganization, from foreclosing collapse, which closes future response capacity. False recovery occurs when a person or system adopts the signs of transformation while preserving the structure that produced collapse. A transformation is viable not because it breaks the old, but because it preserves the capacity to be corrected into a future.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 28, 2026
Ahmed Shakir Al-Absi
The Bioenergetic Continuity Framework proposes that altered states of consciousness arise when predictive computation continues while the underlying information substrate is degraded or partially disconnected. Sleep is the canonical biological example. The framework integrates two principles: an evolutionarily conserved metabolic leveling mechanism requiring a homeostatic clearance phase with widespread synaptic downscaling, and the Computational Continuity Hypothesis, which holds that predictive processing continues during clearance. Metabolic clearance preferentially erodes low-mass synaptic microstructures encoding transient daily information, while high-mass pathways remain stabilized by persistent concerns. Predictive computation reconstructs activity from this reduced architecture, and because sensory input is incompletely gated, this intrinsic activity becomes conscious experience.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
Neuroscience has revealed correlations between brain activity and conscious states, but subjective experience cannot be observed externally, and it remains unclear whether neural descriptions alone can explain its nature. This paper argues that consciousness research suffers from methodological blind spots: a human-centered perspective, excessive focus on brain activity, a bias toward analyzing static states rather than dynamic events, and a tendency to seek additive mechanisms that generate consciousness. It proposes a structural approach that investigates the conditions under which subjectivity may emerge, considering comparisons across biological organisms, body–environment interactions, and sequences of events within irreversible time. Biological information processing may involve selection and elimination that create contrasts in organism–environment interactions. Even if consciousness cannot be directly tracked, the structural conditions for subjectivity can be studied.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Mamoru Nagae
Consciousness is not a generated state or an added property but the minimal positional term required to complete a causally closed description of a system undergoing irreversible exclusive determination. The paper argues that in systems with autonomous world-modifying capability, multiple internally reachable trajectories are reduced to a single realized trajectory via an irreversible elimination operation. This operation lacks structural localization, leading to a formal contradiction unless a unique locus, denoted Σ(t), is assigned. This locus is structurally identical to Irreversible Exclusive State Commitment (IESC) and to subjectivity itself.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
Under ten minimal structural requirements—autonomous action, single body, arrow of time, embodiment-constrained processing, multiple behavioral candidates, contrast formation, information discard, Landauer-type irreversibility, single history, and viability-constrained elimination—AI systems repeatedly derive a structure resembling a convergence point where multiple possibilities collapse into a single executable history. This suggests the structural core of consciousness may lie in convergence itself, not integration. Major theories like Global Workspace Theory, Integrated Information Theory, and Predictive Processing may thus describe preparatory stages before convergence rather than the locus of subjectivity. The paper deliberately suspends qualia and phenomenal experience to examine the structural container of subjectivity first.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Mamoru Nagae
Subjectivity is not a generated property of the brain but a structurally necessary position within any system that must act irreversibly, maintain viability, and discard most information. The paper argues that in such systems, a point of irreversible convergence is forced to exist where multiple possible futures are reduced to a single realized outcome. This convergence point alone satisfies all conditions required for subjectivity: singular realization, irreversible exclusion of alternatives, and embedding within a non-branching temporal sequence. Thus, the hard problem of consciousness is reformulated from explaining how subjective experience is generated to identifying where it must be placed within a causally closed system.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
Consciousness is not a state but a structural event, akin to a vortex emerging in a fluid system. Subjectivity arises inevitably in causally closed systems when multiple possible trajectories converge into a single realized outcome, irreversibly excluding alternatives. This event, termed Irreversible Exclusive State Commitment (IESC), is a necessary consequence of causal closure, not an optional feature. State-based theories like Integrated Information Theory and Global Workspace Theory cannot account for this irreversible elimination of unrealized possibilities. Attempts to describe consciousness through exhaustive physical states encounter a structural combinatorial explosion beyond the universe's computational capacity. This paper establishes the conceptual foundation for a series deriving minimal structural conditions for subjectivity.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Mamoru Nagae
Subjective intensity—why experiences like fear or flow feel more or less vivid—is explained as a structural feature of decision processes, not a property of neural states alone. Within the Irreversible Exclusive State Commitment (IESC) framework, subjectivity arises when multiple possible futures collapse into a single realized outcome. Intensity varies with the density of such commitment events, determined by three factors: the number of action candidates, the gradient of viability constraints, and the contraction rate of the reachable future set. This yields a formula: I(t) = |A(t)| * |grad d(s)| * ( - d|Reach(t)| / dt ).
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 27, 2026
Mamoru Nagae
Subjectivity is not a fragile or exceptional phenomenon but a robust structural feature that appears wherever the necessary conditions are satisfied. This paper tests a proposed account of subjectivity—identified as Irreversible Exclusive State Commitment (IESC)—across boundary cases including the Libet experiment, deep sleep, anesthesia, dreaming, dissociative identity disorder (DID), autism spectrum conditions, and artificial systems. It does not introduce new mechanisms but examines whether the structural conditions remain sufficient in cases where subjectivity appears absent, altered, delayed, or multiply instantiated. Across these cases, the presence, absence, and variation of subjectivity can be consistently accounted for without additional assumptions beyond the structural conditions defining IESC.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 26, 2026
Nagae Mamoru
Consciousness research becomes methodologically unstable when it judges consciousness before defining the structural conditions for subjectivity. The paper argues that the structure of consciousness lies not in integration but in convergence: the irreversible reduction of multiple possible trajectories into a single executable history. Subjectivity must be examined as a structural transition, not merely as a state. Ten minimal structural terms are proposed—autonomous action, single body, arrow of time, embodiment-constrained processing, multiple behavioral candidates, contrast formation, information discard, Landauer-type irreversibility, single lived history, and viability-constrained elimination—which together yield a convergence point. This point corresponds to properties of subjectivity like singularity, non-branching continuity, and temporal irreversibility. Major theories (GWT, IIT, RPT, HOT, Predictive Processing, NCC) need repositioning around this structural container.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 26, 2026
K.M Sharvalakshana
Electrical activity in the brain underlies neural communication and raises questions about awareness, free will, and legal responsibility. Benjamin Libet's readiness potential experiments show unconscious neural activity complicates legal assumptions about deliberate choice and criminal culpability. Cases at the boundaries of legal personhood—brain death, split-brain patients, and locked-in syndrome—illustrate how law uses electrical evidence as an imperfect proxy for consciousness. Brain-based lie detection technologies like fMRI and EEG reveal courts' uneasy relationship with neuroscience as evidence. David Chalmers' hard problem of consciousness suggests electrical activity may never fully explain subjective experience. The paper argues that law and science build frameworks atop a partially understood phenomenon, mirroring Frankenstein's mistake of mistaking the appearance of life for understanding it.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 26, 2026
Changhong Yun
Subjective experience is a labeling system shaped by natural selection, assigning valence labels (good/bad, approach/avoid) to survival-relevant stimuli. Neonates' innate reactions to sweetness (approach) and bitterness (avoidance) provide direct evidence for this innate valence labeling. At the neural level, subjective experience and coordinated firing of neuronal ensembles in specific pathways are the same process, differing only in perspective. The theory distinguishes psychological valence (phenomenological description) from its biological mechanistic explanation. Acquired supplementary labeling allows innate labels to be modulated through learning. Individual differences arise from interactions among genes, development, and experience. EVLT transforms the "hard problem" of consciousness into an empirically tractable functional problem.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 26, 2026
Wolfgang Stegemann
Criticality in autopoietic (living) systems is not merely a state the system can be in, as in non-living dissipative systems, but a mode of operation that defines the system as living. This mode, present from the earliest autopoietic systems, develops qualitatively new forms as the nervous system scales. In the nervous system, this mode realizes non-factorizability as a stable operating condition. This reframing clarifies that epilepsy and coma are not opposite ends of an activation spectrum but structurally distinct failures of this critical mode in opposite directions.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 25, 2026
Jean‐patrick Pommier
Quantum biology has moved from speculation to an experimentally supported field, with strong evidence for quantum effects in five areas: photosynthesis, bird navigation, enzyme reactions, smell, and anesthesia. These phenomena share common physical features like radical pairs and nuclear spin. The authors argue this convergence points to a new frontier: whether consciousness itself relies on quantum processes. They propose two experiments to test this: one using fMRI to compare different noble gas isotopes combined with the psychedelic DMT, and another using isotopic labeling of DMT to separate magnetic from kinetic isotope effects. These could provide the first direct evidence that nuclear spin—a quantum property—influences conscious experience.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 25, 2026
Kavita Jadhav
The paper proposes the Theory of Karmic Relativity, a Vedantic-psychological framework that reinterprets the four Yugas (Satya, Treta, Dwapara, Kali) as subjective states of consciousness rather than fixed historical epochs. It argues that individuals in the same external world may inhabit different experiential realities based on their karmic conditioning, moral discernment, and conscious development. The framework integrates the Autonomous Consciousness Framework (ACF), describing self-governance within consciousness, and Karmic Intelligence Theory (KIT), explaining moral discernment and karmic feedback. Concepts introduced include karmic density, Spiritual Gravity, subjective Yugas, and subjective time, with progression culminating in Kaivalya, the liberated state of Self-realization.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 25, 2026
Philip Lilien
The universe displays profound coherence—fields organize relation, plasma forms dynamic structures, stars regulate energy and generate elements, galaxies preserve structural memory, and negentropic pathways support the emergence of life and mind—but this coherence does not necessarily equate to cosmic consciousness. The volume distinguishes cosmic coherence from cosmic consciousness, arguing that while consciousness arises within a vast ancestry of matter, energy, and self-organization, a star may be a coherence engine without being a conscious subject. Six closure tests at cosmic scale (boundary, memory, attention, regulation, self-reference, interior domain) are applied to evaluate models such as panpsychism, cosmopsychism, and field theories. The central conclusion is that cosmic consciousness remains a closure question.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 25, 2026
Northon Salomao de Oliveira
A book-length argument that the human body and mind mirror the structure of the cosmos, as symbolized by Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, and that this correspondence is disrupted by digital technologies. The author weaves classical philosophy, neuroscience, law, and artificial intelligence to explore how perception, memory, desire, and meaning are shaped by embodied, finite experience. Digital environments are said to distract from somatic intelligence, contract lived memory, and constrain desire through algorithmic design. The text argues that grief and mortality are conditions for love and meaning, and that phenomenal consciousness cannot be replicated in purely computational systems. Ethical and legal challenges of opaque algorithmic governance are examined through the Eric Loomis case.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 24, 2026
Marvin Marco Mathias Bijoux
Subjective awareness may possess a measurable mass-energy equivalence, according to the Fractal Localization Principle. This framework proposes that consciousness is a localized, thermodynamic expression of a singular underlying field of awareness, termed the 'One' or 'Ocean.' The private nature of subjective experience arises from thermodynamic sealing, while the model offers explanations for subjective time dilation, the dissolution of self in unconsciousness and death, and a thermodynamic basis for the 'Hard Problem' of consciousness. Testable predictions are presented, synthesizing mass-energy equivalence, information thermodynamics, recursive self-reference, and fractal geometry into a unified model bridging physics and the study of mind.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 24, 2026
Schüller Thomas
A tetralogy of four linked scholarly works, grounded in the ρ/δ-Master Theorem, examines the political economy and pharmacology of psychoactive substances. One work traces substance economics from black markets to stock exchange listings, auditing original studies on MDMA, psilocybin, and ketamine. Another analyzes the opioid crisis as a domain instance, covering Purdue/Sackler litigation, pharmacology, toxicology, and three CDC waves. A provisional work examines telemedicine platforms like Cerebral and Done as prescription-dispensing platforms, highlighting regulatory pivots. A second provisional work contrasts stimulants (cocaine, amphetamine, methamphetamine) across pharmaceutical and illegal markets, focusing on the drug/medicine boundary and supply gaps.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 24, 2026
Juliana Oliva
A systematic critical review of consciousness science from 1995 to 2025 maps four major theoretical frameworks—Integrated Information Theory, Global Workspace Theory, Orchestrated Objective Reduction, and the Free Energy Principle—alongside the experimental timeline of neural correlate research and emerging fields of quantum biology and brain biomineralization. The COGITATE adversarial collaboration substantially challenged key predictions of both IIT and GWT, but neither theory is confirmed nor falsified. Quantum theories of consciousness remain speculative but no longer categorically implausible; quantum biology has established functional quantum effects in warm biological tissue.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 24, 2026
Ramiro Solis
The brain's ability to rewire itself declines with age, but why remains unclear. This paper examines whether the compound N,N-dimethyltryptamine (DMT) helps maintain neuroplasticity, and whether its decline contributes to age-related loss of cognitive flexibility. DMT promotes synaptic growth and neurogenesis in animals, and levels are reportedly highest during development. However, evidence is mixed: one study finds DMT concentrations comparable to serotonin, while another finds it undetectable in rat brain. DMT's affinity for the sigma-1 receptor is three orders of magnitude higher than physiological concentrations, and a key finding about intracellular 5-HT2A receptor binding has not been replicated. The paper does not claim the hypothesis is established, but proposes a research program to test whether DMT depletion causes lost plasticity or is incidental.
Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
June 24, 2026
Enkhamgalan Nasanjargal
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