Evidence map›Paper›PMID 38618486›Full record

ArticleNeuroscience of consciousness2024

A mechanistic alternative to minimal sufficiency as the guiding principle for NCC research.

Andy Mckilliam

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Neuroscience of consciousness, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
0citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

0 citing papers in PubMed.

No citing paper in PubMed yet.

4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

1 author.

Andy MckilliamCognition and Philosophy Lab, Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies, Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Room 429, 29 Ancora Imparo Way, Melbourne, VIC 3800, Australia.ORCID https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8223-3817

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

A central project for the neuroscience of consciousness is to reveal the neural basis of consciousness. For the past 20-odd years, this project has been conceptualized in terms of minimal sufficiency. Recently, a number of authors have suggested that the project is better conceived in mechanistic terms as the search for difference-makers. In this paper, I (i) motivate this mechanistic alternative to minimal sufficiency, (ii) develop it further by clarifying debates about the prospects of leveraging mutual manipulability to distinguish constitutive difference-makers from those that are merely causal, and (iii) explore the implications this has for recent debates concerning the status of the prefrontal cortex. I argue that adopting a mechanistic approach to the neuroscience of consciousness suggests that the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural mechanisms underlying consciousness even if it is not strictly speaking a necessary part.

Indexed as

constitutive relevancemechanisms of consciousnessmutual manipulabilityneural correlates of consciousness

Identifiers

PMID38618486
PMCPMC11013376

What OpenQuestion holds

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Registered trials

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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.