The Consciousness Issue: The Mystery of Being You – Big Think Skip to content Scientists are rethinking how we perceive ourselves — and the world. Introducing Big Think’s Consciousness Issue. Stephen Johnson is the Managing Editor of Big Think. Formerly a long-time contributor to Big Think, he is a St. Louis-based writer and editor whose work has been …
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AI models can respond to text, audio, and video in ways that sometimes fool people into thinking a human is behind the keyboard, but that doesn’t exactly make them conscious. It’s not like ChatGPT experiences sadness doing my tax return … right? Well, a growing number of AI researchers at labs like Anthropic are asking when — if ever — …
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Sign up for Big Think on Substack The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free. Growing up, Annaka Harris had a restless, inquisitive mind — and terrible migraines. Which is how she developed an interest in the subject that would captivate her for most of her career: consciousness. “I was really focused on …
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Sign up for Big Think on Substack The most surprising and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every week, for free. Roughly 150 years ago, Harvard University’s William James became one of the first educators to offer a psychology course in the United States. Among other ideas, James put forth the notion of a “stream of consciousness” and encouraged …
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Summary: Each morning, your brain undergoes a precise sequence to shift from sleep to wakefulness, reorienting you to the world. A study using high-density EEG recordings found that awakening begins in frontal regions and spreads backward, with distinct patterns depending on whether you wake from REM or non-REM sleep. In non-REM sleep, slower waves precede faster wake-like activity, while REM …
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