Frontiers in Consciousness Research: Perception-Cognition Interface & Cross-Modal Experiences: Insights into Unified Consciousness

Journal Name: Frontiers in Consciousness Research: Perception-Cognition Interface & Cross-Modal Experiences: Insights into Unified Consciousness

Publication Date: Not specified

Submission Deadline: October 31, 2013 (Abstracts) September 30, 2014 (final papers)

Traditionally cognition and conscious perception as well as its different sense modalities have been examined independently, as divided and different from each other. However, recent studies elucidating the impact of perception on cognition, but also the various ways in which conscious perceptual experiences can be penetrated and modified by cognitive states such as thoughts, beliefs, moods, desires, emotions, knowledge and memories, seem to support an alternative view. Investigations of cross-modal experiences and multimodal interactions, in which input in one sense modality elicits or modulates contents in another modality, reveal that such perceptual experiences cannot be easily categorized as belonging to one of the traditional five senses. The existence of multisensory influences on perception and cross-domain integration going beyond the senses to the domains of abstract, conceptually represented entities, domains of bodily, motor and emotional states, provide challenges to standard methods individuating our epistemic abilities. This implies a need for a new methodology. A full understanding of how the mind works requires considering the complex and tight relations holding among these domains and their mutual impact. Our mental faculties should not only be studied separately. They call for a more holistic approach in order to uncover their extensive capacity for interaction producing unified conscious experiences.

The Research Topic “Perception-Cognition Interface & Cross-Modal Experiences: Insights into Unified Consciousness” is open to both theoretical and empirical contributions from different fields (e.g., philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience) in the form of original research articles, hypothesis and theory articles, reviews, opinion papers and commentaries. It aims to be an interdisciplinary reference on the links between cognition, concepts and perception as well as interactions among sense modalities to advance our understanding of the kinds of unity relation or integration processes within consciousness.

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