The Feeling Brain

31/03/2026

We didn't expect to find William James this personally relevant when we started producing this mini-course series with Bernard J Baars.

But here we are.

James wrote in 1890 that attention is "the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of several simultaneously possible objects."

Scientists have cited that definition for over 130 years — and quietly glossed over its most important implication:

👁️ Attention and consciousness are not the same thing.

Attention is the selection. Consciousness is what blooms from it. And what you choose to attend to — genuinely, deliberately — shapes not just what you experience, but who you become.

Mini-Course #2, "How Your Inner World Truly Matters," is live on our Substack. I love producing and directing our education!

BONUS 🧠 Neuroscientist David Edelman leads this compelling video narration.

You are conscious of some aspects of reading right now — but are you aware of the touch of your chair, a faint residual taste, or a conversation drifting in the background? Perhaps not — until just now. That small shift is exactly what this mini-course is about.

We also dip into some nifty natural comparison experiments, plus a short, reflective quiz.

Come and hang out with us at the DG Wills Book Store in La Jolla. Shall we begin? 👉 https://bernardbaars.substack.com/p/you-are-conscious-right-now-but-are

Mini-Course #2 👁️: The science of conscious and unconscious experience, selective attention, and why your inner world matters more than you think.

24/03/2026

Your wandering mind is not a problem to fix, it's often your most creative state.

Consciousness & The Brain Mini-Course #1: Your Stream of Consciousness is live now — narrated by Dr. Bernard J Baars, one of the world's leading consciousness researchers and founder of . 🧠

Before fMRI, there was William James, watching the mind fly like a bird from branch to branch. He called it flights and perches.

We call it Lesson 1. 🕊️:-)

→ https://bernardbaars.substack.com/p/your-stream-of-consciousness-wm-james

Before fMRI, there was William James, watching the mind fly like a bird from branch to branch. Mini-Course #1 begins here. 🕊️ | Narrated video lesson with Bernard Baars & Nat Geld

23/03/2026

Tomorrow, something Bernard J Baars and I have been quietly building together finally arrives. 🧠

Consciousness & the Brain Mini-Courses.
Short. Focused. Narrated or hosted by a scientist who has spent his career mapping the conscious brain — and produced by a writer who has spent decades asking why any of this matters to how we love and live.

Lesson 1: your own wandering mind. 🕊️

Subscribe today. Watch your inbox tomorrow.

Consciousness is a fundamental scientific question of life. Together, we will gain a deeper understanding of some of the most definitive evidence in medical science about cortical connectivity and the complexities of the living brain. Welcome! Click to read Consciousness & The Brain, by Bernard Baar...

08/03/2026

We can distinguish several kinds of frames.

First, there are the frames of perception and imagery.
Second, the frame of conceptual thought.
Third, goal frames, which evoke and shape actions.
And finally, the frame of communication, shared by two people talking — or by ourselves in inner speech.

Some of these frames shape conscious experience directly. Others evoke thoughts and images or help select what enters awareness. Perceptual and imaginal frames clearly enter into conscious qualitative experience.

A goal frame, by contrast, may simply recall a word or evoke a mental image without itself becoming part of experience.

Yet these different frames interact constantly:

Perceptual events influence conceptual thinking.

Concepts influence inner speech, imagery, and the selection of perceptual events.

Goals influence concepts — and vice versa.

Let us look more closely.

How Perceptual, Imaginal, and Conceptual Frames Shape What We Experience — and What We Cannot See

19/02/2026

🌱Coming full circle… and soon🌱 with a little help from my friends 🌸💗🧠

10/09/2025

On how consciousness reaches into vast unconscious systems that silently shape our lives

02/04/2025

Surprise! Dreams are conscious.

Subjectively falling asleep and waking up refreshed eight hours later is something of an illusion.

Perhaps because we dream after losing consciousness every day, we tend to forget that dreams are actually conscious events.

But we now know beyond reasonable doubt that our eight hours of unconscious sleep is interrupted by periods of waking consciousness, which are easily distinguishable in the electrical activity of the cortex (almost exactly like waking); many times we can also see the distinctive signature of “slow, regular, horizontal eye movements” – called REM.

So the first point is that subjectively falling asleep and waking up refreshed eight hours later is something of an illusion.

In fact, we are not densely unconscious every second of being asleep — it only seems like that in the morning.

🧠 When scientists started studying night-time EEG they discovered periods of waking activity in the EEG, labeled “paradoxical sleep” by French scientist Michel Jouvet. The word “paradoxical” was suggested that waking EEG happened several times during what we think of as a continuously unconscious eight hours of sleep. When we wake people up during the paradoxical period, sleepers tell us about their dreams — which are in fact conscious states of a kind.

📜 This was already realized by the authors of the Mandukya Upanishad, the shortest and best-known scripture of Vedanta.

💫 Dreams are an interaction between the unconscious and conscious.

The unconscious is the dominant force of the dream. You overlook all your realm of the waking scene while you are dreaming.

From "The Developing Brain & Consciousness" BaarsLab.com course — The Story of Spikes and Waves.

https://bernardbaars.substack.com/p/surprise-dreams-are-conscious

Subjectively falling asleep and waking up refreshed eight hours later is something of an illusion. From "The Developing Brain & Consciousness" BaarsLab.com course — The Story of Spikes and Waves.

17/03/2025

There seems to be a tug of war between those deep midbrain nuclei and the control system which involves the prefrontal cortex. Various areas of the prefrontal cortex have somewhat different effects, but prefrontal is associated with self-regulation, while midbrain nuclei have to do with impulses, motivations, emotions, and so on. The prefrontal cortex is sometimes called the “organ of civilization” or as Dr. Heather Berlin dubs it, “the brake system”.

In the last two decades a whole new generation of brain instruments has come to light.

Exploring deep midbrain nuclei and the control system, which involves the prefrontal cortex.

28/02/2025

🧠 “Consciousness” has several meanings.

It is used in biomedical science to refer to the state of waking consciousness, as assessed by responsiveness to questions, commands, and mild pain, by the classical scalp EEG of waking, and by the ability to describe oneself and current events.

However, in scientific work “consciousness” is also used to refer to the “dimension of conscious vs. unconscious brain events” - that is, as an experimental variable that allows us to study brain differences attributable to consciousness.

This usage is profoundly different from the first, since it involves...

🧠 Keep reading at bernardbaars.substack.com !! 🧠

07/02/2025

Sleep Strengthens Emotionally Charged Memories During Non-REM Phase

A new study reveals that positive emotions enhance perceptual memories during sleep, specifically in the non-REM stage.

Researchers trained mice to associate a texture with a positive experience and found that this memory lasted longer than neutral ones.

The amygdala, along with the motor and sensory cortices, plays a key role in reinforcing these memories.

07/02/2025

"We found that loving kindness meditation is associated with changes in the strength and duration of certain types of brain waves called beta and gamma waves,” said Ignacio Saez, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience, Neurosurgery, and Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine and senior author of the paper. “These kinds of brain waves are affected in mood disorders like depression and anxiety, so the possibility of being able to willfully control these through meditation is pretty amazing, and may help explain the positive impact that these practices have on individuals.”

The study is unique in that it used advanced invasive neural recording techniques, which provide much more detailed and precise insight into the brain compared to traditional techniques like scalp EEG. The study took place in the Quantitative Biometrics Laboratory at Mount Sinai West, a lab designed to provide patients with a relaxing environment to receive therapeutic treatment that is free from typical distractions associated with a hospital setting or traditional lab. This naturalistic setting enabled study participants to meditate in a calm environment that is more reflective of real-world experiences, improving the study’s ecological validity.

“Traditionally, it has been challenging to study these deep limbic brain regions in humans using standard methods like scalp EEG. Our team was able to overcome this challenge by leveraging data collected from a unique patient population: epilepsy patients with surgically implanted devices that allow for chronic EEG recording from electrodes implanted deep in the amygdala and hippocampus,” said Christina Maher, a neuroscience PhD student in the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine and first author of the paper. “It was quite amazing to uncover changes in brain wave activity in these key regions, even during first-time meditation.”

Alea Skwara Consciousness Studies Brain World Magazine Brain Cafe

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1153504106783264&set=a.489198276547187

PRESS RELEASE!

New Research Reveals That Meditation Induces Changes in Deep Brain Areas Associated with Memory and Emotional Regulation | Findings provide insight about its potential as a noninvasive therapy
👉 https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2025/new-research-reveals-that-meditation-induces-changes-in-deep-brain-areas-associated-with-memory-and-emotional-regulation

Researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, using intracranial electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings from deep within the brain, found that meditation led to changes in activity in the amygdala and hippocampus, key brain regions involved in emotional regulation and memory.

The study is unique in that it used advanced invasive neural recording techniques, which provide much more detailed and precise insight into the brain compared to traditional techniques like scalp EEG and may help explain the positive impact these practices have and could contribute to the development of meditation-based approaches for improving memory and emotional regulation.

“This study provides a foundation for future research that could contribute to developing meditation-based interventions to help individuals modulate brain activity in areas involved in memory and emotional regulation... Meditation is noninvasive, widely accessible, and doesn’t require specialized equipment or medical resources, making it an easy-to-use tool for improving mental well-being. However, it is crucial to note that meditation is not a replacement for traditional therapies. Instead, it could serve as a complementary low-cost option for individuals experiencing challenged with memory or emotional regulation.” - Dr. Ignacio Saez.

Full Study in PNAS
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2409423122

Intracranial substrates of meditation-induced neuromodulation in the amygdala and hippocampus
- Christina Maher, Lea Tortolero, Soyeon Jun, Daniel Cummins, Adam Saad, James Young, Lizbeth Nuñez Martinez, Zachary Schulman, Lara Marcuse, Allison C. Waters, PhD; Helen Mayberg, MD; Richard J. Davidson, Fedor Panov, and Ignacio Saez, PhD



The Mount Sinai Hospital Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine Mount Sinai West
University of Wisconsin-Madison

07/02/2025

DON'T MISS "How Stress-Related Immune Activation May Alter the Brain and Impair Behavior" in the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (BBRF) Blog.

In the fall of 2021, BBRF Scientific Council member Scott J. Russo, Ph.D., and colleagues at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai launched the Brain and Body Research Center at that institution. It is composed of researchers and clinicians from diverse specialties, from neuroscience and neurology to cardiology, gastroenterology, dermatology, and immunology, who, says Dr. Russo, “are pioneering a holistic approach to revealing the intricate connections between the brain and body that drive health and disease.”

Central in this effort, which Dr. Russo directs, is to “decode the brain’s conversations” with other organ systems, including the heart, gut, and skin.

“We are trying to understand how the brain and peripheral organ systems interact and, importantly, to understand why there are so many co-morbidities between mental illnesses, neurological conditions, and systemic organ diseases.” - Dr. Scott Russo

Tracing potentially causal relationships like this is at the heart of why Dr. Russo and colleagues have formed their new research center.

Learn More at the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation
https://bbrfoundation.org/blog/how-stress-related-immune-activation-may-alter-brain-and-impair-behavior



Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai The Mount Sinai Hospital Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine