Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropharmacology

A Challenge for the 21st Century: Neurophenomenology

Nicka Stein^{* *}Correspondence: Nicka Stein, Department of Neurology, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, Email:

Author info »

Introduction

In order to explore the neurophenomenological approach in the investigation of human subjectivity and the neural underpinnings of cognition, cognitive neuroscientists are invited and challenged in this editorial. The scientific community may benefit from neurophenomenology, but it is also extremely difficult to implement. There's no doubt that science will continue to astound us with the things it discovers and develops, and that these discoveries will form the cornerstone of our culture and society. Therefore, knowing who and what we are is absolutely essential to both our health and the health of the rest of the world.

The term "neurophenomenology," which combines the terms "neuroscience" and "phenomenology," refers to a branch of science that is predicated on the idea that groups of neural networks that dynamically and flexibly connect various brain regions and areas are the best candidates for studying the neurophysiological underpinnings of conscious behaviour. Numerous researchers have discussed this strategy, though the specifics of each model differ. The idea of "lived experience" is closely related to neurophenomenology, and it refers to the direct investigation of the origin, cause, and prereflective aspects of human existence.

Description

Motivating neurophenomenological research and advancing it to the fore of cognitive neuroscience is one potential approach. In this situation, integrative activity at various levels of the central nervous system serves as the drive, while mindfulness, enactivism, and embodied views offer this framework. The goal of mindfulness is to help people build happiness in their lives via the focused, non-judgmental awareness of their present experiences. The subjective realm of the human mind is shown as another way of knowing about reality. The organism's independence and autonomy are emphasised by the inactive approach. Providing a framework for comprehending the subjectivity and neural underpinnings of cognition is one of the many themes that modern neuroscience has not sufficiently addressed. The connection between first-person lived experience and third-person natural science is still largely unknown. There is still a significant explanatory gap connecting the mechanisms of the brain and the mind, despite the identification of numerous models and neural correlates of conscious experience. This gap has been conceptualised as conceptual, epistemological, and methodological by Fazelpur and Thompson.

A fully developed neuroscience is all that is required to understand cognition, according to the current scientific paradigm, which emphasises a reductionist physicality mindset. Though cognitive neuroscience has had mixed results, this has left gaps regarding additional explanatory theories. In light of this, there is a lack of a sufficient conceptual framework to explain phenomena that "(i) Have a first person, subjective experiential or phenomenal character; (ii) Link first and third person perspectives; (iii) Are reportable and describable; and (iv) Are neurobiologically realized."

Therefore, from an inactive perspective, it is necessary to investigate large scale dynamic networks in order to comprehend how cognition, intentional action, and consciousness are produced by self-organizing neural activity. Neurophenomenology has an immediate allure, but due to practical issues, its incorporation into actual research programmes has been constrained. This is so because neurophenomenology places a strong emphasis on the micro dynamics of experience, or the level of quick mental events with very specific content. It is challenging to find a correlation between neural and experiential descriptions because the majority of neural measures of behaviour have much coarser functional selectivity. But with the development of new techniques, it is now possible to gather descriptions of neural and experiential dynamics at a fine enough level to conduct correlational research.

Future prediction

The information is assumed to flow in a hierarchical, inputoutput system starting on the sensory end of things, transformed from stage to stage, until the final end product is obtained in the traditional neuroscience model of brain processing. Such a system, which Walter Freeman has referred to as the "passivist cognitivist view" of the brain, processes perception through a series of bottom up feed forward and top-down feedback loops. The flow of information, however, is heteroarchical, recursive, re-entrant, and self-activating from an inactive perspective, with processes that begin and end everywhere. "The inactive approach treats perception, emotion, and cognition as dependent aspects of intentional action and starts analysis by focusing on the brain's self-generated, endogenous activity.

Conclusion

A determined and focused effort is required to deploy a neurophenomenological approach that stresses "lived experience" in order to bridge the gap between first person lived experience and third person natural science. We hope that early attempts in that direction are strengthened and that in the new century, a new generation of cognitive neuroscientists take the task seriously. Furthermore, we anticipate that the journal of brain, behaviour and cognitive sciences would serve as an appropriate venue for such initiatives.