BACKGROUND Citicoline, a neuroprotective drug, has been suggested to improve level of consciousness, mitigating secondary to brain damage and ectopic vascular calcification, following post-traumatic neurogenesis and angiogenesis, inducing calcification modulators, like fetuin-A and matrix Gla-protein (MGP). This study aimed to investigate effects of citicoline on levels of consciousness, serum ...

Objectives: We here assessed the effects of left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex transcranial direct current stimulation (DLPF-tDCS) on Coma Recovery ScaleRevised scores in severely brain-damaged patients with disorders of consciousness. Methods: In a double-blind sham-controlled crossover design, anodal and sham tDCS were delivered in randomized order over the left DLPF cortex for 20 minutes in...

Barron and Klein (1) define consciousness very narrowly, excluding most of the attributes commonly associated with it (e.g., self-awareness). By limiting the definition to a form of information processing, they find that insects qualify. However, just to put this conclusion in perspective, by the same definition, some robots are also conscious and capable of subjective experience. Autonomous, s...

The purpose of this chapter is twofold. The primary purpose is to revisit Ned Block’s distinction between phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness. The secondary purpose is to examine key case studies from consciousness research in the cognitive sciences. Block has argued that what he calls phenomenal consciousness and access consciousness are completely independent phenomena, and that...

Current research on artificial consciousness is focused on phenomenal consciousness and on functional consciousness. We propose to shift the focus to self-consciousness in order to open new areas of investigation. We use an existing scenario where self-consciousness is considered as the result of an evolution of representations. Application of the scenario to the possible build up of a consciou...