In Consciousness we Trust The Cognitive Neuroscience of Subjective Experience

In Consciousness We Trust is a synthesis of Hakwan Lau's 20-year research programme exploring the neuroscience of consciousness. Discussing studies from his own laboratory, Lau uses various neuroscience techniques to address challenging philosophical questions about the nature of our subjective experience.

Considering the qualitative nature of subjective experience, the book reviews the current cognitive neuroscience literature on conscious perception, attention, and metacognition and puts forward a mechanistic account of experience through the context of personal journey. Chapters cover different major theoretical positions, to relate the nature of consciousness to relevant phenomena such as attention, metacognition, rational control, emotion, and sense of agency.

This is a must-read for graduate students and researchers in cognitive neuroscience and philosophy, and an important contribution to the consciousness literature.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International] licence.

Hakwan Lau, Team Leader, Laboratory for Consciousness, Center for Brain Science, Riken Institute

Hakwan Lau is Team Leader in the Laboratory for Consciousness, Center of Brain Science, Riken Institute near Tokyo. He was born and raised in Hong Kong, where he studied philosophy and cognitive science. Upon graduation, a Rhodes Scholarship enabled him to obtain his doctoral degree from Oxford
University. Between 2017-20 he held a position at the University of Hong Kong, his alma mater. He has also been an associate professor at Columbia University in the City of New York, a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Centre of Neuroimaging in London, and, most recently, a fully tenured Professor
at UCLA.