{
  "id": 6408246,
  "title": "What is it like to be a blob? A distributed, decentred and context-sensitive neurobiology of consciousness",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/09/what-is-it-like-to-be-a-blob-a-distributed-decentred-and-context",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-09-09T00:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "bioRxiv",
    "slug": "biorxiv",
    "url": "https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.02.745341v1?rss=1"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Consciousness, a topic of intense study, has been traditionally explored by focusing on specific brain regions or systems that may be privileged. To challenge this conventional approach, a study examined consciousness through a different lens - one that is distributed, decentred, and context-sensitive. Researchers analyzed 579 consciousness-focused neuroimaging studies, using semantic clustering of titles and abstracts to identify seven domains. The corrected meta-analytic maps revealed these domains had limited overlap and no invariant cross-domain core. Remarkably, these maps occupied 18.0% of grey matter and extended across 91.0% of brain regions.\n\nAfter accounting for reporting topography, distributed cognitive, sensorimotor, and organismic-affective maps were found to reconstruct the residual consciousness landscape more effectively than spatial surrogates. The organismic-affective maps contributed the most, but the functional contributions varied contextually across domains. Crucially, theory-associated regional loci added no additional meaningful prediction. Information carried by the functional families was found to be both redundant and synergistic. Coactivation-network and hypergraph analyses further revealed a shared network repertoire, but with context-dependent higher-order coalitions.\n\nThese findings argue against the existence of an invariant core for consciousness. Instead, they support a distributed neurobiology of consciousness where specialised systems are weighted and combined differently depending on the context.",
  "summary": "Consciousness is often studied by asking whether particular brain regions or systems are privileged. We tested a distributed, decentred and context-sensitive alternative using 579 consciousness-focused neuroimaging studies. Semantic clustering of titles and abstracts identified seven domains whose corrected meta-analytic maps showed limited overlap and no invariant cross-domain core. These maps…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}