Consciousness is one of the most significant scientific problems today. Renewed interest in the nature of consciousness - a phenomenon long considered not to be scientifically explorable, as well as increasingly widespread availability of multimodal functional brain imaging techniques (EEG, ERP, MEG, fMRI and PET), now offer the possibility of detailed, integrated exploration of the neural, behavioral, and computational correlates of consciousness. The present volume aims to confront the latest theoretical insights in the scientific study of human consciousness with the most recent behavioral, neuroimaging, electrophysiological, pharmacological and neuropathological data on brain function in altered states of consciousness such as: brain death, coma, vegetative state, minimally conscious state, locked-in syndrome, dementia, epilepsy, schizophrenia, hysteria, general anesthesia, sleep, hypnosis, and hallucinations. The interest of this is threefold. First, patients with altered states of consciousness continue to represent a major clinical problem in terms of clinical assessment of consciousness and daily management. Second, the exploration of brain function in altered states of consciousness represents a unique lesional approach to the scientific study of consciousness and adds to the worldwide effort to identify the "neural correlate of consciousness". Third, new scientific insights in this field have major ethical and social implications regarding our care for these patients.

Chapter 1: What in the world is consciousness?
Chapter 2: A neuroscientific approach to consciousness
Chapter 3: Functional neuroimaging during altered states of consciousness: how and what do we measure?
Chapter 4: Global workspace theory of consciousness: toward a cognitive neuroscience of human experience
Chapter 5: Skill, corporality and alerting capacity in an account of sensory consciousness
Chapter 6: Methods for studying unconscious learning
Chapter 7: Computational correlates of consciousness
Chapter 8: Machine consciousness
Chapter 9: Consciousness, information integration, and the brain
Chapter 10: Dynamics of thalamo-cortical network oscillations and human perception
Chapter 11: From synchronous neuronal discharges to subjective awareness?
Chapter 12: Genes and experience shape brain networks of conscious control
Chapter 13: Visual phenomenal consciousness: a neurological guided tour
Chapter 14: The mental self
Chapter 15: Posterior cingulate, precuneal and retrosplenial cortices: cytology and components of the neural network correlates of consciousness
Chapter 16: Human cognition during REM sleep and the activity profile within frontal and parietal cortices: a reappraisal of functional neuroimaging data
Chapter 17: General anesthesia and the neural correlates of consciousness
Chapter 18: Brain imaging in research on anesthetic mechanisms: studies with propofol
Chapter 19: The cognitive modulation of pain: hypnosis- and placebo-induced analgesia
Chapter 20: Consciousness and epilepsy: why are patients with absence seizures absent?
Chapter 21: Two aspects of impaired consciousness in Alzheimer's disease
Chapter 22: Functional brain imaging of symptoms and cognition in schizophrenia
Chapter 23: Hysterical conversion and brain function
Chapter 24: The out-of body experience: precipitating factors and neural correlates
Chapter 25: Near-death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors
Chapter 26: The concept and practice of brain death
Chapter 27: The minimally conscious state: defining the borders of consciousness
Chapter 28: Behavioral evaluation of consciousness in severe brain damage
Chapter 29: Evoked potentials in severe brain injury
Chapter 30: Event-related potential measures of consciousness: two equations with three unknowns
Chapter 31: Novel aspects of the neuropathology of the vegetative state after blunt head injury
Chapter 32: Using a hierarchical approach to investigate residual auditory cognition in persistent vegetative state
Chapter 33: Modeling the minimally conscious state: measurements of brain function and therapeutic possibilities
Chapter 34: The locked-in syndrome : what is it like to be conscious but paralyzed and voiceless?
Chapter 35: Brain-computer interfaces - the key for the conscious brain locked into a paralyzed body
Chapter 36: Neural plasticity and recovery of function
Chapter 37: Thirty years of the vegetative state: clinical, ethical and legal problems
Chapter 38: Assessing health-related quality of life after severe brain damage: potentials and limitations
Chapter 39: Outcome and ethics in severe brain damage
Chapter 40: Clinical pragmatism and the care of brain damaged patients: toward a palliative neuroethics for disorders of consciousness