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Background:

Despite accumulating evidence suggesting the tight relationship between human conscious experiences and cardiopulmonary metabolism, the psychophysiological basis underlying this relationship remains unclear. In this study, we present the hypothesis that the oxygen-delivering efficacy of the cardiopulmonary metabolism contributes to the conscious experiences.

Method:

To test this hypothesis, we carried out a large cohort of investigations with regards to mental imagery, to highlight the connection of visual imagery vividness with oxygen‐delivering ability in an organism. The properties of the red blood cells, under the control of immune cells, played significant roles in this phenomenon. Additionally, we combined the hyperbaric oxygen treatment approach and the conscious awareness detection tasks to demonstrate that the improved cardiopulmonary metabolism accelerated and promoted the processing and strength of conscious awareness along with the intensified attention executive control ability.

Results:

The results provided experimental evidence for the association of cardiopulmonary metabolism with consciousness, in conjunction with the executive role of mental imagery.

Discussion:

Overall, the data highlights the essential role of the oxygen available in the body, in the integrity of cardiopulmonary metabolism, which is related to consciousness, and further implies that the internal consciousness experience may exhibit executive control in psychology and physiology homeostasis.


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Association of visual conscious experience vividness with human cardiopulmonary function

Show Author's information Yan Sun1Xiaojuan Xue1Zefeng Li1Hailin Ma2,3Delong Zhang1( )
Key Laboratory of Brain, Cognition and Education Sciences, Ministry of Education, China; School of Psychology, Center for Studies of Psychological Application, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Mental Health and Cognitive Science, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China
Plateau Brain Science Research Center, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China
Plateau Brain Science Research Center, Tibet University, Lhasa 850012, China

Abstract

Background:

Despite accumulating evidence suggesting the tight relationship between human conscious experiences and cardiopulmonary metabolism, the psychophysiological basis underlying this relationship remains unclear. In this study, we present the hypothesis that the oxygen-delivering efficacy of the cardiopulmonary metabolism contributes to the conscious experiences.

Method:

To test this hypothesis, we carried out a large cohort of investigations with regards to mental imagery, to highlight the connection of visual imagery vividness with oxygen‐delivering ability in an organism. The properties of the red blood cells, under the control of immune cells, played significant roles in this phenomenon. Additionally, we combined the hyperbaric oxygen treatment approach and the conscious awareness detection tasks to demonstrate that the improved cardiopulmonary metabolism accelerated and promoted the processing and strength of conscious awareness along with the intensified attention executive control ability.

Results:

The results provided experimental evidence for the association of cardiopulmonary metabolism with consciousness, in conjunction with the executive role of mental imagery.

Discussion:

Overall, the data highlights the essential role of the oxygen available in the body, in the integrity of cardiopulmonary metabolism, which is related to consciousness, and further implies that the internal consciousness experience may exhibit executive control in psychology and physiology homeostasis.

Keywords: homeostasis, cardiopulmonary, consciousness experience, executive control, mental imagery

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Publication history

Received: 30 September 2022
Revised: 28 August 2023
Accepted: 14 September 2023
Published: 05 October 2023
Issue date: October 2023

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© The Author(s) 2023

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all the participants for their involvement.

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