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.

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.

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

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.