The Minimal Phenomenal Experience Project:
Towards a minimal-model explanation for consciousness
MPE is the abbreviation for “minimal phenomenal experience”. The main goal of this research project is to develop a minimal model of conscious experience, by focusing on awareness “as such”. One background assumption is that self-consciousness, time representation, and self-location in a spatial frame of reference are not necessary conditions for consciousness to occur. Currently, members of the network use an investigation of the phenomenology and neural correlates of specific subjective experiences in meditation as its main entry point, experiences which are later often described as episodes of “pure consciousness”.
General Introduction
The Elephant and the Blind
- What if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness?
- The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like?
- What is the essence of human consciousness?
In “The Elephant and the Blind”, influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world’s leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world’s first comprehensive account of states of pure consciousness. Drawing on a large psychometric study of meditators in 57 countries, Metzinger focuses on “pure awareness” in meditation—the simplest form of experience there is—to illuminate the most fundamental aspects of how consciousness, the brain, and illusions of self all interact.
Date of publication: February 6, 2024
The MPE Network
Professor Emeritus
Philosophisches Seminar
Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany
National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
- Conceptual foundations
- Methodology
- Phenomenology of MPE
Project partners
Postdoctoral Researcher,
Centre for Philosophical Psychology (CSPE),
University of Antwerp, Belgium
Former project manager of the MPE-network
- Conscious dreamless sleep
- Alcaraz-Sanchez, 2021
- Alcaraz-Sanchez et al., 2022
Research Assistant Professor,
Department of Psychology,
The University of Texas at Austin, USA
- Cognitive neuroscience
- Conscious dreamless sleep
- Lucid Dreaming
Department of Neurology,
Center for Sleep and Consciousness, University of Wisconsin, USA
- Conceptual foundations
- Methodology
- Phenomenology of MPE
- Boly et al, 2024
Monash University, Australia
- Conceptual foundations
- Selfless states of consciousness
- Buddhist Philosophy
- Chadha & Nichols, 2020
- Chadha, 2023
Visiting Researcher,
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Freiburg, Germany
Former project manager of the MPE-network
- Phenomenology of MPE
- Costines et. al, 2021
Principal investigator,
Donders Sleep & Memory Lab,
Radboud University, Netherlands
- Conscious experience during sleep
Alex Gamma
Independent Researcher
- Questionnaire development
- Psychometric analysis
- Gamma & Metzinger, 2021
Research Fellow,
Tsadra Foundation,
NYC, USA
- Buddhist Studies
- Tibetology
- Comparative Philosophy
- Recent publications
Lars Sandved-Smith
PhD candidate,
Cognition and Philosophy Lab,
Center for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies,
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia
- Computational Phenomenology
- Sandved-Smith et al., 2021
- Lars Sandved-Smith wins The 2024 Computational Phenomenology of Pure Awareness Prize.
Senior Scientist,
Social, Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience Unit,
University of Vienna, Austria
- Predictive processing and MPE
- Brain connectivity
- fMRI neurofeedback training
Director,
Cognition & Plasticity laboratory,
University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
- Contemplative neuroscience
- Methodology
- Laukkonen & Slagter, 2021
Professor of Philosophy,
University of British Columbia,
Vancouver, Canada
- Conceptual foundations
- Methodology
- Phenomenology of MPE
- Indian philosophy
- Thompson, 2015
Director of Research,
Lyon Neuroscience Research Center,
INSERM
Lyon, France
- Neural correlates of subjective experience
- Large-scale neuronal integration
- Neurophysiological basis of mindfulness and compassion meditation, impact on consciousness, attention, emotion regulation, and pain perception
- Fucci et al., 2018
- Zorn et al., 2020
Research fellow,
Department of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychotherapy,
University of Freiburg, Germany
- Methodology
- Neurophenomenology of MPE
- Self-boundary dissolution in meditation
- Nave et al., 2021
- Trautwein et al., 2023
- Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2024
Postdoctoral Research Fellow,
Monash Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies,
Melbourne, Australia
- Phenomenology of MPE
- Meditation techniques
- Woods et al., 2020,
- 2022a,
- 2022b,
- 2023
The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel
- Mindfulness-induced selflessness: a MEG neurophenomenological study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2013
- Prediction-based neural mechanisms for shielding the self from existential threat. NeuroImage, 2022
- Mindfulness meditators’ brains show an acceptance of death which predicts positively-valenced meditative self-dissolution experiences. 2023
Research Fellow, DMT Research Group, Imperial College London, UK
- Neurophenomenology (fMRI and EEG) of psychedelics
- 5-MeO-DMT as a pharmacological model for MPE
Senior Researcher, Brain Modeling department, Neuroelectrics Barcelona, Spain
Cognitive Science, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany
Subprojects
Psychometrics of pure awareness
Pure awareness during dreamless deep sleep
Computational phenomenology of pure awareness
Discover Our
Multilingual Questionnaire
The phenomena that this questionnaire focuses on are all experiences that involve “awareness of awareness itself” or “consciousness of consciousness itself”. The object of our investigation is a subjective experience called “consciousness as such”. This state is also sometimes called “pure awareness” or “pure consciousness”.
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