IT’S ALL IN YOUR HEAD, OR IS IT? –
Dec. 28, 2025 – (Image Credit: Leon-Pascal Jc/Unsplash) Questions about the nature of consciousness remain among the most perplexing areas of modern scientific research, with implications for neuroscience and the human mind, as well as our broader concept of reality.
In 2025, many new thresholds in this complex area of study were crossed, with empirical inquiry into our questions about the nature of consciousness occurring within fields such as neuroscience, psychology, and medicine. Many advancements in this area over the last year have also challenged long-held assumptions about where and how consciousness originates, how widespread it may be, and how profoundly altered states can reshape human perception. Among the year’s most provocative work about consciousness, one controversial peer-reviewed paper published in AIP Advances proposed that “universal consciousness” may have existed before the Big Bang, functioning not as a byproduct of matter but as a foundational feature of reality itself.
