The Oxford Companion to Consciousness

A companion is a comrade, a consort, and a partner, and our hope in putting together this volume was to create such a guide and friend for students of consciousness. As such, this volume aims to provide a comprehensive account—a map, if you like—of current work on consciousness. Our approach has been an inclusive one. Some of the entries found herein form the mainstay of consciousness research (e.g. consciousness and attention; the neural basis of consciousness; consciousness in animals); others concern topics that are perhaps less central to the study of consciousness but—we think—no less interesting (e.g. the rubber hand illusion; the experience of déjà vu; the neuroscience of orgasm). In adopting this somewhat eclectic approach to our topic we have taken our cue from Richard Gregory’s Oxford Companion to the Mind, to which we are much indebted.