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Prioritizing mental health through accessible healthcare is crucial. Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has the potential to significantly improve the treatment of mental diseases. In a participatory process involving various stakeholders, recommendations were developed for policy makers, health authorities, healthcare providers of NIBS, Industry, researchers in industry and academia and research funding agencies.

Despite the theoretical and epistemological complexities involved in dealing with the phenomenon of consciousness, the author describes defines a pragmatic and experimental methodology, based on a two-dimensional neurocognitive approach. Indeed, in order to avoid the hard problem of consciousness, it would be better to focus on the real problem, i.e. on mechanisms that can be empirically observed, leaving out all of the epistemic and phenomenological features of conscious states. The idea of a hierarchical relationship between the level (wakefulness) and the content (awareness) of consciousness could give rise to an interpretation which justifies both the unity and, at the same time, the phenomenal variety of consciousness. However, studies on sleep, REM phase and nightmares might challenge at least the strong version of this hypothetical relationship between different features of consciousness. Furthermore, it is important to consider whether a two-dimensional perspective, rather than a three-dimensional one, would be sufficient to exhaustively define all the objective features of consciousness.

The main subject of this dissertation is the relationship of consciousness with the world. Consciousness is extremely familiar and mysterious at the same time, and it is considered one of the most complex phenomena to describe and explain. Recently, cognitive science and neuroscience have assumed a significant role in the search for the fundamental structures of consciousness, investigating the neuronal basis that allows the emergence of our experience. For this reason, the present work is not only aimed at philosophical and phenomenological analysis but also at the latest results of neuroscience on the relationship between consciousness and brain. The first chapter outlines the main topics of contemporary consciousness studies (first-, second-, third-person perspective, the nature of qualia, phenomenal contents, the hard problem and the meta-problem of consciousness, etc.). After presenting a provisional model for the phenomenological (Sartre) and logical (Kripke) structure of consciousness, represented by intentionality, phenomenality and self-awareness (Chapter 2), I will critically discuss reductive approaches that are influential both in neuroscience and in philosophy of mind. Some of them support the possibility to conceptually and ontologically reduce experience to brain activity (neuro-centrism; Chapter 3), while others perform the hypostatization of numerous mental states within the mind/brain (mento-centrism; Chapter 4). In this regard, it is possible to identify a common paradigm, that is, the distinction between reality and appearance that occurred especially during modern philosophy (in particular Descartes) and after the modern scientific revolution (in particular Galilei). This has led to the reduction of experience to a mind- or brain-related quality/property, as we can see nowadays (Chapter 4). Given the perspectival, multifaceted structure of experience and following the analysis of several non-reductive approaches, I will argue for an ontologically and epistemologically pluralist account of consciousness, that it can be developed only through an interdisciplinary approach, by philosophy, phenomenology and neuroscience together (Chapter 5). This will allow me to address the issue of consciousness from the so-called non-reductive neurophilosophical approach, through which I will analyse the way we experience the world from both a phenomenological and a neuroscientific perspective. Supported by Sartre's phenomenological analyses of consciousness in relation to world and body, I argue that experience is not given without the embodied-being-in-the-world condition, a condition that will then be connected to the neuroscientific concept of environment-body-brain alignment (adapted from Northoff’s world-brain relation), that is, a necessary predisposition for the maintenance of consciousness (Chapter 6). In conclusion, the concept of consciousness-in-the-world will be tested through neurophilosophical experiments regarding the Locked-in syndrome and the dreaming state, suggesting the need to reconsider consciousness not merely in terms of brain- or mind-relation, but intrinsically as world-related.

Each year, the UK records 25,000 or more excess winter deaths, primarily among the elderly. A key policy response is the “Winter Fuel Payment” (WFP), a labelled but unconditional cash transfer to households with a member above the female state pension age. The WFP has been shown to raise fuel spending among eligible households. We examine the causal effect of the WFP on health outcomes, including self‐reports of chest infection, measured hypertension, and biomarkers of infection and inflammation. We find a robust, 6 percentage point reduction in the incidence of high levels of serum fibrinogen. Reductions in other disease markers point to health benefits, but the estimated effects are less robust.

A substantial body of research on the UK's National Minimum Wage (NMW) has concluded that the the NMW has not had a detrimental effect on employment. This research has directly influenced, through the Low Pay Commission, the conduct of policy, including the subsequent introduction of the National Living Wage (NLW). We revisit this literature and offer a reassessment, motivated by two concerns. First, much of this literature employs difference-in-difference designs, even though there are significant challenges in conducting appropriate inference in such designs, and they can have very low power when inference is conducted appropriately. Second, the literature has focused on the binary outcome of statistical rejection of the null hypothesis, without attention to the range of (positive or negative) impacts on employment that are consistent with the data. In our re-analysis of the data, we conduct inference using recent suggestions for best practice and consider what magnitude of employment effects the data can and cannot rule out. We find that the data are consistent with both large negative and small positive impacts of the UK National Minimum Wage on employment. We conclude that the existing data, combined with difference-in-difference designs, in fact offered very little guidance to policy makers.

Contemporary naturalism is supposed to be the exact opposite of dualism, regarding current studies in cognitive science, in particular between philosophy and neuroscience. Indeed, one of the key principles of naturalism and materialism is the rejection of any kind of dualism, in favour of a monistic view of the world and man. However, examining Descartes' dualism and mechanism in relation to the body, it is highlighted that conceptual signs of his philosophical doctrine are still rooted in the alleged anti-cartesian naturalism. Interestingly enough, common sense, contemporary medicine and scientific paradigm reveal dualistic structures between subject and body, mental and physical diseases, brain and body, which implicitly refer to the cartesian mind-body relation, though with less ontological commitment. The "ghost in the machine" has become the "brain in the machine", therefore, this means that some conceptual features of dualism lie unaltered at the basis of contemporary science and philosophy. Finally, they will be specified some possible alternatives to the mechanist idea of the body as a machine, through the recent 4E cognition movement and the phenomenological distinction between objective-cartesian corpse and temporal-lived body.

Each year the UK records 25,000 or more excess winter deaths, primarily among the elderly. A key policy response is the 'Winter Fuel Payment' (WFP), a labelled but unconditional cash transfer to households with a member above the Female State Pension Age. The WFP has been shown to raise fuel spending among eligible households. We examine the causal effect of the WFP on health outcomes, including self-reports of chest infection, measured hypertension and biomarkers of infection and inflammation. We find a robust and statistically significant six percentage point reduction in the incidence of high levels of serum fibrinogen. Reductions in other disease markers point to health benefits, but the estimated effects are not robustly statistically significant.