意识的困难问题引发了当代意识科学所面临的最大困境：构建一个能同时阐明意识的主观性及其神经生物学基础的研究纲领。为此，Varela提出了神经现象学方案，即意识经验是脑内大尺度神经集合活动的涌现结果，神经相位同步模式就是表现形式之一。意识的主观性决定了在意识研究中必须将第一人称方法与第三人称方法结合起来，使得主观与客观数据间形成互惠的约束。

One of the major challenges facing science of consciousness today is to provide an explanatory framework that accounts for both the subjectivity and neurobiology of consciousness, which is triggered by the difficult problem of consciousness. According to Varela’s neurophenomenology, conscious expericences are the products emerging from the activity of large-scale neural assemblies in brain, and neural phase synchronization is one of its forms. Subjectivity determines that the study of consciousness must integrate first person- and third person methods, so as to enable the relationship between subjective- and objective datas to become a reciprocal constraint.