PsyArXiv
November 17, 2025
Elise G Rowe, Ken Takeda, Masafumi Oizumi et al.
preprint
The effects of top-down attention on perception have been intensively studied using binary categorization tasks (e.g., seen vs. unseen). However, such tasks poorly characterise the quality of experience, or qualia, for short. To characterise attentional effects on qualia, we combined a dual-task attention paradigm with similarity rating tasks to examine whether relational structures of qualia...
iScience
March 21, 2025
Genji Kawakita, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, Ken Takeda et al.
Whether one person's subjective experience of the "redness" of red is equivalent to another's is a fundamental question in consciousness studies. Intersubjective comparison of the relational structures of sensory experiences, termed "qualia structures", can constrain the question. We propose an unsupervised alignment method, based on optimal transport, to find the optimal mapping between the...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2025
Elise G Rowe, Ken Takeda, Masafumi Oizumi et al.
Top-down attentional amplification is often assumed to affect 'what' we see, that is, the contents of conscious experience. Previously, this claim has been examined by studies that manipulated attention and characterized conscious perception in binary categorical labels (e.g. seen versus unseen). However, these categorical judgments are not powerful enough to characterize the quality of...
PsyArXiv
January 7, 2023
Genji Kawakita, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, Ken Takeda et al.
preprint
To what extent are sensory experiences equivalent between individuals? One promising approach to this fundamental question about consciousness is to intersubjectively compare the similarity relationships of sensory experiences, named "qualia structures". Conventional methods for comparing the similarity relationships largely sidestep the issue by assuming experiences evoked by the same stimuli...
Genji Kawakita, Ariel Zeleznikow-Johnston, Ken Takeda et al.
preprint
Whether one person’s experience of “red” is equivalent to another’s has long been considered unanswerable. One promising approach to this fundamental question about consciousness is the intersubjective comparison of the similarity relations of sensory experiences, termed “qualia structures”. Conventional methods for comparing similarity relations largely sidestep the issue, assuming that...