Introduction Within the past few decades, the nature of consciousness has become a central issue in neuroscience, and it is increasingly the focus of both theoretical and empirical work. Studying consciousness is vital to developing an understanding of human perception and behavior, of our relationships with one another, and of our relationships with other potentially conscious animals....
The Dynamic Core and Global Workspace hypotheses were independently put forward to provide mechanistic and biologically plausible accounts of how brains generate conscious mental content. The Dynamic Core proposes that reentrant neural activity in the thalamocortical system gives rise to conscious experience. Global Workspace reconciles the limited capacity of momentary conscious content with...
A recent theoretical emphasis on complex interactions within neural systems underlying consciousness has been accompanied by proposals for the quantitative characterization of these interactions. In this article, we distinguish key aspects of consciousness that are amenable to quantitative measurement from those that are not. We carry out a formal analysis of the strengths and limitations of...
In binocular rivalry, the observer views two incongruent images, one through each eye, but is conscious of only one image at a time. The image that is perceptually dominant alternates every few seconds. We used this phenomenon to investigate neural correlates of conscious perception. We presented a red vertical grating to one eye and a blue horizontal grating to the other eye, with each grating...
Conventional approaches to understanding consciousness are generally concerned with the contribution of specific brain areas or groups of neurons. By contrast, it is considered here what kinds of neural processes can account for key properties of conscious experience. Applying measures of neural integration and complexity, together with an analysis of extensive neurological data, leads to a...
In binocular rivalry, a subject views two incongruent stimuli through each eye but consciously perceives only one stimulus at a time, with a switch in perceptual dominance every few seconds. To investigate the neural correlates of perceptual dominance in humans, seven subjects were recorded with a 148-channel magnetoencephalography array while experiencing binocular rivalry. A red vertical...
Abstract This work addresses the complexity of neuronal interactions, the nature of this complexity and how it can be characterised in real neurophysiological processes. A measure of complexity has been introduced recently (Tononi et al. [1994]: Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91:5033–5037) that is sensitive to the joint constraints imposed by two principles of brain organisation: functional segregation...