September 9, 2026
Angus Leung, Yota Kawashima, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
preprint
Freud’s iceberg metaphor has long been used to describe (un)consciousness: a huge unconsciousness supports a tiny tip of consciousness. Inspired by this, research has assumed that unconscious discriminative processing persists into consciousness, employing contrastive analysis to isolate the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). For example, in electroencephalography (EEG) studies, features...
PLoS Biology
July 1, 2025
Angus Leung, Ahmed A Mahmoud, Travis Jeans et al.
3 citations
The neural mechanisms of consciousness remain elusive. Previous studies on both human and non-human animals, through manipulation of level of conscious arousal, have reported that specific time-series features correlate with level of consciousness, such as spectral power in certain frequency bands. However, such features often lack principled, theoretical justifications as to why they should be...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2023
Angus Leung, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
Mediano et al. (The strength of weak integrated information theory. Trends Cogn Sci 2022;26: 646-55.) separate out strong and weak flavours of the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. They describe 'strong IIT' as attempting to derive a universal formula for consciousness and 'weak IIT' as searching for empirically measurable correlates of aspects of consciousness. We put...
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
April 29, 2022
Angus Leung, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
How a system generates conscious experience remains an elusive question. One approach towards answering this is to consider the information available in the system from the perspective of the system itself. Integrated information theory (IIT) proposes a measure to capture this integrated information (Φ). While Φ can be computed at any spatiotemporal scale, IIT posits that it be applied at the...
PLoS Computational Biology
February 1, 2021
Angus Leung, Dror Cohen, Bruno van Swinderen et al.
The physical basis of consciousness remains one of the most elusive concepts in current science. One influential conjecture is that consciousness is to do with some form of causality, measurable through information. The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes that conscious experience, filled with rich and specific content, corresponds directly to a hierarchically...
Angus Leung, Naotsugu Tsuchiya
preprint
Mediano et al. (1. Mediano 2022 TICS) separate out strong and weak flavours of the integrated information theory (IIT) of consciousness. They describe “strong IIT” as attempting to derive a universal formula for consciousness, and “weak IIT” as searching for empirically measurable correlates of aspects of consciousness. We put forward that their overall notion of “weak IIT” may be too weak....
Chikayo Hemmi, Angus Leung, Jennifer Windt et al.
preprint
Dream experiences during sleep provide an excellent opportunity to investigate the neural basis of consciousness. Previous studies have examined the neural correlates of dreaming using electroencephalography (EEG), focusing on spectral power in specific frequency bands. However, findings have been inconsistent, particularly regarding the spatiotemporal characteristics of these correlates,...