Philosophy and the Mind Sciences
December 23, 2025
Tadahiro Taniguchi, Masafumi Oizumi, Noburo Saji et al.
1 citation
This perspective paper explores the bidirectional influence between language emergence and the relational structure of subjective experiences, termed qualia structure, and lays out a constructive approach to the intricate dependency between the two. We hypothesize that the emergence of languages with distributional semantics (e.g., syntactic-semantic structures) is linked to the coordination of...
The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience
April 23, 2025
Tomoya Taguchi, Jun Kitazono, Shuntaro Sasai et al.
The brain comprises a complex network of interacting regions. To understand the roles and mechanisms of this intricate network, it is crucial to elucidate its structural features related to cognitive functions. Recent empirical evidence suggests that both feedforward and feedback signals are necessary for conscious perception, emphasizing the importance of subnetworks with bidirectional...
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...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 12, 2021
Jun Kitazono, Yuma Aoki, Masafumi Oizumi
preprint
Where in the brain consciousness resides remains unclear. It has been suggested that the subnetworks supporting consciousness should be bidirectionally (recurrently) connected because both feed-forward and feedback processing are necessary for conscious experience. Accordingly, evaluating which subnetworks are bidirectionally connected and the strength of these connections would likely aid the...
Entropy (Basel, Switzerland)
March 6, 2018
Jun Kitazono, Ryota Kanai, Masafumi Oizumi
The ability to integrate information in the brain is considered to be an essential property for cognition and consciousness. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) hypothesizes that the amount of integrated information ( Φ ) in the brain is related to the level of consciousness. IIT proposes that, to quantify information integration in a system as a whole, integrated information should be measured...
arXiv Preprint Archive
December 19, 2017
Jun Kitazono, Ryota Kanai, Masafumi Oizumi
The ability to integrate information in the brain is considered to be an essential property for cognition and consciousness. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) hypothesizes that the amount of integrated information ($Φ$) in the brain is related to the level of consciousness. IIT proposes that to quantify information integration in a system as a whole, integrated information should be measured...
eNeuro
2017
Andrew M. Haun, Masafumi Oizumi, Christopher K Kovach et al.
A significant problem in neuroscience concerns the distinction between neural processing that is correlated with conscious percepts from processing that is not. Here, we tested if a hierarchical structure of causal interactions between neuronal populations correlates with conscious perception. We derived the hierarchical causal structure as a pattern of integrated information, inspired by the...
PLoS Computational Biology
June 10, 2016
Masafumi Oizumi, Shun-ichi Amari, Toru Yanagawa et al.
Accumulating evidence indicates that the capacity to integrate information in the brain is a prerequisite for consciousness. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness provides a mathematical approach to quantifying the information integrated in a system, called integrated information, Φ. Integrated information is defined theoretically as the amount of information a system generates...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
October 15, 2015
Masafumi Oizumi, Naotsugu Tsuchiya, S. Amari
Significance Measuring the degree of causal influences among multiple elements of a system is a fundamental problem in physics and biology. We propose a unified framework for quantifying any combination of causal relationships between elements in a hierarchical manner based on information geometry. Our measure of integration, called geometrical integrated information, quantifies the strength of...
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 15, 2015
Masafumi Oizumi, Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Shun-ichi Amari
We propose a unified theoretical framework for quantifying spatio-temporal interactions in a stochastic dynamical system based on information geometry. In the proposed framework, the degree of interactions is quantified by the divergence between the actual probability distribution of the system and a constrained probability distribution where the interactions of interest are disconnected. This...
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 17, 2015
Masafumi Oizumi, Shun-ichi Amari, Toru Yanagawa et al.
Accumulating evidence indicates that the capacity to integrate information in the brain is a prerequisite for consciousness. Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness provides a mathematical approach to quantifying the information integrated in a system, called integrated information, $Φ$. Integrated information is defined theoretically as the amount of information a system generates...
PLoS One
May 13, 2015
Melanie Boly, Shuntaro Sasai, Olivia Gosseries et al.
69 citations
A meaningful set of stimuli, such as a sequence of frames from a movie, triggers a set of different experiences. By contrast, a meaningless set of stimuli, such as a sequence of 'TV noise' frames, triggers always the same experience--of seeing 'TV noise'--even though the stimuli themselves are as different from each other as the movie frames. We reasoned that the differentiation of cortical...
PLoS Comput. Biol.
May 1, 2014
Masafumi Oizumi, Larissa Albantakis, Giulio Tononi
This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) of consciousness 3.0, which incorporates several advances over previous formulations. IIT starts from phenomenological axioms: information says that each experience is specific – it is what it is by how it differs from alternative experiences; integration says that it is unified – irreducible to non-interdependent components; exclusion...
Naotsugu Tsuchiya, Masafumi Oizumi, Makiko Yamada et al.
preprint
我々が主観的に感じる意識と、脳の中で生じている物理・化学現象の間をつなぐ科学法則とは一体どのようなものだろうか？...
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...