A central question in consciousness research is whether perceptual awareness is primarily reflected in early posterior sensory activity or in later frontal processes associated with access and report. Empirical tests of these alternatives are challenging because most paradigms rely on explicit perceptual reports, introducing motor and decisional confounds. Here, we used an...
Abstract A central question in consciousness research is whether perceptual awareness arises predominantly from activity in posterior sensory regions or from later frontal processes associated with access and report. Empirical tests of these alternatives are challenging because most paradigms rely on explicit perceptual reports, introducing motor and decisional confounds. Here, we used an...
PLoS One2026Clement Abbatecola, Bernard Marius ’t Hart, Belén M. Montabes De la Cruz et al.
We investigate the subjective experience of space around the visual blind spot area, the cortical representation of which is missing feedforward connectivity from one eye. We performed these experiments as part of an adversarial collaboration to test contrasting theories of consciousness; Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Predictive Processing Active Inference (AI), and Predictive Processing...
Slow-wave activity (SWA) is a hallmark of the loss of consciousness in non-REM sleep and anesthesia. The mechanistic underpinnings of SWA, and its evolution when transitioning toward the conscious brain state is poorly understood. We address this topic by recording multi-area and laminar activity in posterior parietal (PPC) and primary visual (V1) cortices of mice spontaneously awakening from...
Research into the neural mechanisms of consciousness has so far mainly progressed through human neuroscience. However, most of the available techniques for use in human subjects lack the ability to probe the underlying neuron- and circuit-level mechanisms. Animal experiments offer a promising solution to these limitations. In particular, experiments in rodents allow us to combine large-scale...
PsyArXivJuly 5, 2025Clement Abbatecola, Bernard Marius 'T Hart, Belen Maria Montabes de la Cruz et al.
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We investigate the subjective experience of space around the visual blind spot area, the cortical representation of which is missing feedforward connectivity from one eye. We performed these experiments as part of an adversarial collaboration to test contrasting theories of consciousness; Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Predictive Processing Active Inference (AI), and Predictive Processing...
During the wake-sleep cycle, consciousness waxes and wanes, and this is thought to be reflected in varying levels of integration between brain areas. Recent studies challenged the notion that consciousness is homogeneously present or absent in a brain state, as exemplified by conscious reports found in otherwise unconscious Non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Here, we tested if functional...
PLoS One2025Kengo Takahashi, Samuel Pontes Quero, Julien Fiorilli et al.
A major debate in the field of consciousness pertains to whether neuronal activity or rather the causal structure of neural circuits underlie the generation of conscious experience. The former position is held by theoretical accounts of consciousness based on the predictive processing framework (such as neurorepresentationalism and active inference), while the latter is posited by the...
eNeuroSeptember 1, 2024Simone Ciceri, Matthijs N Oude Lohuis, Vivi Rottschäfer et al.
Conscious reportability of visual input is associated with a bimodal neural response in the primary visual cortex (V1): an early-latency response coupled to stimulus features and a late-latency response coupled to stimulus report or detection. This late wave of activity, central to major theories of consciousness, is thought to be driven by the prefrontal cortex (PFC), responsible for...
Top-down, feedback projections account for a large portion of all connections between neurons in the thalamocortical system, yet their precise role remains the subject of much discussion. A large number of studies has focused on investigating how sensory information is transformed across hierarchically-distributed processing stages in a feedforward fashion, and computational models have shown...
Neuronal activity is markedly different across brain states: it varies from desynchronized activity during wakefulness to the synchronous alternation between active and silent states characteristic of deep sleep. Surprisingly, limited attention has been paid to investigating how brain states affect sensory processing. While it was long assumed that the brain was mostly disconnected from...
How consciousness (experience) arises from and relates to material brain processes (the "mind-body problem") has been pondered by thinkers for centuries, and is regarded as among the deepest unsolved problems in science, with wide-ranging theoretical, clinical, and ethical implications. Until the last few decades, this was largely seen as a philosophical topic, but not widely accepted in...