Schizophrenia Bulletin
November 10, 2025
Elahe Arani, Simona Garobbio, Maya Roinishvili et al.
3 citations
People with schizophrenia rely less on prior experiences when interpreting visual stimuli, leading to faster perceptual switches in a bistable perception task called Structure-from-Motion (SfM). In the intermittent version of this task, patients with schizophrenia and their unaffected siblings showed significantly higher alternation rates than healthy controls, while patients with depression had the lowest alternation rates. In the continuous version, only patients with schizophrenia had shorter percept durations. The intermittent SfM paradigm may serve as an endophenotype for schizophrenia, reflecting altered adaptation or cross-inhibition mechanisms that affect prior processing.
PLoS Biology
July 6, 2026
Maëlan Q. Menétrey, Michael H Herzog, David Pascucci
In the Sequential Metacontrast (SQM) paradigm, later visual stimuli alter the perception of earlier ones, indicating that conscious perception can follow extended unconscious processing. Using EEG recordings in humans, researchers identified two distinct neural activity stages: an early occipital pattern around 200 milliseconds after the initial vernier, linked to unconscious processing, and a later centro-parietal pattern between 400 and 600 milliseconds after SQM onset, associated with the integrated percept and behavioral report. The transition between these patterns marks the shift from unconscious encoding of individual visual stimuli to their integrated conscious percept.
The Behavioral and brain sciences
June 25, 2026
Michael H Herzog, Adrien Doerig
Fleming and Michel link consciousness to sensory horizons, model-based computations, reality monitoring, and decision termination, but these functions can operate without consciousness, potentially making consciousness epiphenomenal. Like other current theories, this approach places excessive explanatory weight on a limited set of factors.
The European journal of neuroscience
June 1, 2022
Maëlan Q. Menétrey, Lukas Vogelsang, Michael H Herzog
Brain waves (EEG, MEG) and fluctuating behavioral responses are often cited as evidence for discrete perception—the idea that conscious experience occurs in discrete snapshots, such as one percept per alpha cycle. However, the connection between brain waves and discrete perception is often vague. This review examines different models of discrete perception, highlights problems with specific interpretations, and discusses how certain brain wave findings may relate to particular aspects of discrete theories. The main goal is to provide a short overview of discrete perception models and to emphasize the need to clarify which aspects of these theories are addressed by which brain wave findings.
Consciousness and Cognition
February 1, 2022
Michael H Herzog, Aaron Schurger, Adrien Doerig
The authors argue that integrated information theory (IIT) cannot be a scientific theory of consciousness because it relies on pure first-person experience as a foundation, which is not measurable except through reports, brain activity, and their relationship. Science requires measurements and data, not assertions of ground truth independent of data. No experiment based on third-person data can test IIT as a theory of consciousness. The authors contend that IIT's conception of consciousness is fully dissociated from measurable things, implying that both the level and content of consciousness are epiphenomenal and lack causal power. This leads to a form of dissociative epiphenomenalism that undermines trust in reports about first-person experiences, which are the basis for IIT's own axioms, meaning accepting IIT leads to rejecting its axioms.
Neuroscience of Consciousness
January 1, 2019
Adrien Doerig, Frank Scharnowski, Michael H Herzog
The longstanding debate over whether conscious perception is continuous or discrete is addressed with a two-stage model in which unconscious processing integrates information continuously until a discrete conscious percept forms. In response to criticism from Fekete et al., the authors argue that simple sliding windows cannot account for apparent motion and related phenomena within a continuous framework. They also contend that the supervenience argument raised by their critics applies only to qualia realists, a philosophical position the authors do not adopt.
Michael H Herzog, Aaron Schurger, Adrien Doerig
preprint
The authors argue that integrated information theory (IIT) cannot be a scientific theory of consciousness because it relies on pure first-person experience as ground truth, which is not measurable except through reports, brain activity, and their relationship. They contend that science requires testable data, and no experiment based on third-person data can test IIT as a theory of consciousness. The authors further claim that IIT implies consciousness is epiphenomenal—lacking causal power—and that accepting IIT leads to rejecting its own axioms, since reports about first-person experiences, which are the foundation for those axioms, become untrustworthy under the theory.