Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
May 31, 2017
Lampros Perogamvros, Benjamin Baird, Mitja Seibold et al.
76 citations
Thoughts occur during wake as well as during dreaming sleep. Using experience sampling combined with high-density EEG, we investigated the phenomenal qualities and neural correlates of spontaneously occurring thoughts across wakefulness, non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and REM sleep. Across all states, thoughts were associated with activation of a region of the midcingulate cortex....
March 17, 2017
Giulio Tononi
57 citations
Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience (axioms) and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious (postulates; see Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness: An Outline, this volume). The postulates of IIT can be seen as a list of requirements for something to exist ‘for itself’, as an intrinsic...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2017
Andrew M. Haun, Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch et al.
97 citations
It has been argued that the bandwidth of perceptual experience is low-that the richness of experience is illusory and that the amount of visual information observers can perceive and remember is extremely limited. However, the evidence suggests that this postulated poverty of experiential content is illusory and that visual phenomenology is immensely rich. To properly estimate perceptual...
Annals of Neurology
September 22, 2016
Silvia Casarotto, Angela Comanducci, Mario Rosanova et al.
504 citations
OBJECTIVE: Validating objective, brain-based indices of consciousness in behaviorally unresponsive patients represents a challenge due to the impossibility of obtaining independent evidence through subjective reports. Here we address this problem by first validating a promising metric of consciousness-the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI)-in a benchmark population who could confirm the...
Scientific Reports
August 5, 2016
Jaakko O. Nieminen, Olivia Gosseries, Marcello Massimini et al.
60 citations
When subjects become unconscious, there is a characteristic change in the way the cerebral cortex responds to perturbations, as can be assessed using transcranial magnetic stimulation and electroencephalography (TMS-EEG). For instance, compared to wakefulness, during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep TMS elicits a larger positive-negative wave, fewer phase-locked oscillations, and an overall...
Nature reviews. Neuroscience
April 20, 2016
Christof Koch, Marcello Massimini, Melanie Boly et al.
1,654 citations
There have been a number of advances in the search for the neural correlates of consciousness--the minimum neural mechanisms sufficient for any one specific conscious percept. In this Review, we describe recent findings showing that the anatomical neural correlates of consciousness are primarily localized to a posterior cortical hot zone that includes sensory areas, rather than to a...
PLoS One
February 22, 2016
Daniela Dentico, Fabio Ferrarelli, Brady A. Riedner et al.
43 citations
STUDY OBJECTIVES: We have recently shown higher parietal-occipital EEG gamma activity during sleep in long-term meditators compared to meditation-naive individuals. This gamma increase was specific for NREM sleep, was present throughout the entire night and correlated with meditation expertise, thus suggesting underlying long-lasting neuroplastic changes induced through prolonged training. The...
Neuroscience of Consciousness
2016
Erik Hoel, Larissa Albantakis, William Marshall et al.
153 citations
Causal interactions within complex systems such as the brain can be analyzed at multiple spatiotemporal levels. It is widely assumed that the micro level is causally complete, thus excluding causation at the macro level. However, by measuring effective information—how much a system’s mechanisms constrain its past and future states—we recently showed that causal power can be stronger at macro...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
May 19, 2015
Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch
The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioural and neuronal correlates of experience. However, while such correlates are important for progress to occur, they are not enough if we are to understand even basic facts, for example, why the cerebral cortex gives rise to consciousness but the cerebellum does not, though it has even more neurons and appears to be...
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...
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 27, 2014
Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch
The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioral and neuronal correlates of experience. However, correlates are not enough if we are to understand even basic neurological fact; nor are they of much help in cases where we would like to know if consciousness is present: patients with a few remaining islands of functioning cortex, pre-term infants, non-mammalian...
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...
Clinical EEG and Neuroscience
2014
Simone Sarasso, Mario Rosanova, Adenauer G. Casali et al.
164 citations
We normally assess another individual's level of consciousness based on her or his ability to interact with the surrounding environment and communicate. Usually, if we observe purposeful behavior, appropriate responses to sensory inputs, and, above all, appropriate answers to questions, we can be reasonably sure that the person is conscious. However, we know that consciousness can be entirely...
PLoS One
August 28, 2013
Fabio Ferrarelli, Richard Smith, Daniela Dentico et al.
125 citations
Over the past several years meditation practice has gained increasing attention as a non-pharmacological intervention to provide health related benefits, from promoting general wellness to alleviating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions. However, the effects of meditation training on brain activity still need to be fully characterized. Sleep provides a unique approach to explore the...
Science Translational Medicine
August 14, 2013
Adenauer G. Casali, Olivia Gosseries, Mario Rosanova et al.
1,299 citations
One challenging aspect of the clinical assessment of brain-injured, unresponsive patients is the lack of an objective measure of consciousness that is independent of the subject's ability to interact with the external environment. Theoretical considerations suggest that consciousness depends on the brain's ability to support complex activity patterns that are, at once, distributed among...
Cerebral Cortex
July 10, 2013
Gustavo Deco, P. Hagmann, Anthony G. Hudetz et al.
99 citations
The transition from wakefulness to sleep represents the most conspicuous change in behavior and the level of consciousness occurring in the healthy brain. It is accompanied by similarly conspicuous changes in neural dynamics, traditionally exemplified by the change from "desynchronized" electroencephalogram activity in wake to globally synchronized slow wave activity of early sleep. However,...
Frontiers in Psychology
2013
Francesca Siclari, Joshua J. LaRocque, Bradley R. Postle et al.
184 citations
Dreaming-a particular form of consciousness that occurs during sleep-undergoes major changes in the course of the night. We aimed to outline state-dependent features of consciousness using a paradigm with multiple serial awakenings/questionings that allowed for within as well as between subject comparisons. Seven healthy participants who spent 44 experimental study nights in the laboratory were...
December 1, 2012
Giulio Tononi
378 citations
This article presents an updated account of integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) and some of its implications. IIT stems from thought experiments that lead to phenomenological axioms and ontological postulates. The information axiom asserts that every experience is one out of many, i.e. specific - it is what it is by differing in its particular way from a large repertoire of...
The International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology
June 7, 2012
Wallace C. Duncan, Simone Sarasso, Fabio Ferrarelli et al.
253 citations
The N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist ketamine has rapid antidepressant effects in treatment-resistant major depressive disorder (MDD). In rats, ketamine selectively increased electroencephalogram (EEG) slow wave activity (SWA) during non-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and altered central brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression. Taken together, these findings suggest...
Anesthesiology
February 7, 2012
Robert D. Sanders, Giulio Tononi, Steven Laureys et al.
478 citations
Consciousness is subjective experience. During both sleep and anesthesia, consciousness is common, evidenced by dreaming. A defining feature of dreaming is that, while conscious, we do not experience our environment; we are disconnected. Besides inducing behavioral unresponsiveness, a key goal of anesthesia is to prevent the experience of surgery (connected consciousness), by inducing either...
Cognitive Neuroscience
July 1, 2010
Marcello Massimini, Fabio Ferrarelli, Michael J. Murphy et al.
205 citations
We recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG) responses evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) during the first rapid eye movement (REM) sleep episode of the night and we compared them with the responses obtained during previous wakefulness and NREM sleep. Confirming previous findings, upon falling into NREM sleep, cortical activations became more local and stereotypical, indicating...
PLoS Computational Biology
August 13, 2009
David Balduzzi, Giulio Tononi
272 citations
According to the integrated information theory, the quantity of consciousness is the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements, and the quality of experience is specified by the informational relationships it generates. This paper outlines a framework for characterizing the informational relationships generated by such systems. Qualia space (Q) is a space having an...
Progress in Brain Research
2009
Melanie Boly, Marcello Massimini, Giulio Tononi
50 citations
Assessing the level of consciousness of noncommunicative brain-damaged patients is difficult, as one has to make inferences based on the patients' behavior. However, behavioral responses of brain-damaged patients are usually limited not only by their cognitive dysfunctions, but also by their frequent motor impairment. For these reasons, it is essential to resort to para-clinical markers of the...
Biological Bulletin
December 1, 2008
Giulio Tononi
1,522 citations
The integrated information theory (IIT) starts from phenomenology and makes use of thought experiments to claim that consciousness is integrated information. Specifically: (i) the quantity of consciousness corresponds to the amount of integrated information generated by a complex of elements; (ii) the quality of experience is specified by the set of informational relationships generated within...
Science
November 7, 2008
M. Alkire, A. Hudetz, G. Tononi
When we are anesthetized, we expect consciousness to vanish. But does it always? Although anesthesia undoubtedly induces unresponsiveness and amnesia, the extent to which it causes unconsciousness is harder to establish. For instance, certain anesthetics act on areas of the brain's cortex near the midline and abolish behavioral responsiveness, but not necessarily consciousness. Unconsciousness...