University of Wisconsin–Madison, University of Wisconsin System
86 papers in the library · 15,072 citations · publishing 1995-2026
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...
PLoS Computational Biology June 12, 2008 David Balduzzi, Giulio Tononi 433 citations
This paper introduces a time- and state-dependent measure of integrated information, phi, which captures the repertoire of causal states available to a system as a whole. Specifically, phi quantifies how much information is generated (uncertainty is reduced) when a system enters a particular state through causal interactions among its elements, above and beyond the information generated...
IEEE Spectrum May 29, 2008 Christof Koch, Giulio Tononi 134 citations
Would you sell your soul on eBay? Right now, of course, you can't. But in some quarters it is taken for granted that within a generation, human beings-including you, if you can hang on for another 30 years or so-will have an alternative to death: being a ghost in a machine. You'll be able to upload your mind-your thoughts, memories, and personality-to a computer. And once you've reduced your...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences May 1, 2008 Giulio Tononi, Marcello Massimini 135 citations
Consciousness fades during deep nonrapid eye movement (NREM) sleep early in the night, yet cortical neurons remain active, keep receiving sensory inputs, and can display patterns of synchronous activity. Why then does consciousness fade? According to the integrated information theory of consciousness, what is critical for consciousness is not firing rates, sensory input, or synchronization per...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences March 1, 2008 Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch 615 citations
This review examines recent advances in the study of brain correlates of consciousness. First, we briefly discuss some useful distinctions between consciousness and other brain functions. We then examine what has been learned by studying global changes in the level of consciousness, such as sleep, anesthesia, and seizures. Next we consider some of the most common paradigms used to study the...
Science September 29, 2005 Marcello Massimini, Fabio Ferrarelli, Reto Huber et al. 1,603 citations
When we fall asleep, consciousness fades yet the brain remains active. Why is this so? To investigate whether changes in cortical information transmission play a role, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation together with high-density electroencephalography and asked how the activation of one cortical area (the premotor area) is transmitted to the rest of the brain. During quiet wakefulness,...
BMC Neuroscience November 2, 2004 Giulio Tononi 1,703 citations
BACKGROUND: Consciousness poses two main problems. The first is understanding the conditions that determine to what extent a system has conscious experience. For instance, why is our consciousness generated by certain parts of our brain, such as the thalamocortical system, and not by other parts, such as the cerebellum? And why are we conscious during wakefulness and much less so during...
Journal of Neuroscience July 1, 1999 Ramesh Srinivasan, D. Patrick Russell, Gerald M. Edelman et al. 438 citations
In binocular rivalry, the observer views two incongruent images, one through each eye, but is conscious of only one image at a time. The image that is perceptually dominant alternates every few seconds. We used this phenomenon to investigate neural correlates of conscious perception. We presented a red vertical grating to one eye and a blue horizontal grating to the other eye, with each grating...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences March 17, 1998 Giulio Tononi, Ramesh Srinivasan, D. Patrick Russell et al. 259 citations
In binocular rivalry, a subject views two incongruent stimuli through each eye but consciously perceives only one stimulus at a time, with a switch in perceptual dominance every few seconds. To investigate the neural correlates of perceptual dominance in humans, seven subjects were recorded with a 148-channel magnetoencephalography array while experiencing binocular rivalry. A red vertical...
Human Brain Mapping 1995 Karl Friston, Giulio Tononi, Olaf Sporns et al. 114 citations
Abstract This work addresses the complexity of neuronal interactions, the nature of this complexity and how it can be characterised in real neurophysiological processes. A measure of complexity has been introduced recently (Tononi et al. [1994]: Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 91:5033–5037) that is sensitive to the joint constraints imposed by two principles of brain organisation: functional segregation...
Vincent Rochas, Kevin Mammeri, Laurence Bayer et al. preprint
Previous studies on the neural correlates of dreaming using high-density EEG (hdEEG) and the serial awakening paradigm have identified posterior brain regions related to dreaming, with maximal activity over occipital areas. Based on these results, we have hypothesized that neural activity during dreaming is mainly driven by sensory experiences (e.g., vision, audition), which predominate our...