The MIT Press eBooks
October 25, 2002
David J. Chalmers
156 citations
Neuroscience plays a major but not exclusive role in developing a theory of consciousness, with recent progress in neurobiological research, though its conceptual foundations are still being established. From a philosopher's perspective, the concept of the "neural correlate of consciousness" (NCC) refers to the neural system or systems primarily associated with conscious experience. Numerous proposals for the NCC exist, such as Crick and Koch's earlier suggestion about 40-hertz oscillations, which has since faded. The variety of current proposals is compared to the "particle zoo" in particle physics.
PLoS ONE
February 10, 2023
Lucia Melloni, Liad Mudrik, Michael Pitts et al.
106 citations
An adversarial collaboration between proponents of Global Neuronal Workspace and Integrated Information Theory devised and preregistered two experiments that test contrasting predictions about the location and timing of correlates of visual consciousness. Six theory-impartial laboratories will follow the study protocol using fMRI, M-EEG, and intracranial EEG, with built-in replications between labs and within datasets. The project aims to provide decisive evidence for or against the two theories and clarify the neural footprints of conscious visual perception, while modeling large-scale, collaborative, and open science practice.
Phenomenal Concepts and Phenomenal Knowledge
January 1, 2007
David J. Chalmers
95 citations
Some philosophers deny any gap between physical processes and consciousness, others expect it to close, and some see it as a real divide in nature. This chapter explores a different view: the gap arises from how we think about consciousness, specifically from the relationship between our concepts of physical processes and our concepts of consciousness, not from the things themselves.
Nature
June 1, 2025
Oscar Ferrante, Urszula Gorska-Klimowska, Simon Henin et al.
94 citations
Different theories explain how subjective experience arises from brain activity. An open science adversarial collaboration directly juxtaposed integrated information theory (IIT) and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT). Human participants (n = 256) viewed suprathreshold stimuli for variable durations while neural activity was measured with fMRI, MEG, and intracranial EEG. Information about conscious content was found in visual, ventrotemporal, and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses in occipital and lateral temporal cortex reflecting stimulus duration, and content-specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas. These results align with some predictions of IIT and GNWT but substantially challenge key tenets of both theories, including a lack of sustained posterior cortex synchronization for IIT and a lack of ignition at stimulus offset and limited prefrontal representation for GNWT.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 23, 2023
Oscar Ferrante, Urszula Gorska-Klimowska, Simon Henin et al.
preprint
An open science adversarial collaboration directly juxtaposed Integrated Information Theory (IIT) and Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT) by investigating neural correlates of visual experience. 256 human subjects viewed suprathreshold stimuli for variable durations while neural activity was measured with fMRI, MEG, and ECoG. Information about conscious content was found in visual, ventro-temporal, and inferior frontal cortex, with sustained responses in occipital and lateral temporal cortex reflecting stimulus duration, and content-specific synchronization between frontal and early visual areas.
arXiv Preprint Archive
May 5, 2021
David J. Chalmers, Kelvin J. McQueen
The idea that consciousness causes the collapse of the quantum wave function, once taken seriously by physicists such as John von Neumann and Eugene Wigner but now widely dismissed, is revisited by combining integrated information theory—a mathematical theory of consciousness—with continuous spontaneous localization, an account of quantum collapse dynamics. Simple versions of this combined theory are falsified by the quantum Zeno effect, but more complex versions remain compatible with empirical evidence. Versions of the theory can in principle be tested by experiments with quantum computers. The conclusion is not that consciousness-collapse interpretations are clearly correct, but that there is a research program here worth exploring.