Science Advances
February 1, 2019
Athena Demertzi, Enzo Tagliazucchi, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
545 citations
Consciousness depends on the brain's ability to sustain rich, dynamic patterns of signal coordination. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a complex pattern of coordinated and anticoordinated signals characterized healthy individuals and minimally conscious patients. Unresponsive patients showed low interareal phase coherence mainly mediated by structural connectivity, with fewer transitions between patterns. This complex pattern was also seen in patients with covert cognition who could perform mental imagery tasks, validating its link to consciousness. Anesthesia increased the probability of the less complex pattern to levels seen in unresponsive patients, confirming its role in unconsciousness. These results establish generalizable fingerprints of conscious and unconscious states after brain damage.
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.
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.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
March 1, 2025
Liad Mudrik, Melanie Boly, Stanislas Dehaene et al.
68 citations
In a structured public debate at the 2022 meeting of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, proponents of five major theories—Global Neuronal Workspace Theory, Higher-Order Theories, Integrated Information Theory, Recurrent Processing Theory, and Predictive Processing—clarified their theories' core mechanisms, foundational premises, and what each theory aims to explain. The discussion revealed more controversy than agreement, particularly on the most basic questions: what consciousness is, how to identify conscious states, and what any adequate theory must account for. Addressing these foundational disagreements is essential for advancing the field and enabling meaningful comparison of competing theories.
Neuroscience of consciousness
January 1, 2022
Joachim Bellet, Marion Gay, Abhilash Dwarakanath et al.
57 citations
Neuronal populations in the macaque prefrontal cortex (PFC) reliably encode visual stimuli even under conditions that challenge conscious perception and reduce post-perceptual processing. Recordings from the ventrolateral PFC during isolated trials and rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) showed that stimulus identity could be decoded from population activity, with first signals at 60 ms and peak information at 150 ms. In RSVP, decoding accuracy dropped to chance by 200 ms as the next stimulus became decodable. Decoding in ventrolateral PFC was stronger than in posterior parietal cortex. The findings indicate PFC encodes visual information under conditions that limit conscious access and post-perceptual elaboration, raising questions about whether this reflects conscious access, phenomenal consciousness, or preconscious bottom-up processing.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
December 14, 2016
Darinka Trübutschek, Sebastien Marti, Andrés Ojeda et al.
47 citations
preprint
Working memory and conscious perception are often thought to rely on the same brain mechanisms, but recent evidence suggests non-conscious working memory exists. Using visual masking and magnetoencephalography in a spatial delayed-response task, participants reported the location of a subjectively unseen target above chance after a long delay. Conscious perception and conscious working memory showed sustained alpha/beta desynchronization over frontal cortex and decodable target location in posterior sensors. During non-conscious working memory, these signals vanished, contradicting models equating working memory with sustained neural firing. The findings support 'activity-silent' working memory, where slowly decaying synaptic changes allow cell assemblies to go dormant during the delay yet be retrieved above chance after seconds.
Cell reports
March 25, 2025
Ulysse Klatzmann, Sean Froudist-Walsh, Daniel P Bliss et al.
14 citations
Conscious access involves 'ignition,' an all-or-none activation across cortical areas. Computer simulations of a detection task using a mesoscale connectome-based model of the macaque cortex reveal a dynamic bifurcation mechanism that produces ignition in a network of associative regions. A hierarchical NMDA/AMPA receptor gradient is critical: fast AMPA receptors drive feedforward signal propagation, while slow NMDA receptors in feedback pathways shape and sustain the ignited network. The model suggests higher NMDA-to-AMPA receptor ratios in sensory areas compared to association areas, a prediction supported by in vitro autoradiography data. The model accounts for diverse behavioral and physiological phenomena linked to consciousness.
Neuron
May 15, 2024
Stanislas Dehaene
1 citation
Stanislas Dehaene, a cognitive neuroscientist, discusses his research into the biological basis of perception and cognition, his ongoing interest in consciousness, the importance of theory in neuroscience, and his current work on education and the science of learning.
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
November 8, 2025
Lucie Berkovitch, Alexandre Salvador, Thomas Andrillon et al.
preprint
Low doses of ketamine, an NMDA-receptor antagonist, disrupt the ability to consciously perceive visual information in healthy people. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled experiment with 21 volunteers, ketamine increased visual masking and reduced conscious perception of a digit. The N1 component of brain activity, an early marker of visual processing, was significantly reduced under ketamine and correlated with conscious access. Ketamine also induced psychotic-like and manic-like symptoms, but only the psychotic-like dimension was linked to impairments in conscious access. These findings suggest ketamine attenuates early visual brain responses, impairing conscious access, and that this mechanism differs in some ways from that seen in schizophrenia.
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.
eLife
May 5, 2021
Moti Salti, Simo Monto, Lucie Charles et al.
Conscious perception of a stimulus is linked to a specific sequence of brain processes that unfold after about 270 milliseconds, involving superior parietal and superior frontal regions. Using EEG and MEG recordings during a task where participants reported the location and visibility of a brief visual target, multivariate pattern analysis showed that information about stimulus location is still processed in the cortex even when the stimulus is not consciously seen (blindsight). However, only consciously perceived stimuli trigger additional, time-limited neural activity in higher-order brain areas, whereas unconscious processing decays slowly without this chain of activity.
PLoS Biology
June 15, 2016
Stanislas Dehaene, Jean-Pierre Changeux
Even without sensory input, cortical and thalamic neurons exhibit structured spontaneous activity whose origins and functions are unclear. Computer simulations of a simplified model with multiple interconnected thalamocortical columns and long-range excitatory axons reveal two main activity states: spontaneous gamma-band oscillations emerge at a precise threshold controlled by neuromodulator systems, and within a spontaneously active network, sudden "ignition" of one of many possible coherent high-level activity states occurs among cortical neurons with long-distance projections. During ignition, spontaneous activity can block external sensory processing, relating to inattentional blindness, where intensely engaged subjects fail to notice salient but irrelevant stimuli. The minimal network's generic properties may clarify basic cerebral phenomena underlying consciousness's autonomy.