Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
February 1, 2026
Borjan Milinkovic, Jaan Aru
7 citations
Consciousness in biological systems arises from two fundamental computational features absent in current artificial intelligence: scale-inseparable, substrate-dependent multiscale processing as a metabolic optimization strategy, and continuous-valued computations performed by the fluidic substrate alongside discrete operations. These features are essential to the brain's mode of computation. The absence of consciousness in artificial systems reflects a deeper divide between digital and biological computation, not merely missing functional organization. The authors outline foundational principles of a biological theory of computation and explain why current AI systems are unlikely to replicate conscious processing as it arises in biology.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 16, 2025
Borjan Milinkovic, Anil K. Seth, Lionel Barnett et al.
2 citations
preprint
Consciousness depends on neural activity across many scales. A new measure, dynamical independence (DI), quantifies these multi-scale relationships. Applying DI to EEG data from people under three anaesthetics, the authors found that propofol and xenon—which abolish conscious report—produce more emergent but highly variable dynamic structure, indicating fragmented macroscopic organisation. Ketamine, which preserves dream-like states, shows reduced overall emergence but partial preservation of macroscopic structure similar to wakefulness. Regional brain contributions varied. The results reveal drug-specific reconfigurations of emergent dynamics, dissociate the amount of emergence from its organisation, and caution against equating emergence with consciousness level.
arXiv Preprint Archive
April 13, 2026
Adam B. Barrett, Borjan Milinkovic, Pedro A. M. Mediano et al.
The integrated information theory of consciousness (IIT) proposes a mathematical formula, derived from fundamental properties of conscious experience, to describe the quantity and quality of consciousness for any physical system. This article clarifies common misunderstandings. A high value of the measure Φ does not mean 'more consciousness'; Φ might be replaced with a suite of quantities for a multidimensional characterization. IIT implies a distinct panpsychism where space and time are tiled with substrates of proto-consciousness, which the authors find unproblematic. Φ is not well-defined for real physical systems and has never been computed on one; only proxies have been computed, not approximations. For IIT to align with fundamental physics, a reformulation in continuous fields would be needed.