Trends in cognitive sciences
June 1, 2021
Benjamin Baird, Stephen LaBerge, Giulio Tononi
13 citations
Lucid dreamers can use eye movements to report on their dream content in real time during REM sleep, challenging the long-held belief that dreamers are completely isolated from the outside world. Sensory input is not entirely suppressed during sleep. A recent study by Konkoly et al. demonstrates that experimenters can question lucid dreamers during ongoing dreams and explores the feasibility of more extended two-way communication during lucid REM sleep dreaming.
Trends in cognitive sciences
July 3, 2025
Andrew M. Haun, Giulio Tononi
5 citations
Visual experience is unfathomably rich, not sparse. Seeing involves three levels: high-level object and scene categorizations, mid-level feature groupings, and a fundamental spatial field of spots and their relations. Seeing objects requires seeing the groupings that compose them, and seeing groupings requires seeing the spatial field that grounds them. Even the basic feeling of spatial extendedness implies rich phenomenal structure. Much of what we see cannot be used, reported, or remembered, yet we see it.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
April 18, 2024
Melanie Boly, Richard Smith, Giulietta Vigueras Borrego et al.
5 citations
preprint
A state called pure presence, reported in meditative traditions as a vivid experience without thoughts, perceptions, or self, was examined in twenty-two long-term meditators using high-density EEG. During pure presence, brain activity showed widespread reductions in gamma and delta power compared to mind-wandering, watching a movie, active thinking, and dreamless sleep. The strongest gamma decreases occurred in the posteromedial cortex. These findings align with integrated information theory's prediction that vivid consciousness can arise when the brain's cortical substrate is largely quiet yet highly awake.
Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. Annual International Conference
July 1, 2019
Minji Lee, Benjamin Baird, Olivia Gosseries et al.
4 citations
Cortical networks show differences in functional integration and segregation across states of consciousness, but not in overall connectivity. In the beta frequency band, functional integration during wakefulness exceeded that during NREM sleep. In the theta band, functional segregation (transitivity and clustering coefficient) was stronger in NREM sleep without conscious experience than in wakefulness or REM sleep, while the opposite pattern appeared in the beta band. No significant differences in the weighted phase lag index were found among wakefulness, REM sleep with conscious experience, NREM sleep with conscious experience, and NREM sleep without conscious experience. These findings may relate to cortical bistability and contribute to understanding neural correlates of consciousness.
PLoS ONE
December 4, 2025
Jonathan Robinson, Andrew W. Corcoran, Christopher J. Whyte et al.
1 citation
Active inference, a framework for modeling how sentient agents behave, is being tested as necessary for changes in conscious content. In an adversarial collaboration, active inference will be contrasted with two other theories that do not require it for consciousness. This study protocol describes an adaptation of the motion-induced blindness paradigm: an active condition where participants direct their gaze toward a target after it disappears from consciousness and report its reappearance, versus a passive condition where participants fixate centrally while the stimulus array moves in a replay of active eye-tracking data. Two experiments will compare target reappearance across conditions to evaluate active inference's contribution to conscious awareness.
Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews
August 1, 2026
Andrew W Corcoran, Andrew M Haun, Reinder Dorman et al.
Three theories of consciousness—Integrated Information Theory, Neurorepresentationalism, and Active Inference—are compared and contrasted in a structured adversarial collaboration. The review presents each theory's core claims, the phenomena they explain, their explanatory approaches, and methodological strategies. It outlines key hypotheses to be tested across multi-site experiments, discusses observations that would support or challenge each theory, and describes how data from disparate experiments can be formally integrated to quantify evidential support. The work also provides meta-scientific insights into the mechanics of adversarial collaboration and theory-testing, including how theories may be evaluated by the scientific progress they deliver.
PloS one
January 1, 2026
Clement Abbatecola, Bernard Marius ’t Hart, Belén M. Montabes De la Cruz et al.
The subjective experience of space around the visual blind spot is investigated to test three theories of consciousness: Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Predictive Processing Active Inference (AI), and Predictive Processing Neurorepresentationalism (NREP). IIT predicts that the blind spot region, lacking feedforward input from one eye, should contribute differently to perceived spatial quality. The Predictive Processing accounts argue that internal models accommodate structural deviations based on sensory evidence. Participants evaluate distances, areas, and illusory motion with or without the blind spot involved. Psychometric models quantify bias and precision in perceived versus objective space. Simulated results correspond to each theory's predictions, and challenges for dissemination are discussed.
PloS one
January 1, 2026
Matilda Gibbons, Ethan G McBride, Raghuram Holenarasipura Venkatasubbaiah et al.
An adversarial collaboration will test competing predictions from Global Neuronal Workspace Theory and Integrated Information Theory about the neural correlates of consciousness. Non-human primates and mice will perform a go-nogo task with supra-threshold visual and auditory stimuli while neural activity is recorded from multiple cortical areas using Neuropixels electrodes. To causally test timing and location predictions, prefrontal cortex activity will be manipulated via electrical stimulation in primates or optogenetic silencing in mice. The protocol details experimental design, analyses, divergent predictions, and anticipated outcomes.
arXiv Preprint Archive
October 29, 2025
Giulio Tononi, Melanie Boly
Integrated information theory (IIT) takes a 'consciousness-first' approach, arguing that consciousness reveals the essential properties of existence. IIT formulates these properties operationally, yielding postulates of physical existence: to exist intrinsically, an entity must have cause-effect power upon itself in a specific, unitary, definite, and structured manner. The theory claims that an entity's cause-effect structure accounts for all properties of an experience, including spatial extendedness, temporal flow, and qualia such as colors and sounds, with no additional ingredients. IIT has implications for understanding meaning, perception, free will, and for assessing consciousness in patients, infants, other species, and artifacts.
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 27, 2014
Giulio Tononi, Christof Koch
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) starts from five axioms about conscious experience—existence, composition, information, integration, and exclusion—to derive physical postulates that specify which systems can be conscious and what their experience is like. IIT provides a calculus to measure both the quantity and quality of experience, explains clinical and laboratory findings, and makes testable predictions. It holds that consciousness is graded, common among biological organisms, and present even in some simple systems, but not in everything: groups of individuals or feedforward networks lack it. Crucially, IIT implies that digital computers, even those that perfectly simulate human behavior or brain function, would experience next to nothing, contradicting functionalist views.