•  18
    This book explores how we can measure consciousness. It clarifies what consciousness is, how it can be generated from a physical system, and how it can be measured. It also shows how conscious states can be expressed mathematically and how precise predictions can be made using data from neurophysiological studies.
  •  24
    Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious. It argues that the physical substrate of consciousness (PSC) must constitute a maximum of irreducible, internal cause‐effect power of a specific form, and provides a calculus to determine, in principle, both the quality and the quantity of an experience. Applied to the brain, IIT predicts that the spatio‐temporal grain…Read more
  •  15
    Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness
    In Susan Schneider & Max Velmans (eds.), The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness, Wiley. 2017.
    Integrated information theory (IIT) starts from the essential properties of experience (axioms) and translates them into requirements that any physical system must satisfy to be conscious (postulates; see Integrated Information Theory of Consciousness: An Outline, this volume). The postulates of IIT can be seen as a list of requirements for something to exist ‘for itself’, as an intrinsic entity, and thus have relevance for ontology and metaphysics. Some implications of the theory include the di…Read more
  •  1
    Integrated information theory (IIT) 4.0: Formulating the properties of phenomenal existence in physical terms
    with Larissa Albantakis, Leonardo Barbosa, Graham Findlay, Matteo Grasso, Andrew Haun, William Marshall, William G. P. Mayner, Alireza Zaeemzadeh, Melanie Boly, Bjørn Juel, Shuntaro Sasai, Keiko Fujii, Isaac David, Jeremiah Hendren, and Jonathan Lang
    Arxiv. 2022.
    This paper presents Integrated Information Theory (IIT) 4.0. IIT aims to account for the properties of experience in physical (operational) terms. It identifies the essential properties of experience (axioms), infers the necessary and sufficient properties that its substrate must satisfy (postulates), and expresses them in mathematical terms. In principle, the postulates can be applied to any system of units in a state to determine whether it is conscious, to what degree, and in what way. IIT of…Read more
  •  63
    Causal reductionism and causal structures
    with Matteo Grasso, Larissa Albantakis, and Jonathan Lang
    Nature Neuroscience 24. 2021.
    Causal reductionism is the widespread assumption that there is no room for additional causes once we have accounted for all elementary mechanisms within a system. Due to its intuitive appeal, causal reductionism is prevalent in neuroscience: once all neurons have been caused to fire or not to fire, it seems that causally there is nothing left to be accounted for. Here, we argue that these reductionist intuitions are based on an implicit, unexamined notion of causation that conflates causation wi…Read more
  •  329
    Consciousness and the Fallacy of Misplaced Objectivity
    with Francesco Ellia, Jeremiah Hendren, Matteo Grasso, Csaba Kozma, Garrett Mindt, Jonathan Lang, Andrew Haun, Larissa Albantakis, and Melanie Boly
    Neuroscience of Consciousness 7 (2): 1-12. 2021.
    Objective correlates—behavioral, functional, and neural—provide essential tools for the scientific study of consciousness. But reliance on these correlates should not lead to the ‘fallacy of misplaced objectivity’: the assumption that only objective properties should and can be accounted for objectively through science. Instead, what needs to be explained scientifically is what experience is intrinsically— its subjective properties—not just what we can do with it extrinsically. And it must be…Read more
  •  45
    IIT, half masked and half disfigured
    with Melanie Boly, Matteo Grasso, Jeremiah Hendren, Bjorn E. Juel, William G. P. Mayner, William Marshall, and Christof Koch
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45. 2022.
    The target article misrepresents the foundations of integrated information theory and ignores many essential publications. It, thus, falls to this lead commentary to outline the axioms and postulates of IIT and correct major misconceptions. The commentary also explains why IIT starts from phenomenology and why it predicts that only select physical substrates can support consciousness. Finally, it highlights that IIT's account of experience – a cause–effect structure quantified by integrated info…Read more
  •  2
    A Macro Agent and Its Actions
    with Larissa Albantakis, Francesco Massari, and Maggie Beheler-Amass
    In Jan Voosholz & Markus Gabriel (eds.), Top-Down Causation and Emergence, Springer Verlag. pp. 135-155. 2021.
    In science, macro level descriptions of the causal interactions within complex, dynamical systems are typically deemed convenient, but ultimately reducible to a complete causal account of the underlying micro constituents. Yet, such a reductionist perspective is hard to square with several issues related to autonomy and agency: agents require borders that separate them from the environment, at least in a biological context, agents are associated with macroscopic systems, and agents are supposed …Read more
  •  10
    Episodic thought distinguishes spontaneous cognition in waking from REM and NREM sleep
    with Benjamin Baird, Mariel Kalkach Aparicio, Tariq Alauddin, Brady Riedner, and Melanie Boly
    Consciousness and Cognition 97 (C): 103247. 2022.
  •  1
    Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?
    Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370 (1668): 20140167. 2015.
    The science of consciousness has made great strides by focusing on the behavioural and neuronal correlates of experience. However, while such correlates are important for progress to occur, they are not enough if we are to understand even basic facts, for example, why the cerebral cortex gives rise to consciousness but the cerebellum does not, though it has even more neurons and appears to be just as complicated. Moreover, correlates are of little help in many instances where we would like to kn…Read more
  • From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0
    with Masafumi Oizumi and Larissa Albantakis
    PLOS Computational Biology 10 (5). 2014.
    This paper presents Integrated Information Theory of consciousness 3.0, which incorporates several advances over previous formulations. IIT starts from phenomenological axioms: information says that each experience is specific a sh it is what it is by how it differs from alternative experiences; integration says that it is unified a sh irreducible to non-interdependent components; exclusion says that it has unique borders and a particular spatio-temporal grain. These axioms are formalized into p…Read more
  •  7
    Beta Oscillatory Changes and Retention of Motor Skills during Practice in Healthy Subjects and in Patients with Parkinson's Disease
    with Aaron B. Nelson, Clara Moisello, Jing Lin, Priya Panday, Serena Ricci, Andrea Canessa, Alessandro Di Rocco, Angelo Quartarone, Giuseppe Frazzitta, Ioannis U. Isaias, Chiara Cirelli, and M. Felice Ghilardi
    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 11. 2017.
  •  4
    Local and Widespread Slow Waves in Stable NREM Sleep: Evidence for Distinct Regulation Mechanisms
    with Giulio Bernardi, Francesca Siclari, Giacomo Handjaras, and Brady A. Riedner
    Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 12. 2018.
  •  21
    EEG Differentiation Analysis and Stimulus Set Meaningfulness
    with Armand Mensen and William Marshall
    Frontiers in Psychology 8. 2017.
    A set of images can be considered as meaningfully different for an observer if they can be distinguished phenomenally from one another. Each phenomenal difference must be supported by some neurophysiological differences. Differentiation analysis aims to quantify neurophysiological differentiation evoked by a given set of stimuli to assess its meaningfulness to the individual observer. As a proof of concept using high-density EEG, we show increased neurophysiological differentiation for a set of …Read more
  •  96
    Schizophrenia and the mechanisms of conscious integration
    with Gerald M. Edelman
    Brain Research Reviews 31 (2): 391-400. 2000.
  •  245
  •  96
    Increased synchronization of neuromagnetic responses during conscious perception
    with Ramesh Srinivasan, D. P. Russell, and Gerald M. Edelman
    Journal of Neuroscience 19 (13): 5435-5448. 1999.
  •  80
    Consciousness and the integration of information in the brain
    with Gerald M. Edelman
    In H. Jasper, L. Descarries, V. Castellucci & S. Rossignol (eds.), Consciousness: At the Frontiers of Neuroscience, Lippincott-raven. 1998.
  •  89
    Classes of network connectivity and dynamics
    with Olaf Sporns
    Complexity 7 (1): 28-38. 2001.
    Many kinds of complex systems exhibit characteristic patterns of temporal correlations that emerge as the result of functional interactions within a structured network. One such complex system is the brain, composed of numerous neuronal units linked by synaptic connections. The activity of these neuronal units gives rise to dynamic states that are characterized by specific patterns of neuronal activation and co-activation. These patterns, called functional connectivity, are possible neural corre…Read more
  •  169
    A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination
    with Gerald Edelman
    Basic Books. 2000.
    A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience
  •  312
    Complexity and coherency: integrating information in the brain
    with Gerald M. Edelman and Olaf Sporns
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2 (12): 474-484. 1998.
    The brains of higher mammals are extraordinary integrative devices. Signals from large numbers of functionally specialized groups of neurons distributed over many brain regions are integrated to generate a coherent, multimodal scene. Signals from the environment are integrated with ongoing, patterned neural activity that provides them with a meaningful context. We review recent advances in neurophysiology and neuroimaging that are beginning to reveal the neural mechanisms of integration. In addi…Read more
  •  15
    Integrated Information and State Differentiation
    with William Marshall and Jaime Gomez-Ramirez
    Frontiers in Psychology 7. 2016.
  •  41
    Information: In the stimulus or in the context?
    with Gerald M. Edelman
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 20 (4): 698-700. 1997.
    The distinction between receptive field and conceptual field is appealing and heuristically useful. Conceptually, it is more satisfactory to distinguish between information from the environment and from the brain. We emphasize here a selectionist view that considers information transmission within the brain as modulated by a stimulus, rather than information transmission from a stimulus as modulated by the context.
  •  205
    Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology
    with Yuval Nir and Giulio Tononi
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences 14 (2): 88-100. 2010.
    Dreams are a remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person. They show that the human brain, disconnected from the environment, can generate an entire world of conscious experiences by itself. Content analysis and developmental studies have promoted understanding of dream phenomenology. In parallel, brain lesion studies, functional imaging and neurophysiology have advanced current knowledge of the neural basis of dreaming. It is now possible …Read more
  •  53
    Sleep and synaptic homeostasis
    with Chiara Cirelli
    Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28 (1): 85-85. 2005.
    We propose that sleep is linked to synaptic homeostasis. Specifically, we propose that: (1) Wakefulness is associated with synaptic potentiation in cortical circuits; (2) synaptic potentiation is tied to the homeostatic regulation of slow wave activity; (3) slow wave activity is associated with synaptic downscaling; and (4) synaptic downscaling is tied to several beneficial effects of sleep, including performance enhancement.