Research
The lab investigates high-level cognition, both at the behavioral and neural level. More specifically, we are interested in the following questions:
1. What is consciousness, how does it come about, and what are its functions? We focus on the neural correlates of consciousness, testing theories of consciousness, examining the scope of unconscious processing and developing tests for consciousness in non-trivial cases.
2. How does cognition affect perception? We are interested in the way our expectations and semantic knowledge affect perceptual processing and our interpretation of the world
Comparing Consciousness Theories: Understanding Landscape and Convergence Challenges
The proliferation of consciousness theories without convergence hinders unified understanding. Our lab tests leading theories and identifies factors driving the field's current state. By synthesizing over 500 experiments, we've created an interactive, open overview to foster clarity and progress in understanding consciousness.
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Testing for Consciousness: Advancing Approaches for Humans, Animals, and AI
​Determining which entities are conscious is increasingly vital due to AI advancements, animal ethics, and life/death debates. Collaborating with the CIFAR Brain, Mind & Consciousness program, we explore conceptual issues in validating consciousness tests. Our work examines approaches like the Natural Kinds (see our BMC piece (Bayne et al., 2024). theory-based testing (with discussed difficulties (Mudrik et al., 2023), and adopting computational functionalism for AI systems (Butlin et al., 2023).
Unveiling High-Level Processing in the Absence of Awareness
Emerging evidence suggests conscious awareness isn't always necessary for high-level processing, particularly for information integration (spatiotemporal, multisensory, or semantic), challenging its assumed critical tie to consciousness. Our lab uses various experimental paradigms to test this tie, unravel the neural substrates of unconscious integration, delineate the limits of such unconscious processing, and ultimately identify consciousness's unique contribution to high-level functions.
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Innovating Ecological Methods to Study the Functions of Consciousness
Despite extensive research, the functions of consciousness remain unclear, with current findings often lacking external validity for real-life scenarios. Our lab seeks novel, more ecological approaches, such as a multi-trial Virtual Reality Inattentional Blindness paradigm [VRIB] where participants missed billboard stimuli, and an augmented reality paradigm suppressing real 3D objects ('real-life CFS'). We advocate, in a recent perspective [LINK], for developing methods that study consciousness as it naturally occurs.
Consciousness's Role in Voluntary Action and the Free Will Debate
We investigate the causal role of conscious experience in voluntary actions, a key question in the free will debate. This debate was significantly sparked by Benjamin Libet’s finding that the readiness potential precedes conscious intention to move. However, in collaboration with Dr. Uri Maoz, we've shown this primarily applies to meaningless, arbitrary decisions, not meaningful, deliberate ones. We continue to explore consciousness's nuanced role in voluntary action.
Exploring How Cognition Shapes Perception
Challenging the view that cognition and perception are modular, our lab investigates how cognitive processes affect perception. We have previously demonstrated that semantic relations between objects and scenes constrain object processing. Our ongoing research further explores these phenomena and other instances where semantic knowledge impacts perception, studying their neural underpinnings and connections to attention and consciousness.
