Research

Why do we experience consciousness during awake periods but not deep sleep? During wakefulness, why do we experience a particular conscious experience, such as vision, audition, and so on?  When I experience a blue ball, do I experience it in the same way as the other people? What about animals? Plants? Or artificial intelligence?

These fascinating fundamental questions used to be targets of philosophical speculation. Now, they are beginning to be empirically investigated by scientists. At Monash Neuroscience of Consciousness, we address these questions using a multitude of interdisciplinary methods, aiming to eventually uncover the link between consciousness and its physical substrate.

Areas of research/projects:

Boundary between conscious and non-conscious

What are the boundaries between conscious and unconscious states (e.g., induced by general anesthesia, deep sleep)? What are the boundaries between conscious vs. nonconscious perception (e.g., continuous flash suppression etc). We combine psychophysics with neuroimaging to address these issues.

Relationship between consciousness and other processes

What is the relationship between consciousness and other psychological processes, such as attention, expectation, report, access, memory, and emotion? For example, is attentional amplification always necessary to perceive any visual object? We combine psychophysics with neuroimaging to address these issues.

Testing the theories of consciousness

Can we empirically test theories of consciousness with empirical experiments? In particular, we develop computational tools to test various predictions from quantitative theories (e.g., integrated information theory)

Neural basis of Consciousness Youtube channel

We provide various video lectures and symposia related to consciousness research at our lab Youtube website. Check it out and please subscribe.

View Youtube channel