COGITATE

Collaboration on GNW and IIT:
Testing Alternative Theories of Experience

Love, hate, regret, deliberation, and thoughts all reside within our conscious experience. Every day, we lose and regain consciousness as we fall asleep and wake up. Yet consciousness remains one of the least understood aspects of human nature—and perhaps even of nature at large.
Extensive research has focused on the topic, leading to several prominent theories of consciousness. So far, however, most effort has been on testing each theory independently. A crucial question remains: which theory has greater explanatory power when we directly test them against each other? Led by Lucia Melloni, the COGITATE project seeks to answer this question through an adversarial collaboration designed to test two prominent theories of consciousness against each other: Global Neuronal Workspace theory (GNW), and Integrated Information Theory (IIT). GNW was first developed by Bernard Baars and later championed by Stanislas Dehaene. IIT was originally proposed by Giulio Tononi.

The COGITATE project includes two studies to test incompatible predictions of the two theories. The aim is to accelerate research on consciousness by providing decisive, field-transformative evidence in favour of one theory over the other.
Additionally, the project seeks to establish a groundbreaking framework for scientific practice in cognitive neuroscience at large, by demonstrating the impact of team-based adversarial research and open data.
The goal is to change the landscape of cognitive neuroscience by refining its social practices and norms.
Indeed, the team follows core principles of open science: adversarial collaboration, well-powered studies, replication, and outsourcing of testing to impartial, highly qualified multimodal laboratories. This approach ensures the highest standard of scientific practice, minimizing potential biases in data analysis and strengthening the robustness of the findings.