INTREPID

Predictive Processing &

Integrated Information

Key Highlights

Leadership

Cyriel Pennartz | Umberto Olcese
Melanie Boly | Lars Muckli
Jakob Hohwy

External Links

Grant DOI
Project Website

Measures

Eye Tracking
Behavioural Measures

Theories

Intergated Information (IIT)
Active Inference (PP-AI)
Neurorepresentationalism (PP-NREP)

Neuroimaging

fMRI | MEG | EEG
Calcium Imaging | Neuropixel

Manipulations

Visual Manipulation
Optogenetics

Project Summary

How are the brain, neural activity, motor activity and consciousness related? To understand consciousness, we need to learn how different brain structures and brain cell activity can give rise to it.

There exists at least a dozen noteworthy theories of consciousness, but it remains unclear which of them is more likely to be correct. New research led by the Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience Lab at the University of Amsterdam and involving partners in the US, UK, Australia, Canada and Germany, will explore three leading theories: the Integrated Information Theory (IIT), the Active Inference account of Predictive Processing (PP-AI), and the Neurorepresentationalism account of Predictive Processing (PP-NREP).

These three theories make incompatible predictions on brain mechanisms of sensory processing, conscious perception and the role of actions and agency in consciousness. Through a structured adversarial collaboration, the project carries out three main experiments (including replications) and subsequent data analyses, in a carefully controlled manner that closely involves interactions between theorists, experimentalists, and other experts.

The first experiment uses optogenetics to inactivate silent neurons in the visual cortex of mice, and measures how this causal manipulation of the sensory brain network affects behavior. The second experiment studies how the perception of visual space is affected by the blind spot of the retina, or by stroke damage to visual brain areas, and how these affect our subjective experience of space. The third experiment uses the optical illusion called Motion Induced Blindness and neuroimaging techniques to test if actively ‘looking’ at objects is necessary for conscious perception.

The project is planned to deliver various outputs directed to different target audiences including specialists in the area of consciousness research and related scientific fields, and a wider scientific audience including cognitive scientists, neurobiologists, AI and roboticists, philosophers and clinicians. The intended impact of the project will be to significantly advance our understanding of consciousness, and contribute to more general theories of how the brain works.