Lectures and seminars Cognitive Neuroscience Club with Daniel Bor: "Exploring Consciousness and Cognition via Information Theory"

"Exploring Consciousness and Cognition via Information Theory"

Speaker

Daniel Bor, Queen Mary University of London, UK

Abstract

Consciousness is one of the greatest mysteries remaining in biology. Open questions include how the brain supports this process, and what the links between consciousness and cognition are. Here I will describe how methods from information theory, applied to neuroimaging data, can shed new light on both of these questions. I will describe how the complexity of the neural signal is related to the level of consciousness, and can be a tool to investigate its connection with cognition. I will also focus on ways to split information in the brain into different components, particularly redundant information (where two parts carry the same information), and synergistic information (where information is more than the sum of its parts). I will show that synergistic information is more connected to consciousness, and more linked to higher cognitive function.