Lectures and seminars What is life-lecture: Consciousness and its neural substrate and Emergence of consciousness

Host and contact person: hugo.lagercrantz@ki.se

Followed by discussion and light mingle

Abstract. Consciousness and its neural substrate

Consciousness is everything we experience—what it is like to be. Without consciousness, for each of us, there would be nothing at all, as we realize when emerging from dreamless sleep or deep anesthesia. We know that our consciousness depends on the state of our brain. But which parts matter, and why? And what can we say about its presence before and after birth? In brain damaged patients? In species different from us? Or in computers powered by AI? Integrated information theory (IIT) is an attempt to answer these and other questions in a principled manner. IIT starts not from the brain, but from consciousness itself—the world of experience—and derives from it what it takes for a system to be conscious. The results of this exploration account for many empirical findings, generate counterintuitive predictions, and have led to the development of promising new tests for the practical assessment of consciousness. 

Giulio Tononi is a neuroscientist and psychiatrist based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he holds chairs in sleep medicine and consciousness science. His scientific work on consciousness has centered on the development of the integrated information theory, a comprehensive theory of what consciousness is, its neural substrate, what determines its quantity and quality, and how it can be measured. The theory accounts for why certain brain areas are critical for consciousness and has led to the development of practical measures for assessing the quantity of consciousness in both healthy humans and unresponsive patients. His work on sleep has led to the synaptic homeostasis hypothesis, a comprehensive theory of the core function of sleep that is supported by a large amount of empirical evidence.