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Towards understanding human consciousness: How internal brain states and environmental context shape our subjective experience

Description du projet

Comprendre la conscience humaine grâce à la neurobiologie, aux neurosciences et à la psychologie

Financé par le Conseil européen de la recherche, le projet HUMANCONSCIOUSNESS étudiera la conscience humaine à travers le prisme de la neurobiologie, des neurosciences et de la psychologie. En combinant des techniques de neuro-imagerie, des interventions pharmacologiques ainsi que la modélisation informatique, le projet examinera le rôle des neurotransmetteurs dans l’expérience consciente. Il vérifiera également comment l’excitation et l’activité physique influencent l’expérience subjective et comment les prédictions et les données sensorielles interagissent pour façonner la conscience. Le projet entend proposer un cadre intégratif pour comprendre les mécanismes neuronaux et biochimiques de la conscience et la manière dont elle est façonnée par l’interaction de l’homme avec l’environnement. HUMANCONSCIOUSNESS nous permettra de mieux comprendre la conscience et aura un impact sur différents domaines comme la psychologie, la neurobiologie et la médecine.

Objectif

Consciousness is subjective experience, the ‘what it is likeness’, for example to perceive a certain scene or to feel joy. In the last three decades tremendous progress has been made in identifying the neural correlates of consciousness at the level of whole brain regions. Meanwhile, outside the field of consciousness, rapid progress has been made in understanding neural, biochemical and psychological factors that have to be accounted for to further understand human consciousness. Most importantly, we know much more about the neurotransmitter systems underlying basic sensory processes in animals (e.g. neurobiology), the mechanisms responsible for fluctuations in wakefulness and arousal (e.g. anesthetics/neurobiology), and how perception is constructed by the brain’s predictions about regularities in the world (e.g. neuroscience/psychology). This research has, however, been performed in relative isolation from studies of human consciousness and clear opportunities to link these different fields remain largely unexplored. Here I will establish this crucial link by combining state-of-the-art neuroimaging techniques with pharmacological interventions and computational modelling in humans performing novel experimental tasks gauging subjective perceptual experience. My project has 3 main aims. I will first test the hypothesis that excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters play central, albeit different roles in recurrent neural processes, crucial for conscious experience. Second, I will test how subjective experience is shaped by spontaneous fluctuations in arousal and levels of physical activity. Third, I will test how conscious experience is modulated by the interplay between predictions and sensory input. This research promises to provide an integrative framework for understanding the neural and biochemical mechanisms of consciousness, and will reveal how it is shaped and determined by being a human agent that interacts with, acts in, and predicts its environment.

Institution d’accueil

UNIVERSITEIT VAN AMSTERDAM
Contribution nette de l'UE
€ 1 999 562,50
Adresse
SPUI 21
1012WX Amsterdam
Pays-Bas

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Région
West-Nederland Noord-Holland Groot-Amsterdam
Type d’activité
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Liens
Coût total
€ 1 999 562,50

Bénéficiaires (1)