Description du projet
Une nouvelle voie pour étudier la conscience
Lorsque les personnes forment des pensées, des perceptions, ou éprouvent des émotions, elles sont conscientes de leur conscience. Les scientifiques ne comprennent toutefois pas encore totalement son fonctionnement. Les recherches actuelles menées dans ce domaine tentent d’étudier la conscience perceptive en analysant la réponse du cerveau à un stimulus chez des personnes conscientes et inconscientes. Pour rendre compte de la prise de conscience du stimulus, les participants doivent prendre des décisions. Le projet LEAP, financé par l’UE, examinera si un mécanisme inhérent à la prise de décision (l’accumulation de preuves) peut aider à comprendre le développement de la conscience perceptive au fil du temps. Pour atteindre cet objectif, un nouveau modèle informatique du processus d’accumulation de preuves latentes sera mis au point et testé en recourant à des mesures comportementales. En combinant ce modèle avec des techniques d’électrophysiologie avancées, le projet entend expliquer comment l’activité neuronale contrôle et oriente la perception.
Objectif
How we consciously experience the world remains a mystery in science. To tackle this problem, scientific works on perceptual consciousness contrast brain activity when participants consciously perceive a stimulus versus when they are unaware of it. To report stimulus awareness, participants need to make decisions. However, the extent to which the well-studied mechanisms of decision-making apply to consciousness is unclear. One possible reason is that standard neuroimaging methods lack the sensitivity to observe whether the mechanisms of decision-making also operate in the absence of task relevance, as when participants become conscious of a stimulus irrespective of any task.
In this project, I will test the hypothesis that a mechanism of decision-making –evidence accumulation– explains how perceptual consciousness unfolds over time. First, I will develop a computational model of a latent evidence accumulation process (LEAP) and test it on behavioral measures of phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience: its duration and intensity. Second, I will search for single neuron activity in humans that instantiates evidence accumulation and test whether it also determines these phenomenal aspects of perceptual experience. Third, I will stimulate the corresponding brain regions to disentangle their causal role in either solely triggering perceptual experience or shaping it. Last, I will use the LEAP model to explain hallucinatory-like experiences in patients with Parkinson's disease and test whether deep-brain stimulation affects only decision-making –as previously shown– or also perceptual experience.
By combining computational modeling and cutting-edge electrophysiology, the LEAP project will provide unique mechanistic insights on how neuronal activity determines perceptual experience and guides its temporal dynamics. It will also provide a tool to better understand hallucinations, which remain today a major debilitating symptom in numerous psychiatric disorders.
Champ scientifique
Mots‑clés
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Thème(s)
Régime de financement
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsInstitution d’accueil
75654 Paris
France