Our work on the physiological markers of information processing and learning during sleep revealed that the human brain continues to respond to external stimulation and can even be induced to generate classifications of incoming sounds. We show that this is the case in particular in light sleep, but that responsiveness to the external world disappears during deep sleep stages. We also showed that, again during light but not during deep sleep, the human brain can continue responding and even adapting to (i.e. learning from) the acoustic environment. Furthermore, another study from our group reveals that sleeper can selectively attend to relevant information in the acoustic environment (when several people are talking at the same time, as in the so-called “cocktail party” situation, the sleeper’s brain selectively amplifies the speech stream which is most relevant to her/him). Congruent with our previous studies, this research shows that selective attention is possible during light but not during deep sleep.
- Andrillon, T., & Kouider S. (2020). The vigilant sleeper: neural mechanisms of sensory (de) coupling during sleep. Current Opinion in Physiology, 15, 47-59.
- Andrillon, T., Pressnitzer, D., Léger, D., & Kouider S. (2017). Formation and suppression of acoustic memories in human sleep. Nature communications, 8 (1), 179.
- Andrillon, T., Poulsen, L.K. Hansen, L.K. Léger, D., & Kouider, S., (2016). Neural Markers of Responsiveness to the Environment in Human Sleep. The Journal of Neuroscience, 36 (24), 6583-6596.
- Andrillon, T., & Kouider, S. (2016). Implicit Memory for Words Heard During Sleep. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 25, 2823-282.
- Koroma, M., Lacaux, C., Andrillon, T., Legendre, G., Leger, D., & Kouider S. (2020). Sleepers Selectively Suppress Informative Inputs during Rapid Eye Movements. Current Biology, 30, 1-7.
- Koroma, M., Elbaz, G., Leger, D., & Kouider S. (2021). Mapping new word representations during sleep via associative transfer learning. Manuscript under review (2nd round) in Psychological Science.
- Legendre, G., Andrillon, T., Koroma, M., & Kouider S. (2019). Sleepers track informative speech in a multitalker environment. Nature Human Behaviour, 2397-3374. doi:10.1038/s41562-018-0502-5.
Our work on whether and how much participants can attribute self-agency when making directly with their mind, using a brain-computer interface (BCI), showed that people are in large part unable to estimate what they are controlling without reflecting on their overt behavior. These findings reveal a nice dissociation between agency and self-consciousness, and suggest that despite the general impression of a rich internal life, people are only partially aware of their impending decisions.
- Rebouillat, B., Leonetti, J-M, & Kouider S. (2021). People confabulate with high confidence when their decisions are supported by weak internal variables. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 7(1): niab004.
- Rebouillat, B., & Kouider S. (2021). Partial awareness during voluntary endogenous decision. Manuscript submitted for publication.
Our work on the precursors of metacognition and self-consciousness in infants used measures of implicit behaviors and neural signatures to reveal that infants possess ‘core’ metacognitive abilities. Indeed, they can communicate in a non-verbal manner whether they know they don’t know. Moreover, they evaluate their decision confidence and generate electrophysiological signals (i.e. the Error-Related Negativity brain wave) reflecting the internal monitoring of their own errors after having made a simple decision. We propose a new theoretical framework for the development of metacognition and self-reflection in infants. In addition, our work provides new insights from what we know now about consciousness and metacognition in babies to the recent efforts in developing conscious artificial intelligence using machine learning.
- Goupil, L., Romand-Monnier, M., & Kouider S. (2016). Infants ask for help when they know they don’t know. PNAS, 113, 3492–3496.
- Goupil, L., & Kouider S. (2016). Behavioral and Neural Indices of Metacognitive Sensitivity in Preverbal Infants. Current biology, 26, 3038-3045.
- Goupil, L., & Kouider S. (2019). Developing a reflective mind: from core metacognition to explicit self-reflection. Current directions in Psychological Science. doi.org/10.1177/0963721419848672.
- Dehaene, S., Lau, H. & Kouider, S. (2017). What is consciousness, and could machines have it? Science, 358(6362), 486-492.
