Project description
The role of internal organs in consciousness
Subjectivity refers to the individual's unique and personal experience of the world, which includes thoughts, emotions, and perceptions. The neural mechanisms underlying subjectivity are complex and not yet fully understood. Funded by the European Research Council, the BRAVIUS project is working under the hypothesis that subjectivity is related to the neural monitoring of visceral organs such as the heart and the stomach. Researchers will measure brain responses to heartbeats and gastric activity to validate the information flow to the cerebral cortex. Results will provide unprecedented insight into how ascending visceral signals contribute to subjectivity and the organisation of brain activity.
Objective
Subjectivity defines the subject who is perceiving, feeling, thinking, acting, and is essential to understand the conscious mind from the inside. However, subjectivity, or non-reflective first-person perspective, is not identified as a core concept in cognitive neuroscience and its neural basis remain largely unknown. BRAVIUS offers a unified framework to appraise both the concept and the neural mechanisms generating subjectivity. The hypothesis relies on two vital organs that generate their own rhythmic electrical activity, the stomach and the heart, and therefore constantly send information up to the neocortex, even in the absence of bodily change. Cortical responses to those visceral organs would define the organism as an entity at the neural level, and create a subject-centered referential from which first-person perspective can develop. In other words, the cardiac and gastric pacemakers could feed the brain with self-specifying inputs. BRAVIUS builds on previous theories and studies on visceral states but focuses on ascending information, from viscera to brain, and does not require visceral states to change nor to be consciously perceived. Experimentally, BRAVIUS measures the understudied neural response evoked by heartbeats and introduces a new measure, the electrogastrogram, to quantify the slow gastric pacemaker. BRAVIUS will test with magneto-encephalography (MEG) the role of neural responses to ascending visceral signals in generating subjectivity by cutting across domains of cognitive sciences and exploring diverse paradigms where subjectivity is engaged: perceptual consciousness, self-consciousness, emotions and decision making. BRAVIUS will further explore how cardiac and gastric ascending signals shape the temporal (MEG) and spatial (fMRI) organization of spontaneous brain activity. The project outcome is a detailed mechanistic neural account of the most private part of the human mind, and a unified concept of subjectivity across cognitive domains.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences neurobiology cognitive neuroscience
- social sciences psychology cognitive psychology
- natural sciences computer and information sciences data science data processing
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Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-ADG - Advanced Grant
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) ERC-2014-ADG
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75230 Paris
France
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