What is the problem/issue being addressed?
The core defining feature of consciousness is the ability to have subjective experiences: when I feel cold, when I appreciate the softness of a fabric, or when I find a movie boring. Where do subjective experiences come from? The overall aim of BRAVIUS is to develop and test a novel hypothesis on the biological implementation of subjectivity.
Why is it important for society?
Understanding how biological processes generate consciousness is not only one the most intellectually challenging issue in science, it has also profound implications for society. Indeed, having consciousness is what defines a sentient being, and a sentient being should be granted rights. For instance, in modern societies voting rights are granted to adults not because of intelligence or wealth, but to each adult as a conscious person. The need to determine who - or what - is conscious or not is becoming more and more pressing: are fetuses, flies, cows, or artificial agents conscious? A first step in answering such questions is to identify the biological mechanisms generating subjective experiences in humans.
What are the overall objectives?
The hypothesis developed and tested in BRAVIUS is that subjectivity stems from brain-body interactions. In particular, we are interested in how the brain monitors two vital organs, the stomach and the heart. Each of these organs that generates its own rhythmic electrical activity, a bit like a battery, and is wired to the brain. In this project we investigate to which extent the activity of the heart and the stomach explain brain dynamics in humans, and whether and how neural responses to visceral signals are involved in subjective experiences in various domains, from perception to imagination, from spontaneous thoughts to decisions and emotions.
