An information integration theory of consciousness

By Giulio Tononi. BMC Neuroscience, 2004

1,734 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BackgroundConsciousness poses two main problems. The first is understanding the conditions that determine to what extent a system has conscious experience. For instance, why is our consciousness generated by certain parts of our brain, such as the thalamocortical system, and not by other parts, such as the cerebellum? And why are we conscious during wakefulness and much less so during dreamless sleep? The second problem is understanding the conditions that determine what kind of consciousness a system has. For example, why do specific parts of the brain contribute specific qualities to our conscious experience, such as vision and audition?Presentation of the hypothesisThis paper presents a theory about what consciousness is and how it can be measured. According to the theory, consciousness corresponds to the capacity of a system to integrate information. This claim is motivated by two key phenomenological properties of consciousness: differentiation – the availability of a very large number of conscious experiences; and integration – the unity of each such experience. The theory states that the quantity of consciousness available to a system can be measured as the Φ value of a complex of elements. Φ is the amount of causally effective information that can be integrated across the informational weakest link of a subset of elements. A complex is a subset of elements with Φ>0 that is not part of a subset of higher Φ. The theory also claims that the quality of consciousness is determined by the informational relationships among the elements of a complex, which are specified by the values of effective information among them. Finally, each particular conscious experience is specified by the value, at any given time, of the variables mediating informational interactions among the elements of a complex.Testing the hypothesisThe information integration theory accounts, in a principled manner, for several neurobiological observations concerning consciousness. As shown here, these include the association of consciousness with certain neural systems rather than with others; the fact that neural processes underlying consciousness can influence or be influenced by neural processes that remain unconscious; the reduction of consciousness during dreamless sleep and generalized seizures; and the time requirements on neural interactions that support consciousness.Implications of the hypothesisThe theory entails that consciousness is a fundamental quantity, that it is graded, that it is present in infants and animals, and that it should be possible to build conscious artifacts.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/c93798ad4d66738eccbeafee56b55b2bd1647a35

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Citations in the corpus

Brain Dynamics Underlying the Nonlinear Threshold for Access to Consciousness (2007, neutral): “areas [15–28,66].”
Consciousness In The Universe (2011, background): “How does consciousness arise from neurocomputation? Some contend that consciousness emerges from computational complexity due to firings and other brain electrical activity [37,38].”
Criticality in Large-Scale Brain fMRI Dynamics Unveiled by a Novel Point Process Analysis (2012, background): “If our hypothesis is true, we can predict, together with integration/segregation theories of consciousness (Tononi et al., 1994; Tononi, 2004), that a displacement of the optimal point should be observed for brain states of diminished conscious content such as deep sleep, anesthesia, or coma (Lee et”
A visual analytics approach to understanding cycling behaviour (2012, neutral): “The modeb and modeh declarations also specify what is considered to be an input variable , an output variable , a constant , and an upper bound on how many times the predicate it speciﬁes can appear in the same clause, called recall .”
Consciousness without a cerebral cortex: A challenge for neuroscience and medicine (2007, background): “Furthermore, evidence from functional studies suggests other possible modulating roles: for instance, Trageser et al. (2006) reported ZI’s involvement in gating ascending sensory inputs according to the animal’s current state of arousal.”
Integrated Information in Discrete Dynamical Systems: Motivation and Theoretical Framework (2008, methodology): “We determine the a posteriori repertoire by forcibly intervening in the system and imposing each state in the a priori repertoire, thus we implement a perturbational approach (Pearl 2000; Tononi 2001; Tononi and Sporns 2003; Tononi 2004); see also (Ay and Krakauer 2007; Ay and Polani 2008) which app”
Recovery of cortical effective connectivity and recovery of consciousness in vegetative patients (2012, positive): “Theoretical consider- ations (Tononi, 2004; Laureys, 2005; Dehaene et al., 2006; Tononi and Koch, 2008; Seth et al., 2008) as well as experimental data (Del Cul et al., 2007; Alkire et al., 2008) suggest that a basic requirement for consciousness is that multiple, specialized areas of the…”
Psychedelics (2016, result): “This view is consistent with the information integration theory of consciousness (Tononi, 2004), which proposes that the thalamus and thalamocortical system play a key role in integrating information and ensuing consciousness.”
TMS and drugs revisited 2014. (2015, background): “Theoretical neuroscience suggests that consciousness requires the coexistence of integration and information in thalamo-cortical networks, otherwise defined as brain complexity (Seth et al., 2006; Sporns, 2011; Tononi, 2004; Tononi and Edelman, 1998).”
From the Phenomenology to the Mechanisms of Consciousness: Integrated Information Theory 3.0 (2014, background): “By contrast, a prominent feature of the cerebral cortex, which instead can generate consciousness, is that it is comprised of elements that are functionally specialized and at the same time can interact rapidly and effectively [4,37,38].”
Optimization of anesthesia protocol for resting-state fMRI in mice based on differential effects of anesthetics on functional connectivity patterns (2014, background): “…in humans have suggested severalmechanisms potentially leading to the loss of consciousness such as the loss of information content within the signal either in the form of temporal information, reflected in the entropy measures, or of the spatial integration (Schrouff et al., 2011; Tononi, 2004).”
Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis (2020, background): “The theory further attempted to address two key properties of consciousness: integration (the unity of a conscious experience) and differentiation (the large number of states available) (Oizumi et al., 2014; Tononi, 2004; Tononi et al., 2016).”
Insects have the capacity for subjective experience (2016, background): “For example, authors have postulated subjective experience in plants (Pelizzon & Gagliano, 2015), in any reasonably complex system (see Tononi, 2004), or even that it is a fundamental feature of the universe akin to spin and electric charge (Strawson, 2006).”
Rhythms of the brain (2006, background): “Tononi’s information theory model of consciousness (Tononi, 2004) implies that subjective experience is one and the same thing as a system’s capacity to integrate and differentiate information.”