Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science Contemporary consciousness science faces an impasse: competing theoretical frameworks—structuralist versus functionalist, universal versus local, intrinsic versus extrinsic—appear to be inducing philo...

New open-access paper out in Trends in Cognitive Sciences:

Explanation, scope, and perspective: sources of schismogenesis in consciousness science
Francesco Ellia & Naotsugu Tsuchiya

A thread 1/n🧵

www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Thank you, Michael! 🙏

Wholehearted recommendation to listen to @jaanaru.bsky.social on @braininspired.bsky.social !

So much in there about neurobiological theories of consciousness but also about academic freedom and diversity!

🧠🌍🌎🌏🧠

Electrophysiological Mechanisms of Psychedelic Drugs: A Systematic Review Serotonergic psychedelics are known for their profound effects on consciousness and are gaining renewed interest as potential psychiatric treatments. …

Did someone want systematic reviews of the effects of psychedelics?

We have two:
A review of electrophysiology, out now in Neuroscience and Biobehavioral reviews www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

And a review of cognitive effects in J of Psychopharmacology journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

Modern AI is simply no match for the complexity likely required for harboring consciousness, says Jaan Aru He argues that our brain’s computations are of a completely different nature than any artificial intelligence because they take place across many spatial and temporal scales and are inextricably…

In the latest @braininspired.bsky.social, @jaanaru.bsky.social argues that our brain’s computations are of a different nature than any AI; brains compute across spatial and temporal scales, and the computations are entwined with the biological materials.

www.thetransmitter.org/brain-inspir...

The Self-Evidencing Agent What is it to be a human individual, an agent? According to Jakob Hohwy, it is to “self-evidence,” to actively seek out sensory evidence for one&...

"The Self-Evidencing Agent" - my new book - is out now with @mitpress.bsky.social

Can be purchased, or just download the whole thing for free, via the 'Open Access' option.

I'm grateful to @anilseth.bsky.social and Karl Friston for the generous endorsements.

mitpress.mit.edu/978026255389...

Thank you, Hakwan!

1) Some functions (say motor control) might be achieved in multiple ways in different organisms, whereas there might be fewer "degrees of freedom" for consciousness
2) Consciousness might be fundamentally different

But point well taken!🙏

also @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social

A third way between computational functionalism and biological naturalism? @neuromorphicboki.bsky.social & @jaanaru.bsky.social think so 👇

The prospect of artificial consciousness might be both over- and underrated 🤔

Comparing a computational model of visual problem solving with human vision on a difficult vision task Author summary Human vision is not just about passively receiving information from the environment. Rather, it also involves actively making sense of what we see. When faced with unclear or incomplete...

Under challenging conditions, human vision turns into iterative problem solving. Typical deep learning algorithms don't do this.

Our paper out now in Plos Computational Biology journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

work led by @tarunkhajuria.bsky.social

#visionscience #neuroAI

There is a lot of talk about LLMs revolutionizing education. But once you get into it, things are not that trivial.

Here, we summarize the questions that emerge when trying to implement AI Tutors nationwide.

Out now in @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social

#edusky

authors.elsevier.com/a/1ltdo4sIRv...

Our open-access article - Testing circuit-level theories of consciousness in humans - together with Yunkai Zhu, Carolina Fernandez Pujol, @dvwz.bsky.social, @jonescompneurolab.bsky.social, @tmarvan.bsky.social, and @danclab.bsky.social, was just published @cp-trendscognsci.bsky.social.

Thank you very much for remembering and noting my work! :)

Comparing a computational model of visual problem solving with human vision on a difficult vision task Human vision is not merely a passive process of interpreting sensory input but can also function as a problem-solving process incorporating generative mechanisms to interpret ambiguous or noisy data. ...

Awesome! You might also like our new paper:
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The difficult constellation image is solved by generating candidate solutions with a GAN and refined using a genetic search conditioned on best fitting of the solution outline to the dots on the constellation image.

Could we understand vision as a type of problem-solving? In this new paper, we develop a computational model that iteratively refines the hypothesis about the visual input with evolutionary search.

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

work led by @tarunkhajuria.bsky.social

#visionscience #neuroAI

AI and personalized learning: bridging the gap with modern educational goals Personalized learning (PL) aspires to provide an alternative to the one-size-fits-all approach in education. Technology-based PL solutions have shown notable effectiveness in enhancing learning perfor...

Hi Jeff, happy if you add me

For example
arxiv.org/abs/2404.02798
And
www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

Thank you! this doesn’t mean that psychedelics don’t have any effects mediated by membrane receptors in L5p neurons — they probably do, and several. But regarding the reduction of excitatory currents and the emergence of late eEPSCs the intracellular receptors might be crucial

Thank you! I'm happy if our review is useful.

It could be interesting for @alexkwan.bsky.social @existwell.bsky.social @nichols-lab.bsky.social
@mayoonthebrain.bsky.social
@parkersingleton.bsky.social @manojdoss.bsky.social @katenautiyal.bsky.social @robincarhartharris.bsky.social @fredbarrettphd.bsky.social

We systematically reviewed 23 in vitro and 26 in vivo electrophysiological studies on psychedelic compounds, with an emphasis on layer 5 pyramidal neurons.

Our results challenge the simplified view that psychedelics uniformly increase cortical excitability

www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

The feasibility of artificial consciousness through the lens of neuroscience Interactions with large language models (LLMs) have led to the suggestion that these models may soon be conscious. From the perspective of neuroscience, this position is difficult to defend. For one, ...

Looks great! There was also this stupid paper but feel free to ignore it: www.cell.com/trends/neuro...

🙏

Thanks! Indeed, there are many further possibilities. Let's keep on exploring them!

🙏

🙏 I would have stopped working on this a long time ago if there weren't people like you

I'm making some further points in the chapter but probably only three of my best friends are reading this post down here in the thread (and I might lose one of them if I continue) so I just stop here.

🙏 if you got this far.

Sometimes I really hate working on consciousness

This doesn't mean that one cannot capture consciousness computationally at all but we might be really far from understanding these specific computations. The potential space of biological computations is completely unknown to us.

The stupid figure comes from www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

As I claim in the chapter, matter matters for the mind. I think the physical brainy stuff matters for the computations. You cannot simply abstract all these details away. The physical properties significantly constrain what types of computations can be run on them. Part of computations is physical.

Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence: Insights from the Science of Consciousness Whether current or near-term AI systems could be conscious is a topic of scientific interest and increasing public concern. This report argues for, and exemplifies, a rigorous and empirically grounded...

Third, the most problematic assumption is that we are closing in on the computations of consciousness

The Butlin paper really broke my heart because the key assumption of this paper is that our theories are close to figuring it out. I'm not so sure. We might be really far

arxiv.org/abs/2308.08708

There is an (implicit) assumption that probably consciousness corresponds to some type of pattern of spiking (the details might be different according to GNWT, RPT and other theories)

But this might be just a historical artifact not a real thing. Spikes might not be the currency of consciousness.