Matthias Michel

MIT Consciousness Club The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

Next week at the MIT Consciousness Club, Marisa Carrasco will talk about "Perception / Action dissociations as a window into consciousness". Looking forward to it! You can find details (as well as zoom option) here: sites.google.com/view/mit-con...

YouTube video by Michigan Medicine Sensory Horizons and Visual Consciousness in Non-Human Animal

Recording of a talk on "Sensory Horizons and Visual Consciousness in Non-human Animals" (www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_Pz...) at the University of Michigan. Based on the recent BBS paper on sensory horizons and consciousness w/ @smfleming.bsky.social.

YouTube video by Consciousness Live! Consciousness Live! #1

I decided to start a new YouTube channel just for consciousness Live! and will be re-uploading past discussions there until I can host live discussions on that channel. Here is the very first one, from all the way back in 2018 with @hakwan.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZbj...

I agree. Though note that given that the technology is relatively new a lot of the studies will be exploratory in nature I guess.

Didn't try it myself yet! Waiting for the IRB at MIT, but we should have a system on campus at some point.

Transcranial Focused Ultrasound for Identifying the Neural Substrate of Conscious Perception Identifying what aspects of brain activity are responsible for conscious perception remains one of the most challenging problems in science. While pro…

New paper: Transcranial Focused Ultrasound for Identifying the Neural Substrate of Conscious Perception. With Dan Freeman, @brianodegaard.bsky.social, and Seung-Schik Yoo. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Discussion with Sam Coleman -Consciousness Live s8e8 YouTube video by onemorebrown

Interesting interview of Sam Coleman on Consciousness Live! www.youtube.com/live/Ulo5lTh...

The science of consciousness The MIT Consciousness Club, led by professors Matthias Michel and Earl Miller, explores how neurological activity gives rise to human experience.

The science of consciousness
Through the MIT Consciousness Club, professors Matthias Michel and Earl Miller are exploring how neurological activity gives rise to human experience.
news.mit.edu/2025/science...
#neuroscience

The science of consciousness The MIT Consciousness Club, led by professors Matthias Michel and Earl Miller, explores how neurological activity gives rise to human experience.

MIT News article about the MIT Consciousness Club: news.mit.edu/2025/science.... Next session is this Thursday, 12pm-1:30pm. You can learn more here: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....

YouTube video by Giant's Shoulder Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Proving Brain Waves Are the Secret Engine Behind Consciousness

Giant Shoulders podcast: Meet the MIT Neuroscientist Proving Brainwaves are the Secret to Consciousness.
youtu.be/7OFb-NG3jIw
#neuroscience

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

This study aimed to investigate how working memory interacts with perception at the behavioral level. We examined whether working memory modulates subjective perception when the general capacity for perceptual processing is kept constant.

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Bees, blindsight, and consciousness Blindsight patients lack conscious visual perception yet perform visual tasks effectively, suggesting many animals may similarly rely on non-conscious vision. Here, we discuss how to investigate visua...

Bees, blindsight, and consciousness, by Tamietto et al. www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

New Preprint from Kevin Dorst and me!

"Reflection, Introspection, and Book" is about arguments regarding probabilistic coherence and two other principles: reflection (your probabilities today are coherent with your probabilities tomorrow) and introspection (that you know your own beliefs).

MIT Consciousness Club The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

Join us Thursday Nov. 20 at 12pm (EST), Earl Miller will present at the MIT Consciousness Club: "Consciousness emerges from neural dynamics". Details available on the MIT Consciousness Club website: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....

MIT Consciousness Club The MIT Consciousness Club aims to foster interdisciplinary research on consciousness at MIT and in the broader Boston area by organizing a monthly event featuring an expert talk on consciousness foll...

Join us Thursday Nov. 20 at 12pm (EST), Earl Miller will present at the MIT Consciousness Club: "Consciousness emerges from neural dynamics". Details available on the MIT Consciousness Club website: sites.google.com/view/mit-con....

Now out officially here! Published as part of a special issue on evolutionary functions of consciousness edited by W. Tecumseh Fitch, Colin Allen, & Adina Roskies, which also features fascinating contributions from several leaders in the field! royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

Is #ketamine a good pharmacological model of #schyzophrenia?

W/ @lucieberko.bsky.social, @standehaene.bsky.social, R Gaillard, and A Salvador, we investigated the impact of ketamine on conscious processing and attention in healthy subjects.

Check the preprint!
www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

🧠🧪

Identifying indicators of consciousness in AI systems Rapid progress in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities has drawn fresh attention to the prospect of consciousness in AI. There is an urgent need …

Happy to be on this new paper: "Identifying indicators of consciousness in AI systems" - www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti.... The paper expands on some of the methodological points made in the Butlin et al. 2023 report on AI Consciousness.

Without monkeys, neuroscience has no future Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of BCIs, ANNs. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk.

Research in primate brains has been essential for the development of brain-computer interfaces and artificial neural networks. New funding and policy changes put future such advances at risk, write Cory Miller, @movshon.bsky.social and Doris Tsao.

#neuroskyence

bit.ly/47MXYLH

Continuous Flash Suppression responses in mouse visual cortex: stimulus laterality and anesthesia effects We investigated whether binocularly conflicting stimuli adapted from primate binocular rivalry studies could induce binocular response suppression in mouse visual cortex. We presented binocularly conf...

More evidence of continuous flash suppression / binocular rivalry under anesthesia (in mice): www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Question for representational format people:

Greenberg’s (2023) way of making the iconic/symbolic distinction, as consisting in the different rules which state the semantic contents of signs, seems pretty popular. And it’s pretty neat.

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Computational modelling shows evidence in support of both sensory and frontal theories of consciousness Abstract. The role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in consciousness is hotly debated. Frontal theories argue that the PFC is necessary for consciousness, wh

🚨 New article in #NCONSC

Computational modelling shows evidence in support of both sensory and frontal theories of consciousness
academic.oup.com/nc/article/2...

#consciousness
🧠🧪

Join us for tomorrow’s Consciousness Club - Yair Pinto (www.uva.nl/en/profile/p...) on “No easy solutions for the Hard Problem of consciousness”. Should be fun!

Wednesday Nov 5th, 11am-1230pm UK time

For more info and how to join see metacoglab.org/consciousnes...

The Nature, Structure, and Perception of Illumination Illumination is a defining characteristic of natural environments, yet its nature and spatial structure remain poorly understood. I argue first that illumination is not simply light: it is an emergen...

Rich & compelling new paper by Will Davies on illumination as more than mere light. But an emergent, ecologically sig., structured kind - comprising fields & surfaces, shadows & sunbeams; sunlight & twilight. #philperception #philmind #philpsy onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

"Intuitions of mathematical curves in young children's drawings"
In this new paper from the lab, Lorenzo Ciccione, Marie Lubineau, Theo Morfoisse and I show that 5 and 6 year olds already possess intuitions of linearity, curvature, period and compositionality.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a point made by Doug Hofstadter in this 1981 dialogue: www.cse.unr.edu/~sushil/clas...

Replicating the unconscious working memory effect: A multisite preregistered study: https://osf.io/sj7fz

Steve and I are currently working on the response, it's been really great to read and think about all the commentaries (>150 pages of commentaries!) I thought the speech processing example in this one was excellent, and more grist to our mill!

Understanding the flexibility of working memory: Compositionality, generative processing, anchors and holistic representations The typical conception of working memory is a mechanism to temporarily hold multiple discrete objects in service of other cognitive tasks in an item-b…

Understanding the flexibility of working memory: Compositionality, generative processing, anchors and holistic representations
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
#neuroscience

I’m not saying we should ignore the biological details. I think the details matter a lot for implementing the right functions. But if you think biology matters beyond that, just give me a *biological* property that reliably distinguishes conscious from unconscious states.