Scientists embrace a novel collaborative approach to investigating one of the brain’s greatest mysteries
A global consortium of researchers including University 鶹ѡ neuroscientists have conducted a landmark study testing two dominant theories about the nature of consciousness.
Published in , the results of an ambitious study organised by the Cogitate Consortium saw 250 participants take part in tests using several neuro-imaging techniques to test theories about how and where brain activity linked to conscious experience takes place.
In labs around the world including the Centre for Human Brain Health at the University 鶹ѡ, tests used functional MRI (fMRI), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and intracranial EEG recordings from epilepsy patients to rigorously test three key predictions from the two leading models of consciousness, Global Neuronal Workspace Theory (GNWT), and Integrated Information Theory (IIT) —for a rigorous empirical test.
In the area of consciousness, there are already so many theories that we don’t need more. What we do need are better experiments to help us establish what works and doesn’t work in our current theories.
Their tests sought to establish where in the brain content of conscious experiences is represented, how conscious experience is maintained over time, and how different regions communicate to generate conscious experience.
Dr Oscar Ferrante, a Neuroscientist at the University 鶹ѡ said:
“In the area of consciousness, there are already so many theories that we don’t need more. What we do need are better experiments to help us establish what works and doesn’t work in our current theories. As consciousness is a tricky theoretical nut to crack, studies like this give us not only a huge amount of insight to help us in the future but also set a model for how we think other types of studies should be conducted in the future.”
Science thrives when theories are put to the test. And the results were maybe not what their proponents had hoped for. One of IIT’s key predictions failed.
The study found no sustained synchronization between early and mid-level visual areas located in the posterior part of the brain, which contradicts IIT’s claim that consciousness depends on neural integration of information in a posterior "hot zone."
GNWT was also seriously challenged: While some features of conscious experience (such as stimulus category) were evident in activity in the prefrontal cortex part of the brain, critical aspects of experience (like in which direction the stimuli were oriented or their identity) were absent—despite being consciously perceivable. Moreover, a predicted burst of neural activity, a so-called “ignition” — theoretically required for maintaining conscious experience—was not found when the conscious experience ended.
Lucia Melloni, from the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics (MPIEA) and corresponding author said:
“Real science isn’t about proving you’re right—it’s about getting it right. True progress comes from making theories vulnerable to falsification, not protecting them. Stan and Giulio took a bold step in doing just that. This wasn’t about picking a winner; it was about raising the bar for how we test ideas”.
For centuries, the nature of consciousness has baffled scientists and philosophers alike. What transforms neural activity into the rich, subjective experience of seeing a face, hearing a melody, or feeling the warmth of the sun? The mystery remains unsolved, but theories are advancing, steadily pushing us closer to an answer. Despite decades of research, some of the leading, competing theories have remained largely isolated from each other, progressing in intellectual silos where proponents rarely engage with opposing views.
This fragmentation—what psychologist Walter Mischel famously dubbed "the toothbrush problem" (no scientist wants to use someone else’s theory)—has stalled progress toward a unified understanding of consciousness.
From the outset, the Cogitate Consortium set out to change that. Instead of having theories operate in isolation, the consortium brought together the proponents of two influential theories of consciousness—GNWT, led by Stanislas Dehaene, and IIT, proposed by Giulio Tononi. In a shift to how experimental methodologies are designed, the study was designed ex ante—meaning that all predictions, methods, and interpretations were registered in advance, eliminating post-hoc rationalizations.
The Cogitate Consortium is now analyzing the results of a second large-scale experiment to further test GNWT and IIT, and they are also releasing their entire dataset to the scientific community, ensuring that researchers worldwide can retest, refine, and expand on their findings. “This is just the beginning,” said co-senior author Michael Pitts, from Reed College. “We’re not just publishing results—we’re sharing everything: the full dataset and analysis pipelines. We want the community to build on our work and take it further.”
Taken together, this initiative promises to herald a breakthrough in our understanding of consciousness, according to co-senior author Liad Mudrik from Tel Aviv University: “This project has yielded new and more precise predictions, an incredibly rich open dataset and a clear demonstration of the robustness and innovation of consciousness science. Together with other adversarial collaborations now taking place, the community would be able to critically evaluate existing theories and hopefully converge on an agreed upon account”.
Postdoctoral Researcher
Dr Oscar Ferrante is a researcher within the Neural Oscillations Group, School of Psychology specialising in Neuroscience
