UE579 - Neuroscience of consciousness

Intervenant·e·s

• Jérôme Sackur [référent·e]   directeur d'études, EHESS / Laboratoire de sciences cognitives et psycholinguistiques (LSCP)
• Claire Sergent   professeur, Université Paris Cité

This course aims at presenting a state of the art in cognitive neuroscience research on consciousness. The major focus of the course is the understanding of the psychological properties and neural underpinnings of conscious perception, conscious access and reflexive consciousness (the ability to make introspective judgments about one's own perception or cognition). From there we make propositions as to how other aspects of consciousness relate to this central building block.

The course opens to these other aspects in two ways: seminars by external teachers and students’ mini-projects. Our main working model is the Global Neuronal Workspace Model. Other models are mentioned and discussed: local recurrence; higher order thought; Integrated Information Theory.

Throughout the course we keep in mind the societal challenges linked with this research topic, including the assessment of pathologies of consciousness, the assessment of consciousness in animals and the acknowledgement of the unconscious determinants of (human) behaviours and decisions.