Revolutionizing Consciousness Research
Challenges in Investigating the Quality and Content of Consciousness
The content of consciousness has complex properties such as structure (e.g., semantic structure) and dynamics (e.g., temporal changes in content). However, little scientific research has been performed to explore the neural mechanisms that produce such complex properties of consciousness. The main reason is that standard experiments on consciousness rely on simple reports from experimental subjects (e.g., pressing a button), which do not capture the complex properties of consciousness. To address this issue, it would be desirable to use detailed verbal reports (narratives) to assess the properties of consciousness. However, narratives collected from subjects with no specialized knowledge lack reliability and detail. Moreover, narrative data, which are not themselves quantified, are difficult to use directly in scientific studies that require quantitative analysis.
Addressing the Challenges: The Goals of Our Research Area
To address these issues, the Phenomenological Group (PI: Takuya Niikawa) in our research area develops experimental methods to collect rich and reliable narratives about consciousness from non-experts. Additionally, the NLP Group (PI: Hitomi Yanaka) develops analytical methods that use AI-based text analysis to quantify the semantic content of these narratives, which reflect the properties of consciousness. Then, the Brain Group (PI: Satoshi Nishida) proposes a framework for exploring the neural mechanisms of these properties by analyzing the correlation between quantified narratives and measured brain activity. By achieving these research goals, we can establish a foundation for narrative-based scientific studies of consciousness, which has the potential to transform consciousness research.