Decoding consciousness. (360G-Wellcome-082334_Z_07_Z)

Currently the best way of discovering whether someone is having conscious experiences is to ask them, which is sometimes impractical or impossible. The ultimate goal of the proposed research is to establish biomarkers of consciousness that circumvent this need. I will flexibly combine non-invasive imaging technologies (fMRI & MEG) with new methodological approaches (high spatial resolution imaging and multivariate pattern recognition) to examine what distinguishes conscious and unconscious repre sentations in the human visual pathways, both cortical and subcortical, for both patients with focal cortical damage and healthy volunteers. I will further examine the potential causal role of frontal and parietal structures (plus cortico-cortical or thalamocortical coupling) in awareness, using TMS and fMRI either alone or in combination. Clinically, changing the level of consciousness causes profound effects on the ability of neural representations to reach awareness. I will therefore study ho w sensory representations change in patients undergoing anaesthesia using intraoperative fMRI. Finally, I will bring together all of this work in attempting to dynamically decode both conscious perception and intention from brain activity alone. The prospect ultimately afforded by this work is the ability to decode consciousness in humans (and possibly animals) for health and human benefit.