PROJECTS

Integration throughout the perceptual hierarchy - from psychophysics to EEG and MRI.

Principal investigator: Renate Rutiku
Years: 2022-2025

Close your eyes for a moment and open them again. Do You have to make a conscious effort to start seeing again, or does the world simply reappear in front of You without any noticeable effort? Perception of our surrounding environment seems so simple and easy that we often do not even wonder how our brain produces this effect. But in reality, or perception relies on an avalanche of neural computations and we still know only very little about how these processes really work. The aim of this project is to gain a better understanding of a subset of the tasks that the brain has to perform in order to achieve perception, namely perceptual integration. The information that arrives into our brain through our senses is like sand. It has no structure and no meaning. The brain has to integrate different parts of this information in a correct way, similar to building a sandcastle. We want to understand better, which parts of the brain are working together, and how, in order to integrate information correctly.

The Dual Function Of Metacognition: The Interplay Between Regulation And Monitoring.

Principal investigator: Marta Siedlecka
Years: 2021-2025

People have the ability to self-reflect and to control their own behaviour. We already know a lot about what influences the accuracy of our knowledge assessments or the efficiency of a problem-solving strategy we have applied, and about how we use this knowledge to change our behaviour. However, we still do not understand the workings of the basic metacognitive processes that monitor and regulate other cognitive processes. Contemporary research on the mechanisms of metacognition usually deals with monitoring and regulation separately, often in different theoretical contexts and using different research paradigms. The assumption underlying this project is that monitoring and regulation should not be studied independently of each other as they constantly influence each other. Lower-order processes are constantly controlled and regulated whilst simultaneously influencing the outcome of the monitoring process that guides further regulation.

Event-related potential correlates of auditory awareness. In search of domain-general neural correlates of consciousness.

Principal investigator: Kinga Ciupińska
Years: 2020-2023

Research goal and research hypothesis In research in the field of cognitive neuroscience, we can distinguish 3 debates about the nature of neuronal consciousness correlates (NCC). They concern the questions: are the neural correlates of consciousness global (involved in the processing of all types of content) or local (associated with processing in a given sensory cortex); is early or late neuronal activity associated with the formation of NCC; what is the way of the transition of our experiences from unconscious to conscious- is it graded or dichotomous? However, science has not yet answered this questions. This project suggests that finding the answer to a question whether the NCCs are specific for a given modality or generalized for different modalities plays a key role in our understanding of perceptual awareness. The goal of this project is therefore to provide knowledge about the neural correlates of auditory awareness, which can lead to the development of debates about the nature of subjective conscious experience in different modalities.

Gamma range auditory steady-state eeg responses: effects of physiological and pathological brain arousal changes.

Principal investigator: Marek Binder
Years: 2019-2022

How the sleeping brain differs from the awake brain? What happens inside the head of a patient with a severe brain damage who appears not being able to respond to external events, apparently lost in the state we use to call a “coma”? These are the questions that have preyed on us, and that have prompted us to explore this scientific problem. We are convinced that the answers must be related to the concept of “brain arousal”.

Early and late correlates of consciousness. Investigating structures and neural connections involved in conscious perceptual experience with magnetic resonance and transcranial magnetic stimulation.

Principal investigator: Michał Wierzchoń
Years: 2018-2021

The aim of this research project is to investigate the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in a complex and detailed manner. In order to comprehensively investigate individual differences in the brain’s organisation, we plan to use a variety of tasks and combine them with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). Such an integrative approach will enable us to find commonalities between various patterns of activation and structural basis of conscious experience.

Metacognition and cognitive control. The relationship between confidence judgements and performance monitoring.

Principal investigator: Marta Siedlecka
Years: 2018-2021

The goal of this project is to attempt to answer the question of whether and how response confidence is related to the results of the monitoring. We will use computer tasks and measurements of electrical brain activity to measure the effects of error detection, increased task difficulty, and external feedback on the behavioural, subjective, and neural level. By creating conditions that involve different monitoring processes, we will examine how the indexes of monitoring relate to the reported level of confidence and whether engaging these processesmakes our confidence judgments more accurate (i.e., whether we are more confident in our correct answers).

Formal features of conscious representations.

Principal investigator: Simon del Pin
Years: 2018-2020

How much do we experience, when we briefly see the world around us? Intuitively, many people would say that we experience a complete and detailed image of the outside world. This view is supported by some researchers, but other say that we do not necessarily experience much of the outer world when we see something briefly. This project takes the approach of making different predictions on behalf of the two views and testing them against the results of three new experimental setups. As the theories are different, we propose three experiments where the predictions of one theory go against the other.

Verifying the assumptions underlying the richness of visual representation hypothesis. Effects of attention on the characteristics of visual working memory representation.

Principal investigator: Zuzanna Skóra
Years: 2017-2020

In this project we are investigating what is the relationship between memory precision and subjective visibility (or accessibility) in visual working memory. More specifically, are these two parameters based on the same type of information? Does subjective visibility add to predictions regarding visual working memory performance?

Role of fronto-parietal network in dynamics of consciousness.

Principal investigator: Monika Derda
Years: 2017-2020

Answering the question of the biological basis of consciousness in one of the main challenges for contemporary neuroscience. So far, no univocal results are available. This might be because in previous research the distinction between neural correlates of consciousness and neural correlates of process that follow consciousness has not been made. It is claimed in proposed project that the function of fronto-parietal networks in consciousness are not neural correlates of consciousness, but neural correlates of decision process, which is cognitive control especially managing the response conflict.

Neuronal substrates of consciousness - automatic classification of level of consciousness with BCI methods.

Principal investigator: Marcin Koculak
Years: 2017-2020

Main goal of this project is to deepen the knowledge about biological mechanisms that lead to the emergence of consciousness. The project is a part of collective effort through introducing novel methods of analysing biological signals related to conscious processing, transferred from research devoted to development of brain-computer interfaces.

Cognitive and neural plasticity and the subjective experience. Interdisciplinary analysis of sensory substitution.

Principal investigator: Michał Wierzchoń
Years: 2017-2020

Cognitive and neural plasticity and the subjective experience. Interdisciplinary analysis of sensory substitution. The aim of the research project is to identify the cognitive and neural mechanisms engaged in the formation of the subjective experience of sensory substitution (SS).

Neurophysiological indicators for consciousness state recognition using auditory textures.

Principal investigator: Urszula Górska
Years: 2016-2018

This project is motivated by the lack of reliable clinical methods to differentiate patients after severe brain injuries classified as prolonged disorders of consciousness (PDOC). Its main assumption is that the perception of complex auditory textures requires the brain to detect certain statistical pattern and integrate statistical information which can only occur in the presence of consciousness. An essential goal of this project is comprehensive test of its hypotheses on a group of healthy subjects in awake and asleep condition, on PDOC patients as well as on mice during direct registration of neuronal responses in the auditory cortex where manipulation with the level of consciousness is obtained with anesthesia.

Cognitive mechanisms of volition – the role of cue weighting and sensory integration in health and disease.

Principal investigator: Bartosz Majchrowicz
Years:

Volition is a crucial category in understanding cognitive functioning of humans, and the sense of agency (SoA) can be regarded as its central element. SoA refers to the feeling that I am the cause, the author of given action (and its subsequent effects); it allows to differ between self- and externally-generated events. There are few methods of SoA measurement based on certain perceptual effects which occur only in the case of intentional action: temporal binding, spatial binding, and sensory attenuation. Many details still need further research, however, including the precise range and dynamics of weighting and integration processes (possible asymmetries in weightings depending on the cue type; moderating factors), its specificity in psychotic patients, and the relationship between different SoA measures.

The influence of levels of processing and attentional selection on the dynamics of visual awareness.

Principal investigator: Anna Anzulewicz
Years: 2015-2017

The present project is focused on two factors that seem to play such a modulatory role in the transition from unconscious to conscious processing. The first factor is an actual level of processing (LoP) of visual information imposed by demands of a task, and the second factor is temporal attention. Proposed hypotheses state that these two factors modulate the graduality of the transition from unconscious to conscious vision in such a way that imposing either a high-level of processing of visual stimuli, or a strong attentional inhibition, decreases graduality of the transition.

Cognitive and neuronal mechanism of metacognitive awareness.

Principal investigator: Michał Wierzchoń
Years: 2014-2019

The goal of the project is to determine cognitive and neural mechanisms of metacognitive awareness that allows participants to assess the content of their memory and perception.We will use standard cognitive psychology experimental procedures (backward masking, change blindness, cued recall task and insight task). Apart from computerized tasks we will use EEG and TMS, which will enable us to describe the temporal dynamics of metacognitive judgments formation and to localize the involved brain areas. We will not only use behavioral and psychophysiological measures but also subjective scales of consciousness and metacognitive scales (e.g. stimulus visibility or decision confidence).

Relationship between interoceptive awareness and metacognitive abilities in nearthreshold visual perception.

Principal investigator: Marta Łukowska
Years: 2015-2017

The following project investigates the relationship between interoceptive awareness and metacognitive abilities in the context of near-threshold visual perception. In the set of studies an influence of getting access to cardiac activity following Type 1 perceptual decision (i.e. visual judgment) on a Type 2 perceptual decision (i.e. metacognitive judgment) would be explored. Conscious access to interoceptive (i.e. cardiac) information is expected to increase an accuracy of the metacgontive judgements about the Type 1 perceptual decision.

Diagnosis of consciousness using EEG in patients with severe brain damage.

Principal investigator: Marek Binder
Years: 2014-2017

The main objective of this project is the development and assessment of diagnostic sensitivity of four brain activity measurement protocols aimed at detecting consciousness in patients with severe brain damage. Such protocols are intended to increase overall validity of differential diagnosis of disorders of consciousness (DOC) by complementing clinical scales based on behavioural assessment. These four study protocols are: auditory and haptic-auditory steady-state responses and neural correlates of single and repetitive movement attempt to command. Another project objective is the development of the Polish version of the JFK Coma Recovery Scale - Revised. The function of this tool is differential diagnosis, prognostic assessment, and treatment planning in patients with disorders of consciousness.

Dynamic Neural Correlates Of Consciousness As A Function Of The Level Of Processing.

Principal investigator: Marek Binder
Years: 2013-2016

In an earlier work, based on the observation that existing evidence for both approaches (Reccurent Processing Hypothesis and Global Workspace Theory) appear to be based on different types of tasks and stimuli, we have already shown that by taking the level of processing of stimuli into account (for example low level features of visual stimuli and simple tasks versus high level features of stimuli and semantic tasks), one can integrate contradictory results and theories in the domain of consciousness. The aim of the present project is to provide a new empirical evidence for this approach on a level of neural activity measured by fMRI technique.

The Dynamics of Consciousness. A Cognitive Model of Conscious Experience Formation.

Principal investigator: Michał Wierzchoń
Years: 2013-2017

The proposed research project aims to establish a research team that will investigate the cognitive basis of consciousness. The team will attempt to preliminary verify assumptions made by a proposed model based on one of the most popular contemporary theory of consciousness – Higher-Order Thought Theory. The model assumes that both, the process of getting conscious access to any content and of conscious experience formation are based on dynamic interactions between automatically activated representation constituting the content of consciousness (first order thought) and metarepresentation that interprets the lower order representation (higher-order thought).