Research


Research highlights

Dreamachine


The dreamachine project is an immersive, collective public experience, and a major scientific opportunity. As part of it, we are conducting a large-scale citizen-science study to better understand the hidden diversity in how we experience the world – and ourselves. Discover more about our unique Perception Census.

ERC Project CONSCIOUS


I have recently been awarded a five-year European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant for project CONSCIOUS: Explaining conscious experiences in terms of neural mechanisms. The aim is go beyond merely establishing correlations between patterns of brain activity, towards developing and testing explanations of properties of consciousness in terms of neural mechanisms.

Seth, A.K., and Bayne, T. (2022). Theories of consciousness. Nature Reviews Neuroscience

Seth, A.K.  (2024). Conscious artificial intelligence and biological naturalism. PsyArXiv

Being a beast machine


For many years I’ve been developing a theory of consciousness and self which argues that all conscious experiences – of the world and of the self – are rooted in predictive models in the brain that are geared towards keeping the body alive. We are conscious ‘beast machines’, and consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent. I’ve also explored other aspects of the philosophy of consciousness, including the possibility of ‘islands of awareness’ in (for example) brain organoids.

Seth, A.K. (2021). Being You: A New Science of Consciousness. Faber/Dutton

Causality, emergence, complexity


I’m keen to develop new measures of causality, emergence, and complexity. Much of this work is based on Granger causality and transfer entropy, and our field-leading software is freely available.  We’ve also been working on empirically-applicable measures of ‘integrated information’ in the context of Giulio Tononi’s integrated information theory of consciousness. This research is with Lionel Barnett, Adam Barrett, Fernando Rosas and Nadine Spychala (Sussex) – in collaboration with Pedro Mediano (Imperial College London) and Dan Bor (Cambridge).

Barnett, L.C. & Seth, A.K. (2023). Dynamical independence: Discovering emergent macroscopic processes in complex dynamical systems. Physical Review E:108:04134

Phenomenological control


People reliably differ in how ‘suggestible’ they are. We are investigating the role of individual differences in suggestibility – what we call phenomenological control – in many common effects in psychology. We’ve found that phenomena including the rubber hand illusion and ‘mirror synaesthesia’ depend substantially on such differences. We are now investigating how widely these effects apply, and we’re also developing predictive processing models of phenomenological control in terms of ‘top-down’ influences. This work is led by Zoltán Dienes and Peter Lush, with Warrick Roseboom, Ryan Scott, Federico Micheli, and others.

Lush, P., Botan, V., Scott, R.B., Seth, A.K., Ward, J., and Dienes Z. (2020) Trait phenomenological control predicts experience of mirror synaesthesia and the rubber hand illusion. Nature Communications. 11, 4853.

Perceptual expectations


A key reseseach theme is to study how neural predictions shape, or constitute, perceptual experiences. This involves a range of approaches from new theory connecting perceptual phenomenology to particular kinds of predictions; psychophysics and neuroimaging; augmented reality experiments, and a variety of other studies covering topics from visual perception to metacognition.  Many colleagues contribute to this work, including Maxine Sherman, Clémence Compain, Federico Micheli, Warrick Roseboom, and Keisuke Suzuki.

Seth, A.K. (2014). A predictive processing theory of sensorimotor contingencies: Explaining the puzzle of perceptual presence and its absence in synaesthesia. Cognitive Neuroscience (target article) 5(2):97-118.

Active inference and machine learning


Active inference is an extension of ‘predictive processing’ models of brain function in which agents minimize prediction errors by actions, as well as by updating predictions. We use computational modelling to examine how active inference can account for biases and inaccuracies in perceptual experience, and we’ve been developing new machine learning algorithms that work by active inference. This work is led by Chris Buckley, with Alexander Tschantz, Beren Millidge, and Tomasz Korbek.

Tschantz, A., Seth, A.K., and Buckley, C.L. (2020). Learning action-oriented models through active inferencePLoS Computational Biology. 16(4):e1007805.

Time perception and memory


We have eyes to see, ears to hear, but how do we perceive time? Instead of relying on an ‘inner clock’, time perception may depend on how the brain processes salient changes in sensory data. Led by Warrick Roseboom, we’ve tested this idea by combining psychophysics and computational modelling, neuroimaging, and we’re extending our approach to incorporate a model of episodic memory. The team also includes Maxine Sherman and Reny Baykova at Sussex, as well as collaborators Zafeirious Fountas (UCL) and Kyriacos Nikiforou and Murray Shanahan (Imperial College London).

Roseboom, W., Fountas, Z., Nikiforou, K., Bhowmik, D., Shanahan, M.P., and Seth, A.K. (2019). Activity in perceptual classification networks as a basis for human subjective time perceptionNature Communications. 10:267.

Synaesthesia, psychedelics, and dream machines


There is much to be learned by studying unusual conscious states. We’ve pioneered the induction of synaesthesia-like experiences through perceptual training, and we’ve unveiled key changes in neural dynamics in the psychedelic state. We are currently studying the visual hallucinations that are induced by powerful stroboscopic stimulation, part of the Dreamachine project. These projects are led by Lionel Barnett and David Schwartzman at Sussex, with many collaborators.

Barnett, L.C., Carhart-Harris, R., Muthukumaraswamy, S., and Seth, A.K. (2020). Decreased directed functional connectivity in the psychedelic stateNeuroimage. 209:116462.

Extended reality and perceptual presence


Extended Reality (XR) technologies provide enable us to study conscious perception in immersive environments. We use these methods to investigate perceptions of agency, and to simulate psychedelic experiences. Currently we are developing new ‘substitutional reality’ methods to shed new light on the perception of ‘reality’ itself.  This work is led by Keisuke Suzuki, with Alberto Mariola, Warrick Roseboom, and David Schwartzman.

Suzuki, K., Roseboom, W., Schwartzman, D.J., and Seth, A.K. (2017). The hallucination machine: A novel method for studying the phenomenology of visual hallucinationScientific Reports 7(1):15982.

Metascience


Open science is better science. The entire ecosystem of science can be, and must be, improved – from funding, to research practice, to publication, and to impact. With Jakob Hohwy I edit the open-access journal Neuroscience of Consciousness, which now accepts Registered Report submissions (edited by Zoltán Dienes). Through my leadership positions at Sussex and for CIFAR I promote equity, diversity and inclusion in consciousness research. Wherever possible we make all our publications and data freely available, as are our open-source toolboxes (e.g., for Granger causality analysis).

Seth, A.K. (2019). Consciousness: the last 50 years (and the next)Brain and Neuroscience Advances.