Consciousness poses a striking paradox. On the one hand, it is the phenomenon we are most intimately familiar with. On the other, it is one of the most poorly understood.

What are the mechanisms that give rise to consciousness? Extensive research has focused on this question and numerous theories.

Directed by Liad Mudrik, this project aims to develop a novel paradigm to test the key predictions of several neuroscientific theories of consciousness.

Using an engaging video game and presenting common stimuli in the background, the team will compare neural activity elicited by seen or unseen stimuli. A complementary experiment will examine these predictions for clearly visible and conscious stimuli over different durations.

In the current project, the team will test and optimize a video game paradigm for consciousness studies and obtain behavioral, eye tracking, and fMRI data to validate the experimental procedure and optimize it based on the results.

If successful, the project will produce an experimental paradigm and, in the future, make it freely accessible to researchers in the field. It will also produce a dataset to demonstrate the usefulness of this paradigm and how to carry it out.