The COGITATE consortium executed an open-science adversarial collaboration testing Integrated Information Theory against Global Neuronal Workspace Theory across preregistered fMRI, MEG, and intracranial EEG protocols. While neither theory was decisively validated, the preregistered adversarial design demonstrated an empirical methodology for testing competing mechanistic hypotheses of mind.

2026-10-20: Conscious perception is temporally multiplexed rather than anatomically localized

During a constant stimulus and percept, the brain rapidly alternates, about 15 times per second, between conscious and suppressed micro-epochs. During conscious micro-epochs, a pure signal of conscious perception was present, allowing accurate reconstruction of the conscious image from neural activity. During suppressed micro-epochs this reversed: the pure signal now tracked the suppressed stimulus, allowing accurate reconstruction of the suppressed image. At the single-cell level, neurons responded selectively to the conscious stimulus and not to the suppressed stimulus during conscious micro-epochs; conversely, during suppressed micro-epochs, neurons responded selectively to the suppressed stimulus. Together, these findings show that both inferotemporal and prefrontal cortex rapidly interleave conscious with suppressed content, indicating that conscious access requires temporal selection beyond localization.