Volta

VOLTA is a multidimensional and multiscale study of consciousness. The project builds on a computational framework we recently developed linking consciousness to evidence accumulation. It will utilise the clinical context of pharmaco-resistant epilepsy to collect behavioural and neural data. Individuals with epilepsy will participate in behavioural paradigms quantifying multiple dimensions of conscious experience, including its temporal dynamics, metacognitive components, and existence under sleep and anaesthesia. These experiments will be combined with triple neural recordings that simultaneously characterise #1 the global activity of neural populations, #2 spiking activity of individual neurons, and #3 electrochemical activity by measuring neuromodulator release with voltammetry. These unprecedented recordings will provide a multiscale map of the neurobiological basis of consciousness. In summary, VOLTA will conduct a within-subject study to reveal the electrophysiological and electrochemical mechanisms underlying the multiple dimensions of consciousness.