Abstract
Is it possible to predict the rapid stream of conscious experience in another person's mind from their brain activity alone? Here we used binocular rivalry to induce frequent changes in conscious perception in the absence of any external changes in sensory stimulation, while measuring cortical responses with functional MRI. Using information present in the multivariate pattern of responses in early visual cortex, we were able to accurately predict, and therefore track, the conscious experience of participants over periods of several minutes. During this time, multiple changes in the contents of participants' subjective experience were accurately predicted from fMRI measurements alone. Our findings show that it is possible to predict the dynamically changing time-course of subjective experience only using brain activity, in the absence of any behavioural clues.
This work was funded by the Wellcome Trust