Where and when does a representation become conscious?
an entrya bordera stable product
Brain Imaging Research Center · Ben-Gurion University
How does a world become someone’s world?
We study how a physical world becomes an experienced one—through work on conscious perception, numerical cognition, and the questions that define what an experiment can reveal.
Eppur si muove.And yet it moves.
goal
saliency
context
history
ψᵢ(t)
ψᵢ(t+1)
the object to explain is the trajectory
The premise
A question is a model in disguise.
A scientific question does more than request an answer. It decides what an answer can look like. Our work asks which assumptions are built into the frame—and what becomes visible when the frame moves.
How does this observer’s experience evolve, moment by moment?
a trajectorya historyan observer
Why “Laboratoire Bourgeois”?
A little Paris, a little provocation.
The name nods to my postdoctoral years at NeuroSpin and the ICM in Paris—and to our private mythology that revolutions often begin from within the structures they rethink.
The name carries a hint of theatre; the work aims for less. We take productive frameworks seriously, test them carefully, and remain willing to ask what they have made difficult to see.
The scientific work
Two routes into the same problem.
Consciousness and numerical cognition began as different questions. Both led to the same methodological concern: the frame of an experiment helps determine the space of answers it can produce.
Consciousness beyond correlates
What if the boundary is not the phenomenon?
Early studies refined the neural-correlates contrast by separating awareness from unconscious processing and from confidence. Later decoding work suggested a different explanatory object: not a border-crossing event, but an evolving representational trajectory.
Numerical cognition
When the “confound” becomes part of the explanation.
Dot arrays never contain number alone: quantity covaries with area, density, convex hull, and other physical properties. Our work showed that the way those properties are controlled changes their saliency—and can change the result. That made stimulus construction part of the theoretical question rather than a neutral technical step.
Moment-to-Moment
Experience as recursive updating.
MTM treats conscious perception as information repeatedly updated into an ongoing perceptual stream. Goal, saliency, and context shape the update; history reshapes the space in which the next update occurs.
ψᵢ(t)→ψᵢ(t+1)→ψᵢ(t+2)
Idiosyncrasy & qualia
Can another observer’s mapping become measurable?
Numerosity offers a rare common coordinate between physical quantity and subjective report. We use it as a keyhole into observer-specific transfer functions: how different people transform the same physical world into experience.
Putting the model to work
Opposite tests of the same framework.
Psychopathology begins with a known subject and an altered experienced world. Artificial systems begin with sophisticated updating and an uncertain subject. Together they test explanation, prediction, generalization, and the conditions under which a trajectory belongs to an individual.
Methods & neighbouring questions
Measure carefully. Generalize cautiously.
In the lab, we combine psychophysics, M/EEG, fMRI, multivariate decoding, computational modelling, and single-trial analysis. I also collaborate on work in aging, balance, brain health, and neuroimaging.
psychophysicsM/EEGfMRIdecodingmodellingsingle-trial analysis
A scientific journey
The work moved because the question moved.
This is not a story of replacing “bad” questions with “good” ones. Each step used what the previous question made possible—and noticed what it left outside the frame. The numerical and consciousness programs increasingly informed one another.
- Isolate
Separate subjective awareness from successful processing without awareness.
- Control
Show that the late P3 awareness effect cannot be reduced to confidence.
- Follow & contextualize
Track conscious content through time; in parallel, show that numerosity processing depends on context even in the subitizing range.
- Interrogate the stimulus
Show that continuous magnitudes cannot simply be “controlled away”: the chosen control changes saliency and therefore what the experiment can reveal.
- Update
Propose the Moment-to-Moment account: conscious perception as continued updating.
- Represent
Use the quantity transfer function to ask how properties of the physical world contribute to its mental representation.
- Question the frame
Reconstruct the hidden assumptions implemented by the NCC experimental grammar.
- Individualize
Use the Idiosyncrasy Principle to make observer-specific mappings scientifically tractable.
- Make method visible
Map how numerical-stimulus generation methods embody different controls and can produce different behavioral and neural answer spaces.
- Test
Ask whether these ideas earn their keep in altered experience, observer-specific dynamics, and artificial systems.
The standard we set
A theory of consciousness should do more than locate a correlate.
Explain construction
How does an observer build an experienced world?
Explain alteration
How can that construction become fragmented, weak, mistimed, or excessive?
Explain generality
Under what conditions could an unfamiliar system acquire a point of view?
The aim is not a verdict. It is a more precise disagreement—and a better next experiment.
Selected work
Papers that mark the path.
A selective reading route through the development of the research program—not a ranking of its parts.
consciousness
The P3 component of the ERP reflects conscious perception, not confidence
Consciousness and Cognition · Salti, Bar-Haim, & Lamy
consciousness
Distinct cortical codes and temporal dynamics for conscious and unconscious percepts
eLife · Salti, Monto, Charles, King, Parkkonen, & Dehaene
numerical cognition
One tamed at a time: A new approach for controlling continuous magnitudes in numerical comparison tasks
Behavior Research Methods · Salti, Katzin, Katzin, Leibovich, & Henik
consciousness
Conscious perception: Time for an update?
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · Salti, Harel, & Marti
numerical cognition
Putting the world in mind: The case of mental representation of quantity
Cognition · Katzin, Katzin, Rosén, Henik, & Salti
consciousness
Expanding the discussion: Revision of the assumptions framing the study of the NCC
Consciousness and Cognition · Revach & Salti
consciousness
The Idiosyncrasy Principle: A new look at qualia
Perspectives on Psychological Science · Salti & Bergerbest
numerical cognition
A Methodological Framework for Stimuli Control: Insights From Numerical Cognition
Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · Shilat, Henik, Galili, Wasserman, Salzmann, & Salti
consciousness · AI · preprint
Artificial Intelligence as an Opportunity for the Science of Consciousness: A Dual-Resolution Framework
arXiv preprint · Dror, Bergerbest, & Salti
Long-standing collaborations
The work is not done alone.
Two collaborations have been especially formative. They sit on different sides of the research program, but increasingly meet around the same questions about representation, context, and the observer.
Consciousness
Dafna Bergerbest
Dafna and I have worked together on consciousness, subjectivity, and the Idiosyncrasy Principle. Our current work examines observer-specific mappings and the active role of goals in perception.
Numerical cognition
Avishai Henik
Avishai and I have worked together on numerical cognition for many years: context, continuous magnitudes, stimulus control, and how physical quantity becomes a mental representation.
Moti Salti
I study how perception is built—and how the questions we ask shape what we find.
I am a cognitive neuroscientist at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, based at the Brain Imaging Research Center. My work moves between consciousness and numerical cognition, using psychophysics, electrophysiology, neuroimaging, and theory development.
Across these domains, I tend to use established paradigms as tools rather than doctrines: learn what they reveal, then ask which assumptions they built into the experiment—and what those assumptions may have left out.
Israeli media
Outside the journal.
A few conversations and articles where I discussed the work with a broader audience. I have kept this deliberately selective rather than turning the site into a press archive.
המחקר שבודק איך אפשר לחדור לתודעה ו״להפוך להיות אדם אחר״
A long-form conversation about subjectivity, the Idiosyncrasy Principle, and whether another person’s experienced world can become scientifically tractable.
Conversation on consciousness and subjective experience
A radio/podcast discussion of the questions behind the consciousness work.
Early coverage of conscious and unconscious perception
Coverage from the period in which I was trying to isolate the neural activity associated with conscious perception from processing that occurred without awareness.
איך מבודדים את הלא מודע במוח
Coverage of my doctoral work with Dominique Lamy and Yair Bar-Haim on separating conscious perception from successful unconscious processing.
זיהינו את הפעילות המוחית של התת מודע
Another account of the same early consciousness study, focused on perceptual processing that can guide behavior without entering awareness.
I include pieces that engage directly with the research or its questions, rather than every article in which I happen to appear as one author among many.
Contact
For conversations that can move the question.
saltim@post.bgu.ac.il
Brain Imaging Research Center
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Beer-Sheva, Israel