We are an interdisciplinary lab based at Duke University led by Dr. Jorge Morales. Our group investigates subjective conscious experiences: How we see, how we imagine, and how introspection opens a window into our own minds.
Vision & Imagery
Why does the world “out there” look the way it does “from here”? How does our perspective affect what we see? How similar are perception and imagination? What is mental imagery good for?
Consciousness
How does neural activity give rise to conscious awareness? Why do we have a conscious mind? Could our minds do exactly the same if they were completely unconscious or is consciousness special?
Metacognition
How do we know our own minds? Is introspection trustworthy? Is metacognition domain-general or domain-specific? Are we better at knowing certain parts of our mind than others?
To understand the conscious mind, we leverage tools from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Our interdisciplinary research integrates psychophysics, neuroimaging, computational, and theoretical approaches.
Philosophy
Our questions are directly inspired and supported by a rich philosophical tradition that reflects upon both the mind and the sciences of the mind.
Psychology
We use tools from psychophysics and vision science to tackle centuries-old philosophical questions as well as current issues in vision and imagery.
Neuroscience
With modern neuroimaging technologies such as fMRI, we explore the neural basis of the subjective character of the mind.
AI
We use cutting-edge AI to study traditional questions about the mind, and we use methods from the sciences of the mind to understand AI.