BI 237 Ehud Ahissar: Consciousness and Perceptual Dualism

BI 237 Ehud Ahissar: Consciousness and Perceptual Dualism

From Brain Inspired by Paul Middlebrooks

May 6, 2026 · 1h 42m

About this episode

Ehud Ahissar discusses his concept of perceptual dualism and its implications for understanding consciousness and perception.

Support the show to get full episodes, full archive, and join the Discord community. The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists. Read more about our partnership. Sign up for Brain Inspired email alerts to be notified every time a new Brain Inspired episode is released. To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org. Ehud Ahissar runs the Ahissar Lab at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where he studies the neuronal and behavioral mechanisms of perception. Ehud sees perception as a closed-loop process, in which organisms actively generate the sensory signals they interpret. Today, we discuss his development of an idea about how this kind of processing can account for our conscious experience. It's a type of dualism Ehud calls "perceptual dualism," different than the dualisms you may already know. I'll use his own words to summarize it here… "The idea is that humans inevitably experience the world through two…

People in this episode

Host: Paul Middlebrooks

Guest: Ehud Ahissar

Topics covered

  • consciousness
  • perception
  • neuroscience
  • dualism
  • brain communication

Keywords

  • consciousness
  • perceptual dualism
  • neuroscience
  • brain communication
  • sensory signals

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Weizmann Institute, The Transmitter

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