About me

About me

Scientist, thinker, writer, contemplative, nerd, and so on. I like meta-physics, artificial intelligence, the big questions, games, and sci-fi.

Sitemap

A list of all the posts and pages found on the site. For you robots out there, there is an XML version available for digesting as well.

Pages

Posts

Future Blog Post

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This post will show up by default. To disable scheduling of future posts, edit config.yml and set future: false.

Blog Post number 4

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 3

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 2

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

Blog Post number 1

less than 1 minute read

Published:

This is a sample blog post. Lorem ipsum I can’t remember the rest of lorem ipsum and don’t have an internet connection right now. Testing testing testing this blog post. Blog posts are cool.

fiction

other

portfolio

Human Brain Project — Consciousness

Interdisciplinary, international project focused on measuring and understanding consciousness, as part of the EU Human Brain Project flagship initiative.

Conscious Brain Concepts

Interdisciplinary project on the conceptual and experimental delineation of consciousness, including comparative evaluation of measures of consciousness and states of consciousness.

Dreaming During Anesthesia

Collaborative investigation into the occurrence, phenomenology, and neural correlates of dream-like experiences during general anesthesia, in collaboration with UiO and the University of Zurich.

States and Transitions of Consciousness

Loose interdisciplinary collaboration working on measuring transitions between states of consciousness, understanding the experiential content of those states, and the limits of what can be said about consciousness in general.

Artificial Consciousness (Popular Science Book)

A popular science book exploring the question of whether artificial systems can be conscious, what it would mean for them to be, and the scientific and philosophical tools we have for addressing the question.

publications

Popular Science Articles — Speilvendt (3 articles, 2012–2014)

Published in Speilvendt (UiO Student Journal of Psychology), 2013

Three popular science articles published in Speilvendt, the student journal of psychology at the University of Oslo, between 2012 and 2014.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A. (2012–2014). Three popular science articles. Speilvendt, student journal of psychology, University of Oslo.

Right Inferior Frontal Gyrus and Motor Response Inhibition: A Real-Time fMRI Neurofeedback Study

Published in MSc Thesis, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo, 2014

This master’s thesis investigates the causal role of the right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) in voluntary motor inhibition using a real-time fMRI neurofeedback paradigm. Participants were trained to self-regulate rIFG activity, and the study examined whether this regulation influenced stop-signal task performance—contributing to ongoing debates about whether rIFG is causally necessary for response inhibition or merely co-activated alongside it.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A. (2014). "Right Inferior Frontal Gyrus and Motor Response Inhibition: A Real-Time fMRI Neurofeedback Study." MSc Thesis, University of Oslo.
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Brain activity in response to trauma-specific, negative, and neutral stimuli: A fMRI study of recent road traffic accident survivors

Published in Frontiers in Psychology, 2016

Within 3 weeks of a road traffic accident, survivors show heightened activation and amygdala–somatosensory connectivity in response to trauma-specific stimuli, consistent with an attentional sensory processing bias toward trauma-related material.

Recommended citation: Nilsen, A. S., Blix, I., Leknes, S., Ekeberg, Ø., Skogstad, L., Endestad, T., & Heir, T. (2016). Brain activity in response to trauma-specific, negative, and neutral stimuli: A fMRI study of recent road traffic accident survivors. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1173.
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Aberrant resting-state functional connectivity in the salience network of adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome

Published in PLOS ONE, 2016

Adolescents with CFS show reduced salience network connectivity to the right posterior insula — correlated with fatigue severity — revealing disrupted interoceptive and salience processing in paediatric CFS.

Recommended citation: Wortinger, L. A., Endestad, T., Melinder, A. M. D., Øie, M. G., Nilsen, A. S., & Wyller, V. B. (2016). Aberrant resting-state functional connectivity in the salience network of adolescent chronic fatigue syndrome. PLOS ONE, 11(7), e0159351.
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Right temporal cortical hypertrophy in resilience to trauma: an MRI study

Published in European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 2016

Tsunami survivors show greater right temporal cortical thickness 7–8 years post-trauma compared to controls, suggesting structural brain correlates of resilience to PTSD.

Recommended citation: Nilsen, A. S., Hilland, E., Kogstad, N., Heir, T., Hauff, E., Lien, L., & Endestad, T. (2016). Right temporal cortical hypertrophy in resilience to trauma: an MRI study. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 7. http://doi.org/10.3402/ejpt.v7.31314
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Evaluating Approximations and Heuristic Measures of Integrated Information

Published in Entropy, 2019

This study benchmarks computational approximations and heuristic proxies for integrated information (Φ), the central quantity in Integrated Information Theory (IIT). Testing 14 candidate measures across over 2,000 small synthetic networks, the authors show that while some approximations closely track true Φ at limited computational savings, popular heuristic measures correlate only with state-independent aspects of Φ—raising doubts about their validity for empirically testing IIT.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A, Juel BE, Marshall W. (2019). "Evaluating Approximations and Heuristic Measures of Integrated Information." Entropy. 21(5):525. https://doi.org/10.3390/e21050525
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Sleep deprivation differentially affects subcomponents of cognitive control

Published in Sleep, 2019

24 hours of sleep deprivation selectively impairs top-down cognitive control (sustained attention, P300, Pe) while leaving more automatic inhibitory processes (N200, ERN, stop-signal reaction time) largely intact.

Recommended citation: Kusztor, A., Raud, L., Juel, B. E., Nilsen, A. S., Storm, J. F., & Huster, R. J. (2019). Sleep deprivation differentially affects subcomponents of cognitive control. Sleep, 42(4), zsz016.
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Proposed EEG measures of consciousness: a systematic, comparative review

Published in PsyArXiv (Preprint), 2020

Systematic comparison of virtually all time-series EEG measures of consciousness proposed in the literature, showing that most measures behave similarly across states — suggesting diminishing returns from developing new metrics.

Recommended citation: Nilsen, A. S., Juel, B. E., Thürer, B., & Storm, J. F. (2020). Proposed EEG measures of consciousness: a systematic, comparative review. PsyArXiv.
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Increased signal diversity/complexity of spontaneous EEG, but not evoked EEG responses, in ketamine-induced psychedelic state in humans

Published in PLOS ONE, 2020

Sub-anaesthetic ketamine increases spontaneous EEG signal diversity (LZc, ACE, SCE) in parallel with subjective altered-state reports, but leaves TMS-evoked complexity (PCI) unchanged — suggesting distinct neural mechanisms for conscious capacity versus conscious content.

Recommended citation: Farnes, N., Juel, B. E., Nilsen, A. S., Romundstad, L. G., & Storm, J. F. (2020). Increased signal diversity/complexity of spontaneous EEG, but not evoked EEG responses, in ketamine-induced psychedelic state in humans. PLOS ONE, 15(11), e0242056.
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Popular Science Article — MedisinBloggen

Published in MedisinBloggen, 2021

A popular science article published in MedisinBloggen (2021).

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A. (2021). Popular science article. MedisinBloggen.

Changes in measures of consciousness during anaesthesia of one hemisphere (Wada test)

Published in NeuroImage, 2021

Using EEG from patients undergoing the Wada procedure—a clinical protocol that selectively anesthetizes one cerebral hemisphere—this study tests whether proposed consciousness measures detect the expected lateralized changes. Despite clear behavioral effects, signal diversity metrics showed no reliable hemisphere-specific differences, prompting discussion of cross-hemispheric confounds that may complicate consciousness measurement in neurological patients.

Recommended citation: Halder S, Juel BE, Sevenius Nilsen A, Raghavan LV, Storm JF. (2021). "Changes in measures of consciousness during anaesthesia of one hemisphere (Wada test)." NeuroImage. 226:117566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2020.117566
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EEG Signal Diversity Varies With Sleep Stage and Aspects of Dream Experience

Published in Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

This study asks whether EEG signal diversity—proposed by several theories as a correlate of conscious richness—tracks both sleep depth and the vividness of dream experience. While diversity reliably decreased with sleep stage depth, it did not differentiate dreaming from non-dreaming awakenings within NREM2; a modest correlation emerged between posterior cortex complexity and the perceptual (versus thought-like) character of dream reports.

Recommended citation: Aamodt A, Sevenius Nilsen A, Thürer B, HasanzadehMoghadam F, Kauppi N, Juel BE, Storm JF. (2021). "EEG Signal Diversity Varies With Sleep Stage and Aspects of Dream Experience." Frontiers in Psychology. 12:655884. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.655884
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Behavioral effects of sub-anesthetic ketamine in a go/no-go task

Published in Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 2021

Sub-anaesthetic ketamine — at doses sufficient to produce noticeable subjective effects — does not impair inhibitory control performance, contrary to the intuitive expectation that intoxication impairs behaviour.

Recommended citation: Nilsen, A. S., Juel, B. E., Farnes, N., Romundstad, L., & Storm, J. F. (2021). Behavioral effects of sub-anesthetic ketamine in a go/no-go task. Journal of Psychedelic Studies, 4(3), 156–162.
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Are we really unconscious in “unconscious” states? Common assumptions revisited

Published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2022

This perspective article argues that the standard criteria for declaring a subject unconscious—behavioral unresponsiveness and lack of memory recall—are insufficient to establish absence of experience. Drawing on empirical evidence showing frequent dream-like experience even during deep sleep and general anesthesia, the authors advocate for moving beyond binary conscious/unconscious distinctions and propose alternative frameworks for characterizing altered states.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A, Juel BE, Thürer B, Aamodt A, Storm JF. (2022). "Are we really unconscious in 'unconscious' states? Common assumptions revisited." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 16:987051. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.987051
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EEG Lempel-Ziv complexity varies with sleep stage, but does not seem to track dream experience

Published in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2023

A pre-registered replication attempt testing whether Lempel-Ziv complexity (LZC) of high-density EEG tracks both sleep depth and the richness of dream experience within NREM sleep. LZC tracked sleep stage as expected, but failed to distinguish dreaming from non-dreaming awakenings within NREM2, and a previously reported correlation with perceptual dream quality did not replicate—raising questions about the specificity of LZC as a marker of phenomenal richness.

Recommended citation: Aamodt A, Sevenius Nilsen A, Markhus R, Kusztor A, HasanzadehMoghadam F, Kauppi N, Thürer B, Storm JF, Juel BE. (2023). "EEG Lempel-Ziv complexity varies with sleep stage, but does not seem to track dream experience." Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 16:987714. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2022.987714
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Exploring effects of anesthesia on complexity, differentiation, and integrated information in rat EEG

Published in Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2024

Extending human consciousness-measure methodology to rodents, this study compares perturbation-based and spontaneous EEG metrics under three anesthetics (propofol, sevoflurane, ketamine) in rats. While signal diversity measures behaved as predicted—suppressed by propofol and sevoflurane—integrated information metrics paradoxically increased under these same agents, suggesting that different measure families may be indexing distinct and potentially dissociable aspects of neural organization during anesthesia.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A, Arena A, Storm JF. (2024). "Exploring effects of anesthesia on complexity, differentiation, and integrated information in rat EEG." Neuroscience of Consciousness. 2024(1):niae021. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niae021
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Does Cognitive Load Affect Measures of Consciousness?

Published in Brain Sciences, 2024

A key validity concern for EEG-based consciousness measures is whether they confound conscious level with general cognitive engagement. This study tests this directly by comparing proposed measures during passive sensory attendance versus an active working memory task. Several measures showed no reliable modulation by cognitive load, supporting the case for their specificity to consciousness level rather than to arousal or task engagement more broadly.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A, Storm JF, Juel BE. (2024). "Does Cognitive Load Affect Measures of Consciousness?" Brain Sciences. 14(9):919. https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci14090919
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A repeated awakening study exploring the capacity of complexity measures to capture dreaming during propofol sedation

Published in Scientific Reports, 2025

EEG complexity measures distinguish sedation from wakefulness but do not reliably separate dreaming from non-dreaming periods within propofol sedation.

Recommended citation: Bajwa, I. J., Nilsen, A. S., ..., Storm, J. F., & Juel, B. E. (2025). A repeated awakening study exploring the capacity of complexity measures to capture dreaming during propofol sedation. Scientific Reports, 15(1).
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A dream EEG and mentation database

Published in Nature Communications, 2025

The DREAM database: 20 standardised EEG-sleep datasets from 505 participants and 2,643 awakenings, enabling large-scale study of the neural correlates of dreaming.

Recommended citation: Wong, W., ..., Nilsen, A. S., ..., & Tsuchiya, N. (2025). A dream EEG and mentation database. Nature Communications, 16(1).
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Consciousness When Is It Present and How Would We Know? Testing Measures and Assumptions for Detecting Consciousness Across States and Substrates

Published in PhD Thesis, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, University of Oslo, 2026

This doctoral thesis critically examines the conceptual and empirical foundations of consciousness measurement. It investigates whether standard criteria for declaring a system unconscious are valid, whether proposed EEG-based measures are specific to conscious level rather than to confounding factors, and how results generalize across anesthesia, sleep, cognitive load, and animal models—situating the findings within broader theoretical debates in consciousness science.

Recommended citation: Sevenius Nilsen A. (2026). "Consciousness When Is It Present and How Would We Know? Testing Measures and Assumptions for Detecting Consciousness Across States and Substrates." PhD Thesis, University of Oslo.
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