Masafumi Oizumi
University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Integrated information Consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information
Masafumi Oizumi is a professor at the University of Tokyo whose research sits at the intersection of integrated information theory and machine learning. He is best known for developing formal coefficient-based measures of integrated information, examining how much a system’s past constrains its future and how much its future depends on its past. His work asks whether the structure of information in a system, biological or artificial, carries the signatures that consciousness theories predict.
Oizumi’s recent direction connects representation learning to human neuroscience. His 2026 preprint with Yuria Shimizu, Soh Takahashi, and Takato Horii uses relational knowledge distillation to align deep neural network representations with human perception without supervision. The result bears directly on a question the site covers regularly: how close artificial systems’ internal representations must be to human ones before claims of convergence become measurable. His approach treats the alignment of DNN and human structure as a quantitative target rather than a metaphor.
Oizumi belongs to the information-theoretic tradition in consciousness science, which holds that experience is characterized by how a system integrates information, not by its physical substrate. That position aligns with the site’s functionalist emergentism on the substrate question, and his machine-human alignment work gives the position an empirical handle in the age of large models.
Known for. Integrated Information Theory and measures of consciousness grounded in information structure
Coverage on this site
Related researchers
- Larissa AlbantakisUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sleep and ConsciousnessIntegrated Information Theory 4.0 and dissociating intelligence from consciousness in artificial systems
- Anton ArkhipovAllen Institute for Brain ScienceLarge-scale neural simulation, biophysically detailed cortical models, AIBRAIN program, State of Brain Emulation Report 2025
- Bernard J. BaarsThe Neurosciences InstituteGlobal Workspace Theory (GWT), cognitive architecture of conscious access, A Cognitive Theory of Consciousness (1988), In the Theater of Consciousness (1997)
- Adam B. BarrettSussex Centre for Consciousness Science, University of SussexContinuous field formulations of Integrated Information Theory, Measure-theoretic Phi, practical complexity measures, Granger causality
- Melanie BolyDepartment of Neurology, University of Wisconsin-MadisonCo-developer of Integrated Information Theory 4.0 (IIT 4.0), Neural Correlates of Pure Presence, EEG/fMRI consciousness biomarkers, minimal phenomenal experience
- Matteo GrassoUniversity of Wisconsin-Madison, Center for Sleep and ConsciousnessIntegrated Information Theory 4.0 and the structural description of the quality of experience
Masafumi Oizumi is listed with the other integrated information theorists, who hold that consciousness is intrinsic causal power, measured as integrated information. The theory family behind that position is set out in the index of consciousness theories. Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers.