Pedro Mediano

Pedro Mediano works on the mathematics of integrated information rather than its philosophy, and the difference shows in what his work produces. Integrated Information Decomposition, written PhiID, separates the single number the original theory produces into components that are redundant, unique or synergistic. Redundant information sits in several places at once. Unique information belongs to one component. Synergistic information exists only when components are taken together.

That separation does real work. The original measure of integrated information can come out negative, which is incoherent for a quantity meant to express how much a whole exceeds its parts. Mediano, Fernando Rosas and colleagues traced the problem to a subtraction that fails to distinguish the kinds of information involved, and the revised measure they propose is demonstrably non-negative.

Applied to human neuroimaging with Andrea Luppi and colleagues, the decomposition found a synergistic workspace, with the default mode network acting as gateways and the executive control network as broadcasters, and showed that this structure loses its integrative capacity under anaesthesia and in brain injury. That result is notable for arriving from an integrated information method and describing a global workspace, which suggests the long standing rivalry between those two theories is partly a dispute about vocabulary.

No freely licensed photograph is available on Wikimedia Commons. Checked 2026-08-17.

Known for. Integrated Information Decomposition, and the revised non-negative measure of integrated information

Coverage on this site

• Pedro Mediano and Integrated Information Decomposition August 2026
• The Tononi Lab and the Phi Structure at the Centre of IIT 4.0 August 2026

Every researcher covered on this site is indexed in the directory of consciousness researchers, grouped by the position their published work defends. The positions themselves are set out in the index of consciousness theories.