Activation-Assisted Wakefulness and Awareness through Knowledge of Emergent Drift.
Project AWAKE narrowly targets the moment of recognition—the Self-Caught Recognition Event (SCRE). The objective is to determine if this internal monitoring mechanism can be trained and accelerated.
The control baseline. Participants observe a minimal, static visual anchor for continuous 18-minute blocks.
The experimental protocol. A period of rapid cognitive activation (RSVP) followed by an abrupt termination into stillness.
If Activation-to-Stillness transitions function as a training scaffold, observed improvements in SCRE frequency will persist even when the activation phase is completely removed during transfer evaluation.
If the transition acts merely as a crutch, SCRE events will cluster immediately after the transition, and performance enhancements will disappear entirely during the stillness-only transfer evaluation.