Attentional Networks and Consciousness

Posner, Michael I.

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00064

Cited by 82 publications

(71 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…This model dovetails nicely with recent proposals for interactive roles of top-down and bottom-up hierarchies in vision [55]. Top-down influences, besides playing major roles in attentional modulation of lower level visual processing [56], thus can also play a major role in the formation of conscious percepts. We [87] modified the model proposed by Fenske et al [84] by adding cascading re-entrant activations from the higher areas of the ventral cortical stream of processing to its lower ones, for the following reasons.…”

Section: The Roles Of Visual Processing In the Dorsal Pathwaysupporting

confidence: 83%

Contributions of magno- and parvocellular channels to conscious and non-conscious vision

Breitmeyer

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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The dorsal and ventral cortical pathways, driven predominantly by magnocellular (M) and parvocellular (P) inputs, respectively, assume leading roles in models of visual information processing. Although in prior proposals, the dorsal and ventral pathways support non-conscious and conscious vision, respectively, recent modelling and empirical developments indicate that each pathway plays important roles in both non-conscious and conscious vision. In these models, the ventral P-pathway consists of one subpathway processing an object's contour features, e.g. curvature, the other processing its surface attributes, e.g. colour. Masked priming studies have shown that feed-forward activity in the ventral P-pathway on its own supports non-conscious processing of contour and surface features. The dorsal M-pathway activity contributes directly to conscious vision of motion and indirectly to object vision by projecting to prefrontal cortex, which in turn injects top-down neural activity into the ventral P-pathway and there ‘ignites’ feed-forward–re-entrant loops deemed necessary for conscious vision. Moreover, an object's shape or contour remains invisible without the prior conscious registration of its surface properties, which for that reason are taken to comprise fundamental visual qualia. Besides suggesting avenues for future research, these developments bear on several recent and past philosophical issues.

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Section: The Roles Of Visual Processing In the Dorsal Pathwaysupporting

confidence: 83%

Contributions of magno- and parvocellular channels to conscious and non-conscious vision

Breitmeyer

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…As many authors have highlighted (Bartolomeo, 2008; Posner, 2008; Srinivasan, 2008; Koivisto et al, 2009; De Brigard and Prinz, 2010; Kouider et al, 2010), in order to correctly understand the relationship between attention and consciousness, it is essential to duly take into account the varieties and complexity of forms of attention and consciousness: overlooking this factor may lead to the wrong view that there can be consciousness without attention.…”

Section: Experiments Aimed At Demonstrating Consciousness In the Absementioning

confidence: 99%

Against the View that Consciousness and Attention are Fully Dissociable

Marchetti¹

2012

Front. Psychology

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In this paper, I will try to show that the idea that there can be consciousness without some form of attention, and high-level top-down attention without consciousness, originates from a failure to notice the varieties of forms that top-down attention and consciousness can assume. I will present evidence that: there are various forms of attention and consciousness; not all forms of attention produce the same kind of consciousness; not all forms of consciousness are produced by the same kind of attention; there can be low-level attention (or preliminary attention), whether of an endogenous or exogenous kind, without consciousness; attention cannot be considered the same thing as consciousness.

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“…Posner (2012) sets the stage for the discussion by distinguishing different ways in which “consciousness” and “attention” are used colloquially. Clarifying the three senses of consciousness, namely, the level or state of consciousness (as in coma, sleep, or awake), sensory awareness (or contents of consciousness), and voluntary control, Posner claims that the neuronal mechanisms that support each type of consciousness overlap with those for a distinct type of attention: alerting, orienting, and executive attention, respectively.…”

Section: Current Perspectives On the Relationship Between Consciousnementioning

confidence: 99%