Decoding the contents of consciousness from prefrontal ensembles

Kapoor,; Dwarakanath, Abhilash; Safavi, S; Werner, Joachim; Besserve, Michel; Panagiotaropoulos, T; Logothetis, NK

doi:10.1101/2020.01.28.921841

Cited by 33 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 86 publications

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“…Overall, to the best of our knowledge, the current study describes the representation of conscious and subconscious stimuli in IT cells in the most confound-free way to date. Our study complements a study conducted in parallel by Kapoor et al, 2020 that found modulations by conscious percept in prefrontal cortex using a different no-report paradigm based on optokinetic nystagmus.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

A new no-report paradigm reveals that face cells encode both consciously perceived and suppressed stimuli

Hesse

Tsao

2020

eLife

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A powerful paradigm to identify neural correlates of consciousness is binocular rivalry, wherein a constant visual stimulus evokes a varying conscious percept. It has recently been suggested that activity modulations observed during rivalry may represent the act of report rather than the conscious percept itself. Here, we performed single-unit recordings from face patches in macaque inferotemporal (IT) cortex using a no-report paradigm in which the animal’s conscious percept was inferred from eye movements. We found that large proportions of IT neurons represented the conscious percept even without active report. Furthermore, on single trials we could decode both the conscious percept and the suppressed stimulus. Together, these findings indicate that (1) IT cortex possesses a true neural correlate of consciousness and (2) this correlate consists of a population code wherein single cells multiplex representation of the conscious percept and veridical physical stimulus, rather than a subset of cells perfectly reflecting consciousness.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

A new no-report paradigm reveals that face cells encode both consciously perceived and suppressed stimuli

Hesse

Tsao

2020

eLife

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show abstract

“…Thus, to the best of our knowledge, this study shows representations of the conscious percept in IT cortex in the most confound-free way to date. Our study complements a study conducted in parallel by Kapoor et al (2020) that found modulations by conscious percept in prefrontal cortex using a different no-report paradigm based on optokinetic nystagmus.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 73%

Representation of conscious percept without report in the macaque face patch network

Hesse

Tsao

2020

Preprint

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A powerful paradigm to identify the neural correlates of consciousness is binocular rivalry, wherein a constant visual stimulus evokes a varying conscious percept. It has recently been suggested that activity modulations observed during rivalry could represent the act of report rather than the conscious percept itself. Here, we performed single-unit recordings from face patches in macaque inferotemporal (IT) cortex using a no-report paradigm in which the animal's conscious percept was inferred from eye movements. We found high proportions of IT neurons represented the conscious percept even without active report. Population activity in single trials, measured using a new 128-site Neuropixels-like electrode, was more weakly modulated by rivalry than by physical stimulus transitions, but nevertheless allowed decoding of the changing conscious percept. These findings suggest that macaque face patches encode both the physical stimulus and the animal's conscious visual percept, and the latter encoding does not require active report.

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“…Yet, previous research has repeatedly shown that prefrontal cortex may indeed represent the contents of conscious experience 51,52 . Intersecting computational models of dynamic conflict-accumulation 14 with no-report paradigms of bistable perception will enable future research to test whether the contents of conscious experience are represented 53 or multiplexed 54 within the neural correlates of perceptual conflict, creating exciting new opportunities to better understand the role of prefrontal cortex in consciousness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for an Active Role of Inferior Frontal Cortex in Conscious Experience

Weilnhammer

Fritsch

Chikermane

et al. 2020

Preprint

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Despite a growing understanding of human brain function, it is still unclear how conscious experience emerges from neural activity. A much-debated question in the search for the neural underpinnings of consciousness is whether prefrontal cortex actively shapes conscious experience or, alternatively, serves only complementary cognitive functions such as evaluating and acting on the contents of consciousness.Here, we studied the neural mechanisms of bistable perception to elucidate the role of prefrontal cortex in consciousness. Human participants reported periodic changes in conscious experience that were induced by conflicting sensory information. Two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments showed that prefrontal brain activity in inferior frontal cortex signals the conflict between conscious experience and available sensory information. In a third experiment, inhibitory transcranial magnetic stimulation revealed that a disruption of neural activity in inferior frontal cortex leads to a decrease of conflict-driven changes in conscious experience.Our results indicate that, by engaging in iterative and reciprocal interactions with sensory brain regions, inferior frontal cortex plays a critical role in both the detection and the resolution of perceptual conflicts. This points to a causal influence of prefrontal brain activity on the dynamic unfolding of conscious experience. One-sentence Summary Inferior frontal cortex detects and resolves perceptual conflict during bistable perception.

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Decoding the contents of consciousness from prefrontal ensembles

Cited by 33 publications

References 86 publications

A new no-report paradigm reveals that face cells encode both consciously perceived and suppressed stimuli

A new no-report paradigm reveals that face cells encode both consciously perceived and suppressed stimuli

Representation of conscious percept without report in the macaque face patch network

Evidence for an Active Role of Inferior Frontal Cortex in Conscious Experience

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