Introduction to research topic: attention and consciousness in different senses

Tsuchiya, Naotsugu; Boxtel, Jeroen J.A. van

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00249

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(76 reference statements)

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“…A main focus of recent consciousness research has been the relationship between attention and awareness (Tsuchiya and van Boxtel, 2013 ). Historically, attention and consciousness were often treated as similar if not identical concepts; nowadays, however, many researchers are proposing that each refers to a separate category of neural and psychological processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Isolating neural correlates of conscious perception from neural correlates of reporting one's perception

2014

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To isolate neural correlates of conscious perception (NCCs), a standard approach has been to contrast neural activity elicited by identical stimuli of which subjects are aware vs. unaware. Because conscious experience is private, determining whether a stimulus was consciously perceived requires subjective report: e.g., button-presses indicating detection, visibility ratings, verbal reports, etc. This reporting requirement introduces a methodological confound when attempting to isolate NCCs: The neural processes responsible for accessing and reporting one's percept are difficult to distinguish from those underlying the conscious percept itself. Here, we review recent attempts to circumvent this issue via a modified inattentional blindness paradigm (Pitts et al., 2012) and present new data from a backward masking experiment in which task-relevance and visual awareness were manipulated in a 2 × 2 crossed design. In agreement with our previous inattentional blindness results, stimuli that were consciously perceived yet not immediately accessed for report (aware, task-irrelevant condition) elicited a mid-latency posterior ERP negativity (~200–240 ms), while stimuli that were accessed for report (aware, task-relevant condition) elicited additional components including a robust P3b (~380–480 ms) subsequent to the mid-latency negativity. Overall, these results suggest that some of the NCCs identified in previous studies may be more closely linked with accessing and maintaining perceptual information for reporting purposes than with encoding the conscious percept itself. An open question is whether the remaining NCC candidate (the ERP negativity at 200–240 ms) reflects visual awareness or object-based attention.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Isolating neural correlates of conscious perception from neural correlates of reporting one's perception

2014

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“…Despite this possible automatic linking of verbal information, which may have occurred for phonetically related items, and triggered the PSWs at Cz and Pz, maintaining this activity demands attention/executive/frontal functioning (see Baddeley, 2012 ; Jaswal, 2012 ), possibly reflected more frontally. Moreover, this maintenance is essential to allow further manipulation that can lead to better memorization of chunked stimuli (see Fernández and Tendolkar, 2001 ; Bor et al, 2004 ; Baddeley, 2012 ) by interlinking multiple items, a process closely related to fronto-parietal network activation (see Bor and Seth, 2012 ; Tsuchiya and van Boxtel, 2013 ). This may have led to larger deflections at Fz, extending to Cz, for semantically related words.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Late positive slow waves as markers of chunking during encoding

et al. 2015

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Electrophysiological markers of chunking of words during encoding have mostly been shown in studies that present pairs of related stimuli. In these cases it is difficult to disentangle cognitive processes that reflect distinctiveness (i.e., conspicuous items because they are related), perceived association between related items and unified representations of various items, or chunking. Here, we propose a paradigm that enables the determination of a separate Event-related Potential (ERP) marker of these cognitive processes using sequentially related word triads. Twenty-three young healthy individuals viewed 80 15-word lists composed of unrelated items except for the three words in the middle serial positions (triads), which could be either unrelated (control list), related perceptually, phonetically or semantically. ERP amplitudes were measured at encoding of each one of the words in the triads. We analyzed two latency intervals (350–400 and 400–800 ms) at midline locations. Behaviorally, we observed a progressive facilitation in the immediate free recall of the words in the triads depending on the relations between their items (control < perceptual < phonetic < semantic), but only semantically related items were recalled as chunks. P300-like deflections were observed for perceptually deviant stimuli. A reduction of amplitude of a component akin to the N400 was found for words that were phonetically and semantically associated with prior items and therefore were not associated to chunking. Positive slow wave (PSW) amplitudes increased as successive phonetically and semantically related items were presented, but they were observed earlier and were more prominent at Fz for semantic associates. PSWs at Fz and Cz also correlated with recall of semantic word chunks. This confirms prior claims that PSWs at Fz are potential markers of chunking which, in the proposed paradigm, were modulated differently from the detection of deviant stimuli and of relations between stimuli.

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“…It should be noted that currently there is not yet a shared view on the nature of the relationship between attention and consciousness (for a review, see Tsuchiya and van Boxtel 2013). The positions range from those who maintain that attention and consciousness are distinct phenomena that need not occur together (Bachman 2011;Koch and Tsuchiya 2006;Lamme 2003;van Boxtel et al 2010) to those who maintain that the two are inextricably linked (De Brigard and Prinz 2010;Mack and Rock 1998;Posner 1994).…”

Section: Periodicitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness: a unique way of processing information

Marchetti¹

2018

Cogn Process

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In this article, I argue that consciousness is a unique way of processing information, in that: it produces information, rather than purely transmitting it; the information it produces is meaningful for us; the meaning it has is always individuated. This uniqueness allows us to process information on the basis of our personal needs and ever-changing interactions with the environment, and consequently to act autonomously. Three main basic cognitive processes contribute to realize this unique way of information processing: the self, attention and working memory. The self, which is primarily expressed via the central and peripheral nervous systems, maps our body, the environment, and our relations with the environment. It is the primary means by which the complexity inherent to our composite structure is reduced into the "single voice" of a unique individual. It provides a reference system that (albeit evolving) is sufficiently stable to define the variations that will be used as the raw material for the construction of conscious information. Attention allows for the selection of those variations in the state of the self that are most relevant in the given situation. Attention originates and is deployed from a single locus inside our body, which represents the center of the self, around which all our conscious experiences are organized. Whatever is focused by attention appears in our consciousness as possessing a spatial quality defined by this center and the direction toward which attention is focused. In addition, attention determines two other features of conscious experience: periodicity and phenomenal quality. Self and attention are necessary but not sufficient for conscious information to be produced. Complex forms of conscious experiences, such as the various modes of givenness of conscious experience and the stream of consciousness, need a working memory mechanism to assemble the basic pieces of information selected by attention.

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Introduction to research topic: attention and consciousness in different senses

Cited by 17 publications

References 50 publications

Isolating neural correlates of conscious perception from neural correlates of reporting one's perception

Isolating neural correlates of conscious perception from neural correlates of reporting one's perception

Late positive slow waves as markers of chunking during encoding

Consciousness: a unique way of processing information

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