The ‘correlates’ in neural correlates of consciousness

Graaf, Tom A. de; Hsieh, Po‐Jang; Sack, Alexander T.

doi:10.1016/j.neubiorev.2011.05.012

Cited by 184 publications

(161 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Second, the dichotomy drawn between input-related events and NCsC is probably oversimplified in the first place. This verdict of oversimplification has been voiced by others as well [10,11], and it follows from several of the issues discussed earlier in our essay. For instance, we now know that some neural events transpiring during rivalry turn out to correlate neither with the input nor with conscious perception per se, but instead with attention.…”

Section: Concern 4: Are Neural Correlates Of Rivalry Perception Ncsc?supporting

confidence: 58%

Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?

Blake

Brascamp

Heeger

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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This essay critically examines the extent to which binocular rivalry can provide important clues about the neural correlates of conscious visual perception. Our ideas are presented within the framework of four questions about the use of rivalry for this purpose: (i) what constitutes an adequate comparison condition for gauging rivalry's impact on awareness, (ii) how can one distinguish abolished awareness from inattention, (iii) when one obtains unequivocal evidence for a causal link between a fluctuating measure of neural activity and fluctuating perceptual states during rivalry, will it generalize to other stimulus conditions and perceptual phenomena and (iv) does such evidence necessarily indicate that this neural activity constitutes a neural correlate of consciousness? While arriving at sceptical answers to these four questions, the essay nonetheless offers some ideas about how a more nuanced utilization of binocular rivalry may still provide fundamental insights about neural dynamics, and glimpses of at least some of the ingredients comprising neural correlates of consciousness, including those involved in perceptual decision-making.

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Section: Concern 4: Are Neural Correlates Of Rivalry Perception Ncsc?supporting

confidence: 58%

Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?

Blake

Brascamp

Heeger

2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Such processes include (but are probably not limited to) top-down aka focal attention, bottom up attention aka the orienting response, decisions regarding report of subjective experience, preparation for movements involved in report, short-term memory, formation, and/or recall of long-term memories, expectation, general arousal, binding, and pretty much anything else that goes on in the 'global workspace' of the brain. The importance of distinguishing between such processes and conscious experience per se has now been pointed out multiple times, (e.g., [5,6] Ch1, [7][8][9]), but conflation of conscious experience per se with processes that are either necessary but not sufficient for experience, or necessary for the physical movements that are involved in reporting experience has invalidated the interpretation of much early work and to a certain extent remains problematic. A few of the processes that have been mistakenly equated with consciousness are as follows.…”

Section: Brain Processes Wrongly Equated With Sensory Consciousnessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However this suggestion has also suffered at the hands of experimentation aimed at testing the idea. For one thing, magnetic stimulation of prefrontal cortex affects the voluntary control of bistable stimuli, but not passively experienced bistable stimuli [9,37]. Additionally, most frontal activity disappears when no report on sensory experience is required [38][39][40][41].…”

Section: Prefrontal Activitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process

Pockett

2017

Applied Sciences

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Featured Application: If the theory outlined here is correct, the construction of artificial consciousness will certainly be possible, but a fundamentally different approach from that currently used in work on artificial intelligence will be necessary. Abstract:The central dogma of cognitive psychology is 'consciousness is a process, not a thing'. Hence, the main task of cognitive neuroscientists is generally seen as working out what kinds of neural processing are conscious and what kinds are not. I argue here that the central dogma is simply wrong. All neural processing is unconscious. The illusion that some of it is conscious results largely from a failure to separate consciousness per se from a number of unconscious processes that normally accompany it-most particularly focal attention. Conscious sensory experiences are not processes at all. They are things: specifically, spatial electromagnetic (EM) patterns, which are presently generated only by ongoing unconscious processing at certain times and places in the mammalian brain, but which in principle could be generated by hardware rather than wetware. The neurophysiological mechanisms by which putatively conscious EM patterns are generated, the features that may distinguish conscious from unconscious patterns, the general principles that distinguish the conscious patterns of different sensory modalities and the general features that distinguish the conscious patterns of different experiences within any given sensory modality are all described. Suggestions for further development of this paradigm are provided.

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“…nil consciousness) (Supèr et al, 2001;Sergent et al, 2005;Del Cul et al, 2007;Melloni et al, 2007;Gaillard et al, 2009). However, recent theoretical approaches posit that such experimental strategy highlights neural activity driven by various processes unspecific to conscious perception (Aru et al, 2012;de Graaf et al, 2012). Here, we attempted to bypass the bias of non-specificity by focusing on a near-threshold transition from partial to full word-form perception.…”

Section: Scalp Topographies and Brain Views (Sagittal And Axial Planementioning

confidence: 99%

Alpha-band suppression in the visual word form area as a functional bottleneck to consciousness

et al. 2013

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The current state of empirical investigations refers to consciousness as an all-or-none phenomenon. However, a recent theoretical account opens up this perspective by proposing a partial level (between nil and full) of conscious perception. In the well-studied case of single-word reading, short-lived exposure can trigger incomplete word-form recognition wherein letters fall short of forming a whole word in one's conscious perception thereby hindering word-meaning access and report. Hence, the processing from incomplete to complete word-form recognition straightforwardly mirrors a transition from partial to fullblown consciousness. We therefore hypothesized that this putative functional bottleneck to consciousness (i.e. the perceptual boundary between partial and full conscious perception) would emerge at a major key hub region for word-form recognition during reading, namely the left occipito-temporal junction. We applied a real-time staircase procedure and titrated subjective reports at the threshold between partial (letters) and full (whole word) conscious perception. This experimental approach allowed us to collect trials with identical physical stimulation, yet reflecting distinct perceptual experience levels. Oscillatory brain activity was monitored with magnetoencephalography and revealed that the transition from partial-to-full word-form perception was accompanied by alpha-band (7-11 Hz) power suppression in the posterior left occipito-temporal cortex. This modulation of rhythmic activity extended anteriorly towards the visual word form area (VWFA), a region whose selectivity for word-forms in perception is highly debated. The current findings provide electrophysiological evidence for a functional bottleneck to consciousness thereby empirically instantiating a recently proposed partial perspective on consciousness. Moreover, the findings provide an entirely new outlook on the functioning of the VWFA as a late bottleneck to full-blown conscious word-form perception.

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The ‘correlates’ in neural correlates of consciousness

Cited by 184 publications

References 82 publications

Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?

Can binocular rivalry reveal neural correlates of consciousness?

Consciousness Is a Thing, Not a Process

Alpha-band suppression in the visual word form area as a functional bottleneck to consciousness

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