Abstract
Why are some visual stimuli consciously detected, whereas others remain subliminal? We investigated the fate of weak visual stimuli in the visual and frontal cortex of awake monkeys trained to report stimulus presence. Reported stimuli were associated with strong sustained activity in the frontal cortex, and frontal activity was weaker and quickly decayed for unreported stimuli. Information about weak stimuli could be lost at successive stages en route from the visual to the frontal cortex, and these propagation failures were confirmed through microstimulation of area V1. Fluctuations in response bias and sensitivity during perception of identical stimuli were traced back to prestimulus brain-state markers. A model in which stimuli become consciously reportable when they elicit a nonlinear ignition process in higher cortical areas explained our results.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 537-542 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | Science |
| Volume | 360 |
| Issue number | 6388 |
| Early online date | 22 Mar 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 4 May 2018 |
Funding
The work was supported by Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (Brain and Cognition grant 433-09-208 and ALW grant 823-02-010) and the European Union Seventh Framework Program (Marie-Curie Action PITN-GA-2011-290011 “ABC,” grant agreement 7202070 “Human Brain Project,” and European Research Council grant agreement 339490 “Cortic_al_gorithms”) awarded to P.R.R.; S.P. was supported by Fondation Bertarelli, and S.D. was supported by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Canadian Institute for Advanced Research | |
| Fondation Bertarelli | |
| Seventh Framework Programme | 339490, 290011 |
| European Research Council | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | 823-02-010, 433-09-208 |
| Seventh Framework Programme | 7202070, PITN-GA-2011-290011 |