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Distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness and post-perceptual processing

Michael A. Cohen, Kevin Ortego, Andrew Kyroudis, Michael Pitts
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.15.908400
Michael A. Cohen
Department of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience, Amherst CollegeMcGovern Institute for Brain Research, Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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  • For correspondence: mcohen@amherst.edu mpitts@reed.edu
Kevin Ortego
Department of Psychology, Reed College
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Andrew Kyroudis
Department of Psychology, Reed College
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Michael Pitts
Department of Psychology, Reed College
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  • For correspondence: mcohen@amherst.edu mpitts@reed.edu
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Abstract

To identify the neural correlates of perceptual awareness, researchers often compare the differences in neural activation between conditions in which an observer is or is not aware of a target stimulus. While intuitive, this approach often contains a critical limitation: In order to link brain activity with perceptual awareness, observers traditionally report the contents of their perceptual experience. However, relying on observers’ reports is problematic because it makes it difficult to know if the neural responses being measured are associated with conscious perception per se or with post-perceptual processes involved in the reporting task (i.e., working memory, decision-making, etc.). To address this issue, we combined a standard visual masking paradigm with a recently developed “no-report” paradigm. In the visual masking paradigm, observers saw images of animals and objects that were visible or invisible depending on their proximity to masks. Meanwhile, on half of the trials, observers reported the contents of their perceptual experience (i.e., report condition), while on the other half of trials they refrained from reporting about their experiences (i.e., no-report condition). We used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine how visibility interacts with reporting by measuring the P3b event related potential (ERP), one of the proposed canonical “signatures” of conscious processing. Overall, we found a robust P3b in the report condition, but no P3b whatsoever in the no-report condition. This finding suggests that the P3b itself is not a neural signature of conscious processing and highlights the importance of carefully distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness from post-perceptual processing.

Significance statement What are the neural signatures that differentiate conscious and unconscious processing in the brain? Perhaps the most well-established candidate signature is the P3b event-related potential (ERP), a late slow wave that appears when observers are aware of a stimulus, but disappears when a stimulus fails to reach awareness. Here, however, we found that the P3b does not track what observers are perceiving but instead tracks what observers are reporting. When observers are aware of simple visual stimuli, the P3b is nowhere to be found unless observers are reporting the contents of their experience. These results challenge the well-established notion of the P3b as a neural marker of awareness and highlight the need for new approaches to the neuroscience of consciousness.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted January 16, 2020.
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Distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness and post-perceptual processing
Michael A. Cohen, Kevin Ortego, Andrew Kyroudis, Michael Pitts
bioRxiv 2020.01.15.908400; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.15.908400
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Distinguishing the neural correlates of perceptual awareness and post-perceptual processing
Michael A. Cohen, Kevin Ortego, Andrew Kyroudis, Michael Pitts
bioRxiv 2020.01.15.908400; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.15.908400

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