Neural responses to sensory novelty with and without conscious access

Abstract

Detection of novel stimuli that violate statistical regularities in the sensory scene is of paramount importance for the survival of biological organisms. Event-related potentials, phasic increases in pupil size, and evoked changes in oscillatory power in the theta (4-8 Hz) frequency range have been proposed as markers of sensory novelty detection. However, how conscious access to novelty modulates these different brain responses is not well understood. Here, we studied the neural responses to sensory novelty in the auditory modality with and without conscious access. We identified individual thresholds for conscious auditory discrimination and presented to our participants sequences of tones, where the last stimulus could be another standard, a subthreshold target or a suprathreshold target. Participants were instructed to report whether the last tone of each sequence was the same or different from those preceding it. Results indicate that stimulus evaluation and overt decision-making mechanisms, indexed by the P3 event-related response and reaction times, best predict whether a novel stimulus will be consciously accessed or not. In contrast, increased pupil size does not predict conscious access to novelty but reflects unexpected sensory uncertainty. These results highlight the interplay between bottom-up and top-down mechanisms and how the brain weights neural responses to novelty and uncertainty during perception and goal-directed behavior.