PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Veith Weilnhammer
AU  - Merve Fritsch
AU  - Meera Chikermane
AU  - Anna-Lena Eckert
AU  - Katharina Kanthak
AU  - Heiner Stuke
AU  - Jakob Kaminski
AU  - Philipp Sterzer
TI  - Evidence for an Active Role of Inferior Frontal Cortex in Conscious Experience
AID  - 10.1101/2020.05.28.114645
DP  - 2021 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.05.28.114645
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/05/2020.05.28.114645.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/01/05/2020.05.28.114645.full
AB  - In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions such as introspection or action.Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments for a key role of inferior frontal cortex in detecting perceptual conflicts that emerge from ambiguous sensory information. Crucially, the detection of perceptual conflicts by prefrontal cortex turned out to be critical in the process of transforming ambiguous sensory information into unambiguous conscious experiences: In a third experiment, disruption of neural activity in inferior frontal cortex through transcranial magnetic stimulation slowed down the updating of conscious experience that occurs in response to perceptual conflicts.These findings show that inferior frontal cortex actively contributes to the resolution of perceptual ambiguities. Prefrontal cortex is thus causally involved in determining the contents of conscious experience.One-sentence Summary Inferior frontal cortex detects and resolves perceptual conflict during bistable perception.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.