Bridging Consciousness and Cognition in Memory and Perception: Evidence for Both State and Strength Processes

PubMed Central

Aly, Mariam; Yonelinas, Andrew P.

2012-01-01

Subjective experience indicates that mental states are discrete, in the sense that memories and perceptions readily come to mind in some cases, but are entirely unavailable to awareness in others. However, a long history of psychophysical research has indicated that the discrete nature of mental states is largely epiphenomenal and that mental processes vary continuously in strength. We used a novel combination of behavioral methodologies to examine the processes underlying perception of complex images: (1) analysis of receiver operating characteristics (ROCs), (2) a modification of the change-detection flicker paradigm, and (3) subjective reports of conscious experience. These methods yielded converging results showing that perceptual judgments reflect the combined, yet functionally independent, contributions of two processes available to conscious experience: a state process of conscious perception and a strength process of knowing; processes that correspond to recollection and familiarity in long-term memory. In addition, insights from the perception experiments led to the discovery of a new recollection phenomenon in a long-term memory change detection paradigm. The apparent incompatibility between subjective experience and theories of cognition can be understood within a unified state-strength framework that links consciousness to cognition across the domains of perception and memory. PMID:22272314

Objects of consciousness

PubMed Central

Hoffman, Donald D.; Prakash, Chetan

2014-01-01

Current models of visual perception typically assume that human vision estimates true properties of physical objects, properties that exist even if unperceived. However, recent studies of perceptual evolution, using evolutionary games and genetic algorithms, reveal that natural selection often drives true perceptions to extinction when they compete with perceptions tuned to fitness rather than truth: Perception guides adaptive behavior; it does not estimate a preexisting physical truth. Moreover, shifting from evolutionary biology to quantum physics, there is reason to disbelieve in preexisting physical truths: Certain interpretations of quantum theory deny that dynamical properties of physical objects have definite values when unobserved. In some of these interpretations the observer is fundamental, and wave functions are compendia of subjective probabilities, not preexisting elements of physical reality. These two considerations, from evolutionary biology and quantum physics, suggest that current models of object perception require fundamental reformulation. Here we begin such a reformulation, starting with a formal model of consciousness that we call a “conscious agent.” We develop the dynamics of interacting conscious agents, and study how the perception of objects and space-time can emerge from such dynamics. We show that one particular object, the quantum free particle, has a wave function that is identical in form to the harmonic functions that characterize the asymptotic dynamics of conscious agents; particles are vibrations not of strings but of interacting conscious agents. This allows us to reinterpret physical properties such as position, momentum, and energy as properties of interacting conscious agents, rather than as preexisting physical truths. We sketch how this approach might extend to the perception of relativistic quantum objects, and to classical objects of macroscopic scale. PMID:24987382

Isolating neural correlates of conscious perception from neural correlates of reporting one's perception

PubMed Central

Pitts, Michael A.; Metzler, Stephen; Hillyard, Steven A.

2014-01-01

To isolate neural correlates of conscious perception (NCCs), a standard approach has been to contrast neural activity elicited by identical stimuli of which subjects are aware vs. unaware. Because conscious experience is private, determining whether a stimulus was consciously perceived requires subjective report: e.g., button-presses indicating detection, visibility ratings, verbal reports, etc. This reporting requirement introduces a methodological confound when attempting to isolate NCCs: The neural processes responsible for accessing and reporting one's percept are difficult to distinguish from those underlying the conscious percept itself. Here, we review recent attempts to circumvent this issue via a modified inattentional blindness paradigm (Pitts et al., 2012) and present new data from a backward masking experiment in which task-relevance and visual awareness were manipulated in a 2 × 2 crossed design. In agreement with our previous inattentional blindness results, stimuli that were consciously perceived yet not immediately accessed for report (aware, task-irrelevant condition) elicited a mid-latency posterior ERP negativity (~200–240 ms), while stimuli that were accessed for report (aware, task-relevant condition) elicited additional components including a robust P3b (~380–480 ms) subsequent to the mid-latency negativity. Overall, these results suggest that some of the NCCs identified in previous studies may be more closely linked with accessing and maintaining perceptual information for reporting purposes than with encoding the conscious percept itself. An open question is whether the remaining NCC candidate (the ERP negativity at 200–240 ms) reflects visual awareness or object-based attention. PMID:25339922

Attention and Conscious Perception in the Hypothesis Testing Brain

PubMed Central

Hohwy, Jakob

2012-01-01

Conscious perception and attention are difficult to study, partly because their relation to each other is not fully understood. Rather than conceiving and studying them in isolation from each other it may be useful to locate them in an independently motivated, general framework, from which a principled account of how they relate can then emerge. Accordingly, these mental phenomena are here reviewed through the prism of the increasingly influential predictive coding framework. On this framework, conscious perception can be seen as the upshot of prediction error minimization and attention as the optimization of precision expectations during such perceptual inference. This approach maps on well to a range of standard characteristics of conscious perception and attention, and can be used to interpret a range of empirical findings on their relation to each other. PMID:22485102

Body Conscious? Interoceptive Awareness, Measured by Heartbeat Perception, Is Negatively Correlated with Self-Objectification

PubMed Central

Ainley, Vivien; Tsakiris, Manos

2013-01-01

Background ‘Self-objectification’ is the tendency to experience one's body principally as an object, to be evaluated for its appearance rather than for its effectiveness. Within objectification theory, it has been proposed that self-objectification accounts for the poorer interoceptive awareness observed in women, as measured by heartbeat perception. Our study is, we believe, the first specifically to test this relationship. Methodology/Principal Findings Using a well-validated and reliable heartbeat perception task, we measured interoceptive awareness in women and compared this with their scores on the Self-Objectification Questionnaire, the Self-Consciousness Scale and the Body Consciousness Questionnaire. Interoceptive awareness was negatively correlated with self-objectification. Interoceptive awareness, public body consciousness and private body consciousness together explained 31% of the variance in self-objectification. However, private body consciousness was not significantly correlated with interoceptive awareness, which may explain the many nonsignificant results in self-objectification studies that have used private body consciousness as a measure of body awareness. Conclusions/Significance We propose interoceptive awareness, assessed by heartbeat perception, as a measure of body awareness in self-objectification studies. Our findings have implications for those clinical conditions, in women, which are characterised by self-objectification and low interoceptive awareness, such as eating disorders. PMID:23405173

Predictors of Biased Self-perception in Individuals with High Social Anxiety: The Effect of Self-consciousness in the Private and Public Self Domains.

PubMed

Nordahl, Henrik; Plummer, Alice; Wells, Adrian

2017-01-01

"Biased self-perception," the tendency to perceive one's social performance as more negative than observers do, is characteristic of socially anxious individuals. Self-attention processes are hypothesised to underlie biased self-perception, however, different models emphasise different aspects of self-attention, with attention to the public aspects of the self being prominent. The current study aimed to investigate the relative contribution of two types of dispositional self-attention; public- and private self-consciousness to biased self-perception in a high ( n = 48) versus a low ( n = 48) social anxiety group undergoing an interaction task. The main finding was that private self-consciousness explained substantial and unique variance in biased negative self-perception in individuals with high social anxiety, while public self-consciousness did not. This relationship was independent of increments in state anxiety. Private self-consciousness appeared to have a specific association with bias related to overestimation of negative social performance rather than underestimation of positive social performance. The implication of this finding is that current treatment models of Social anxiety disorder might include broader aspects of self-focused attention, especially in the context of formulating self-evaluation biases.

The Role of Attention in Conscious Recollection

PubMed Central

De Brigard, Felipe

2012-01-01

Most research on the relationship between attention and consciousness has been limited to perception. However, perceptions are not the only kinds of mental contents of which we can be conscious. An important set of conscious states that has not received proper treatment within this discussion is that of memories. This paper reviews compelling evidence indicating that attention may be necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. However, it is argued that unlike the case of conscious perception, the kind of attention required during recollection is internal, as opposed to external, attention. As such, the surveyed empirical evidence is interpreted as suggesting that internal attention is necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. The paper begins by justifying the need for clear distinctions among different kinds of attention, and then emphasizes the difference between internal and external attention. Next, evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies suggesting that internal attention is required for the successful retrieval of memorial contents is reviewed. In turn, it is argued that internal attention during recollection is what makes us conscious of the contents of retrieved memories; further evidence in support of this claim is also provided. Finally, it is suggested that internal attention is probably not sufficient for conscious recollection. Open questions and possible avenues for future research are also mentioned. PMID:22363305

The neural monitoring of visceral inputs, rather than attention, accounts for first-person perspective in conscious vision.

PubMed

Tallon-Baudry, Catherine; Campana, Florence; Park, Hyeong-Dong; Babo-Rebelo, Mariana

2018-05-01

Why should a scientist whose aim is to unravel the neural mechanisms of perception consider brain-body interactions seriously? Brain-body interactions have traditionally been associated with emotion, effort, or stress, but not with the "cold" processes of perception and attention. Here, we review recent experimental evidence suggesting a different picture: the neural monitoring of bodily state, and in particular the neural monitoring of the heart, affects visual perception. The impact of spontaneous fluctuations of neural responses to heartbeats on visual detection is as large as the impact of explicit manipulations of spatial attention in perceptual tasks. However, we propose that the neural monitoring of visceral inputs plays a specific role in conscious perception, distinct from the role of attention. The neural monitoring of organs such as the heart or the gut would generate a subject-centered reference frame, from which the first-person perspective inherent to conscious perception can develop. In this view, conscious perception results from the integration of visual content with first-person perspective. Copyright © 2017 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

The Split-Brain Phenomenon Revisited: A Single Conscious Agent with Split Perception.

PubMed

Pinto, Yair; de Haan, Edward H F; Lamme, Victor A F

2017-11-01

The split-brain phenomenon is caused by the surgical severing of the corpus callosum, the main route of communication between the cerebral hemispheres. The classical view of this syndrome asserts that conscious unity is abolished. The left hemisphere consciously experiences and functions independently of the right hemisphere. This view is a cornerstone of current consciousness research. In this review, we first discuss the evidence for the classical view. We then propose an alternative, the 'conscious unity, split perception' model. This model asserts that a split brain produces one conscious agent who experiences two parallel, unintegrated streams of information. In addition to changing our view of the split-brain phenomenon, this new model also poses a serious challenge for current dominant theories of consciousness. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

[Perception, mimesis and consciousness].

PubMed

Emrich, H M

1998-02-01

Questions as to the fundamentals of "consciousness" are envisaged, first of all, from the viewpoint of quantifying experiments on visual perception in humans, focussed on "internal censorship", the role of intrapsychic mechanisms processing and correcting perception, and secondly based on recent theories on "mimesis" in the sense of R. Girard's concept of psychosocial transfer of aims and values between humans. The paper demonstrates a convergence between these two strategies of understanding, pointing to the view that "consciousness" may be interpreted as the performance of the intrapsychic "translation" between "cognitive" and "assessing" (or "valuating") emotional processes.

Is conscious perception a series of discrete temporal frames?

PubMed

White, Peter A

2018-04-01

This paper reviews proposals that conscious perception consists, in whole or part, of successive discrete temporal frames on the sub-second time scale, each frame containing information registered as simultaneous or static. Although the idea of discrete frames in conscious perception cannot be regarded as falsified, there are many problems. Evidence does not consistently support any proposed duration or range of durations for frames. EEG waveforms provide evidence of periodicity in brain activity, but not necessarily in conscious perception. Temporal properties of perceptual processes are flexible in response to competing processing demands, which is hard to reconcile with the relative inflexibility of regular frames. There are also problems concerning the definition of frames, the need for informational connections between frames, the means by which boundaries between frames are established, and the apparent requirement for a storage buffer for information awaiting entry to the next frame. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conscious Vision Proceeds from Global to Local Content in Goal-Directed Tasks and Spontaneous Vision.

PubMed

Campana, Florence; Rebollo, Ignacio; Urai, Anne; Wyart, Valentin; Tallon-Baudry, Catherine

2016-05-11

The reverse hierarchy theory (Hochstein and Ahissar, 2002) makes strong, but so far untested, predictions on conscious vision. In this theory, local details encoded in lower-order visual areas are unconsciously processed before being automatically and rapidly combined into global information in higher-order visual areas, where conscious percepts emerge. Contingent on current goals, local details can afterward be consciously retrieved. This model therefore predicts that (1) global information is perceived faster than local details, (2) global information is computed regardless of task demands during early visual processing, and (3) spontaneous vision is dominated by global percepts. We designed novel textured stimuli that are, as opposed to the classic Navon's letters, truly hierarchical (i.e., where global information is solely defined by local information but where local and global orientations can still be manipulated separately). In line with the predictions, observers were systematically faster reporting global than local properties of those stimuli. Second, global information could be decoded from magneto-encephalographic data during early visual processing regardless of task demands. Last, spontaneous subjective reports were dominated by global information and the frequency and speed of spontaneous global perception correlated with the accuracy and speed in the global task. No such correlation was observed for local information. We therefore show that information at different levels of the visual hierarchy is not equally likely to become conscious; rather, conscious percepts emerge preferentially at a global level. We further show that spontaneous reports can be reliable and are tightly linked to objective performance at the global level. Is information encoded at different levels of the visual system (local details in low-level areas vs global shapes in high-level areas) equally likely to become conscious? We designed new hierarchical stimuli and provide the first empirical evidence based on behavioral and MEG data that global information encoded at high levels of the visual hierarchy dominates perception. This result held both in the presence and in the absence of task demands. The preferential emergence of percepts at high levels can account for two properties of conscious vision, namely, the dominance of global percepts and the feeling of visual richness reported independently of the perception of local details. Copyright © 2016 the authors 0270-6474/16/365200-14$15.00/0.

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

PubMed Central

van Boxtel, Jeroen J. A.; Tsuchiya, Naotsugu; Koch, Christof

2010-01-01

The brain's ability to handle sensory information is influenced by both selective attention and consciousness. There is no consensus on the exact relationship between these two processes and whether they are distinct. So far, no experiment has simultaneously manipulated both. We carried out a full factorial 2 × 2 study of the simultaneous influences of attention and consciousness (as assayed by visibility) on perception, correcting for possible concurrent changes in attention and consciousness. We investigated the duration of afterimages for all four combinations of high versus low attention and visible versus invisible. We show that selective attention and visual consciousness have opposite effects: paying attention to the grating decreases the duration of its afterimage, whereas consciously seeing the grating increases the afterimage duration. These findings provide clear evidence for distinctive influences of selective attention and consciousness on visual perception. PMID:20424112

The science of consciousness - Basics, models, and visions.

PubMed

Hinterberger, Thilo

2015-12-01

This article presents a few models and aspects of the phenomenon consciousness that are emerging from modern neuroscience and might serve as a basis for scientific discourse in the field of Applied Consciousness Sciences. A first model describes the dynamics of information processing in the brain. The evoked electric brain potentials represent a hierarchical sequence of functions playing an important role in conscious perception. These range from primary processing, attention, pattern recognition, categorization, associations to judgments, and complex thoughts. Most functions seem to be implemented in the brain's neural network operating as a neurobiological computer. Another model treats conscious perception as a process of internalisation leading to the "self" as conscious observer. As a consequence, every conscious perception can be seen as a reduced and already interpreted observation of an inner representation of an outer or imagined "world." Subjective experience thus offers properties which can only be experienced from the inside and cannot be made objective. Basic values of humanity such as responsibility, love, compassion, freedom, and dignity can be derived from these subjective qualities. Therefore, in contrast to the Natural Sciences, the Science of Consciousness additionally is challenged to deal with those subjective qualities, emphasizing the resulting influence on health, social interactions, and the whole society. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A frontal but not parietal neural correlate of auditory consciousness.

PubMed

Brancucci, Alfredo; Lugli, Victor; Perrucci, Mauro Gianni; Del Gratta, Cosimo; Tommasi, Luca

2016-01-01

Hemodynamic correlates of consciousness were investigated in humans during the presentation of a dichotic sequence inducing illusory auditory percepts with features analogous to visual multistability. The sequence consisted of a variation of the original stimulation eliciting the Deutsch's octave illusion, created to maintain a stable illusory percept long enough to allow the detection of the underlying hemodynamic activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Two specular 500 ms dichotic stimuli (400 and 800 Hz) presented in alternation by means of earphones cause an illusory segregation of pitch and ear of origin which can yield up to four different auditory percepts per dichotic stimulus. Such percepts are maintained stable when one of the two dichotic stimuli is presented repeatedly for 6 s, immediately after the alternation. We observed hemodynamic activity specifically accompanying conscious experience of pitch in a bilateral network including the superior frontal gyrus (SFG, BA9 and BA10), medial frontal gyrus (BA6 and BA9), insula (BA13), and posterior lateral nucleus of the thalamus. Conscious experience of side (ear of origin) was instead specifically accompanied by bilateral activity in the MFG (BA6), STG (BA41), parahippocampal gyrus (BA28), and insula (BA13). These results suggest that the neural substrate of auditory consciousness, differently from that of visual consciousness, may rest upon a fronto-temporal rather than upon a fronto-parietal network. Moreover, they indicate that the neural correlates of consciousness depend on the specific features of the stimulus and suggest the SFG-MFG and the insula as important cortical nodes for auditory conscious experience.

Dissociation between awareness and spatial coding: evidence from unilateral neglect.

PubMed

Treccani, Barbara; Cubelli, Roberto; Sellaro, Roberta; Umiltà, Carlo; Della Sala, Sergio

2012-04-01

Prevalent theories about consciousness propose a causal relation between lack of spatial coding and absence of conscious experience: The failure to code the position of an object is assumed to prevent this object from entering consciousness. This is consistent with influential theories of unilateral neglect following brain damage, according to which spatial coding of neglected stimuli is defective, and this would keep their processing at the nonconscious level. Contrary to this view, we report evidence showing that spatial coding and consciousness can dissociate. A patient with left neglect, who was not aware of contralesional stimuli, was able to process their color and position. However, in contrast to (ipsilesional) consciously perceived stimuli, color and position of neglected stimuli were processed separately. We propose that individual object features, including position, can be processed without attention and consciousness and that conscious perception of an object depends on the binding of its features into an integrated percept.

Emotional consciousness: a neural model of how cognitive appraisal and somatic perception interact to produce qualitative experience.

PubMed

Thagard, Paul; Aubie, Brandon

2008-09-01

This paper proposes a theory of how conscious emotional experience is produced by the brain as the result of many interacting brain areas coordinated in working memory. These brain areas integrate perceptions of bodily states of an organism with cognitive appraisals of its current situation. Emotions are neural processes that represent the overall cognitive and somatic state of the organism. Conscious experience arises when neural representations achieve high activation as part of working memory. This theory explains numerous phenomena concerning emotional consciousness, including differentiation, integration, intensity, valence, and change.

Cross-modal cueing effects of visuospatial attention on conscious somatosensory perception.

PubMed

Doruk, Deniz; Chanes, Lorena; Malavera, Alejandra; Merabet, Lotfi B; Valero-Cabré, Antoni; Fregni, Felipe

2018-04-01

The impact of visuospatial attention on perception with supraliminal stimuli and stimuli at the threshold of conscious perception has been previously investigated. In this study, we assess the cross-modal effects of visuospatial attention on conscious perception for near-threshold somatosensory stimuli applied to the face. Fifteen healthy participants completed two sessions of a near-threshold cross-modality cue-target discrimination/conscious detection paradigm. Each trial began with an endogenous visuospatial cue that predicted the location of a weak near-threshold electrical pulse delivered to the right or left cheek with high probability (∼75%). Participants then completed two tasks: first, a forced-choice somatosensory discrimination task (felt once or twice?) and then, a somatosensory conscious detection task (did you feel the stimulus and, if yes, where (left/right)?). Somatosensory discrimination was evaluated with the response reaction times of correctly detected targets, whereas the somatosensory conscious detection was quantified using perceptual sensitivity (d') and response bias (beta). A 2 × 2 repeated measures ANOVA was used for statistical analysis. In the somatosensory discrimination task (1 st task), participants were significantly faster in responding to correctly detected targets (p < 0.001). In the somatosensory conscious detection task (2 nd task), a significant effect of visuospatial attention on response bias (p = 0.008) was observed, suggesting that participants had a less strict criterion for stimuli preceded by spatially valid than invalid visuospatial cues. We showed that spatial attention has the potential to modulate the discrimination and the conscious detection of near-threshold somatosensory stimuli as measured, respectively, by a reduction of reaction times and a shift in response bias toward less conservative responses when the cue predicted stimulus location. A shift in response bias indicates possible effects of spatial attention on internal decision processes. The lack of significant results in perceptual sensitivity (d') could be due to weaker effects of endogenous attention on perception.

Time, Memory, and Consciousness a View from the Brain

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Markowitsch, Hans J.

2005-10-01

Memory can be defined as mental time traveling. Seen in this way, memory provides the glue which combines different time episodes and leads to a coherent view of one's own person. The importance of time becomes apparent in a neuroscientific comparison of animals and human beings. All kinds of animals have biorhythms -- times when they sleep, prefer or avoid sex, or move to warmer places. Mammalian brains have a number of time sensitive structures damage to which alters a subject's behavior to his or her environment. For human beings, damage to certain brain regions may alter the sense of time and consciousness of time in quite different ways. Furthermore, brain damage, drugs, or psychiatric disturbances may lead to an impaired perception of time, sometimes leading to major positive or negative accelerations in time perception. An impaired time perception alters consciousness and awareness of oneself. A proper synchronized action of time perception, brain activation, memory processing, and autonoetic (self-aware) consciousness provides the bases of an integrated personality.

Visible propagation from invisible exogenous cueing.

PubMed

Lin, Zhicheng; Murray, Scott O

2013-09-20

Perception and performance is affected not just by what we see but also by what we do not see-inputs that escape our awareness. While conscious processing and unconscious processing have been assumed to be separate and independent, here we report the propagation of unconscious exogenous cueing as determined by conscious motion perception. In a paradigm combining masked exogenous cueing and apparent motion, we show that, when an onset cue was rendered invisible, the unconscious exogenous cueing effect traveled, manifesting at uncued locations (4° apart) in accordance with conscious perception of visual motion; the effect diminished when the cue-to-target distance was 8° apart. In contrast, conscious exogenous cueing manifested in both distances. Further evidence reveals that the unconscious and conscious nonretinotopic effects could not be explained by an attentional gradient, nor by bottom-up, energy-based motion mechanisms, but rather they were subserved by top-down, tracking-based motion mechanisms. We thus term these effects mobile cueing. Taken together, unconscious mobile cueing effects (a) demonstrate a previously unknown degree of flexibility of unconscious exogenous attention; (b) embody a simultaneous dissociation and association of attention and consciousness, in which exogenous attention can occur without cue awareness ("dissociation"), yet at the same time its effect is contingent on conscious motion tracking ("association"); and (c) underscore the interaction of conscious and unconscious processing, providing evidence for an unconscious effect that is not automatic but controlled.

Implicit Goalkeeper Influences on Goal Side Selection in Representative Penalty Kicking Tasks

PubMed Central

Noël, Benjamin; van der Kamp, John; Memmert, Daniel

2015-01-01

In well-controlled lab situations, marginal displacements of the goalkeeper on the goal line affect goal side selection of penalty takers implicitly, that is, without the penalty takers being consciously aware of the displacement. Whether this effect is retained in more representative real-life situations with competing goalkeepers and penalty takers has not been verified. In the current study, penalty takers were instructed to position the goalkeepers at the centre of the goal. They then performed penalty kicks adopting either a keeper independent or a keeper dependent strategy, while goalkeepers actually attempted to save the ball by strategically diving early or late. Analyses of trials in which penalty takers failed to place the goalkeeper in the centre of the goal (although they incorrectly believed they placed the goalkeeper at the centre of the goal) showed that implicit influences of the goalkeeper’s position on goal side selection were overridden by the (conscious) perception of the direction of the goalkeeper’s dive, but only if the penalty takers deliberately monitored the goalkeeper’s action and the goalkeeper committed early enough for penalty takers to respond. In all other combinations of penalty kick and goalkeeper strategies more than 60% of the kicks were directed to the side of the goal with more space. Most importantly, however, the current study shows that influences of implicit perception on the penalty takers’ decision making are rather pervasive considering that many supraliminal sources of information were available. That is, the current study demonstrates that implicit perception retains its influence on decision-making even if other (stronger) stimuli are also present. PMID:26267378

Conceptualizing Mind and Consciousness: Using Constructivist Ideas to Transcend the Physical Bind

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Becker, Joe

2008-01-01

Philosophers and scientists seeking to conceptualize consciousness, and subjective experience in particular, have focused on sensation and perception, and have emphasized binding--how a percept holds together. Building on a constructivist approach to conception centered on separistic-holistic complexes incorporating multiple levels of abstraction,…

Prestimulus Network Integration of Auditory Cortex Predisposes Near-Threshold Perception Independently of Local Excitability

PubMed Central

Leske, Sabine; Ruhnau, Philipp; Frey, Julia; Lithari, Chrysa; Müller, Nadia; Hartmann, Thomas; Weisz, Nathan

2015-01-01

An ever-increasing number of studies are pointing to the importance of network properties of the brain for understanding behavior such as conscious perception. However, with regards to the influence of prestimulus brain states on perception, this network perspective has rarely been taken. Our recent framework predicts that brain regions crucial for a conscious percept are coupled prior to stimulus arrival, forming pre-established pathways of information flow and influencing perceptual awareness. Using magnetoencephalography (MEG) and graph theoretical measures, we investigated auditory conscious perception in a near-threshold (NT) task and found strong support for this framework. Relevant auditory regions showed an increased prestimulus interhemispheric connectivity. The left auditory cortex was characterized by a hub-like behavior and an enhanced integration into the brain functional network prior to perceptual awareness. Right auditory regions were decoupled from non-auditory regions, presumably forming an integrated information processing unit with the left auditory cortex. In addition, we show for the first time for the auditory modality that local excitability, measured by decreased alpha power in the auditory cortex, increases prior to conscious percepts. Importantly, we were able to show that connectivity states seem to be largely independent from local excitability states in the context of a NT paradigm. PMID:26408799

The conjunction of non-consciously perceived object identity and spatial position can be retained during a visual short-term memory task.

PubMed

Bergström, Fredrik; Eriksson, Johan

2015-01-01

Although non-consciously perceived information has previously been assumed to be short-lived (< 500 ms), recent findings show that non-consciously perceived information can be maintained for at least 15 s. Such findings can be explained as working memory without a conscious experience of the information to be retained. However, whether or not working memory can operate on non-consciously perceived information remains controversial, and little is known about the nature of such non-conscious visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here we used continuous flash suppression to render stimuli non-conscious, to investigate the properties of non-consciously perceived representations in delayed match-to-sample (DMS) tasks. In Experiment I we used variable delays (5 or 15 s) and found that performance was significantly better than chance and was unaffected by delay duration, thereby replicating previous findings. In Experiment II the DMS task required participants to combine information of spatial position and object identity on a trial-by-trial basis to successfully solve the task. We found that the conjunction of spatial position and object identity was retained, thereby verifying that non-conscious, trial-specific information can be maintained for prospective use. We conclude that our results are consistent with a working memory interpretation, but that more research is needed to verify this interpretation.

Right Orbitofrontal Cortex Mediates Conscious Olfactory Perception

PubMed Central

Li, Wen; Lopez, Leonardo; Osher, Jason; Howard, James D.; Parrish, Todd B.; Gottfried, Jay A.

2013-01-01

Understanding how the human brain translates sensory impressions into conscious percepts is a key challenge of neuroscience research. Work in this area has overwhelmingly centered on the conscious experience of vision at the exclusion of the other senses—in particular, smell. We hypothesized that the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a central substrate for olfactory conscious experience because of its privileged physiological role in odor processing. Combining functional magnetic resonance imaging, peripheral autonomic recordings, and olfactory psychophysics, we studied a case of complete anosmia (smell loss) in a patient with circumscribed traumatic brain injury to the right OFC. Despite a complete absence of conscious olfaction, the patient exhibited robust “blind smell,” as indexed by reliable odor-evoked neural activity in the left OFC and normal autonomic responses to odor hedonics during presentation of stimuli to the left nostril. These data highlight the right OFC’s critical role in subserving human olfactory consciousness. PMID:20817780

Conscious and Nonconscious Processes:Distinct Forms of Evidence Accumulation?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Dehaene, Stanislas

Among the many brain events evoked by a visual stimulus, which ones are associated specifically with conscious perception, and which merely reflect nonconscious processing? Understanding the neuronal mechanisms of consciousness is a major challenge for cognitive neuroscience. Recently, progress has been achieved by contrasting behavior and brain activation in minimally different experimental conditions, one of which leads to conscious perception whereas the other does not. This chapter reviews briefly this line of research and speculates on its theoretical interpretation. I propose to draw links between evidence accumulation models, which are highly successful in capturing elementary psychophysical decisions, and the conscious/nonconscious dichotomy. In this framework, conscious access would correspond to the crossing of a threshold in evidence accumulation within a distributed global workspace, a set of recurrently connected neurons with long axons that is able to integrate and broadcast back evidence from multiple brain processors. During nonconscious processing, evidence would be accumulated locally within specialized subcircuits, but would fail to reach the threshold needed for global ignition and, therefore, conscious reportability.

A theory of working memory without consciousness or sustained activity

PubMed Central

Trübutschek, Darinka; Marti, Sébastien; Ojeda, Andrés; King, Jean-Rémi; Mi, Yuanyuan; Tsodyks, Misha; Dehaene, Stanislas

2017-01-01

Working memory and conscious perception are thought to share similar brain mechanisms, yet recent reports of non-conscious working memory challenge this view. Combining visual masking with magnetoencephalography, we investigate the reality of non-conscious working memory and dissect its neural mechanisms. In a spatial delayed-response task, participants reported the location of a subjectively unseen target above chance-level after several seconds. Conscious perception and conscious working memory were characterized by similar signatures: a sustained desynchronization in the alpha/beta band over frontal cortex, and a decodable representation of target location in posterior sensors. During non-conscious working memory, such activity vanished. Our findings contradict models that identify working memory with sustained neural firing, but are compatible with recent proposals of ‘activity-silent’ working memory. We present a theoretical framework and simulations showing how slowly decaying synaptic changes allow cell assemblies to go dormant during the delay, yet be retrieved above chance-level after several seconds. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.23871.001 PMID:28718763

Socially Conscious Ventures and Experiential Learning: Perceptions of Student Engagement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Vasbinder, William; Koehler, William

2015-01-01

This qualitative study explored stakeholder perceptions of the outcomes of semester-long experiential learning projects in five selected business courses at a small, private college. Students worked with the owners of socially conscious startup firms to develop and present strategic marketing and business plans. The work draws upon interviews with…

Spatial Frequency Tuning during the Conscious and Non-Conscious Perception of Emotional Facial Expressions – An Intracranial ERP Study

PubMed Central

Willenbockel, Verena; Lepore, Franco; Nguyen, Dang Khoa; Bouthillier, Alain; Gosselin, Frédéric

2012-01-01

Previous studies have shown that complex visual stimuli, such as emotional facial expressions, can influence brain activity independently of the observers’ awareness. Little is known yet, however, about the “informational correlates” of consciousness – i.e., which low-level information correlates with brain activation during conscious vs. non-conscious perception. Here, we investigated this question in the spatial frequency (SF) domain. We examined which SFs in disgusted and fearful faces modulate activation in the insula and amygdala over time and as a function of awareness, using a combination of intracranial event-related potentials (ERPs), SF Bubbles (Willenbockel et al., 2010a), and Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS; Tsuchiya and Koch, 2005). Patients implanted with electrodes for epilepsy monitoring viewed face photographs (13° × 7°) that were randomly SF filtered on a trial-by-trial basis. In the conscious condition, the faces were visible; in the non-conscious condition, they were rendered invisible using CFS. The data were analyzed by performing multiple linear regressions on the SF filters from each trial and the transformed ERP amplitudes across time. The resulting classification images suggest that many SFs are involved in the conscious and non-conscious perception of emotional expressions, with SFs between 6 and 10 cycles per face width being particularly important early on. The results also revealed qualitative differences between the awareness conditions for both regions. Non-conscious processing relied on low SFs more and was faster than conscious processing. Overall, our findings are consistent with the idea that different pathways are employed for the processing of emotional stimuli under different degrees of awareness. The present study represents a first step to mapping how SF information “flows” through the emotion-processing network with a high temporal resolution and to shedding light on the informational correlates of consciousness in general. PMID:23055988

"Binaural Rivalry": Dichotic Listening as a Tool for the Investigation of the Neural Correlate of Consciousness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brancucci, Alfredo; Tommasi, Luca

2011-01-01

Since about two decades neuroscientists have systematically faced the problem of consciousness: the aim is to discover the neural activity specifically related to conscious perceptions, i.e. the biological properties of what philosophers call qualia. In this view, a neural correlate of consciousness (NCC) is a precise pattern of brain activity…

Cortical response tracking the conscious experience of threshold duration visual stimuli indicates visual perception is all or none

PubMed Central

Sekar, Krithiga; Findley, William M.; Poeppel, David; Llinás, Rodolfo R.

2013-01-01

At perceptual threshold, some stimuli are available for conscious access whereas others are not. Such threshold inputs are useful tools for investigating the events that separate conscious awareness from unconscious stimulus processing. Here, viewing unmasked, threshold-duration images was combined with recording magnetoencephalography to quantify differences among perceptual states, ranging from no awareness to ambiguity to robust perception. A four-choice scale was used to assess awareness: “didn’t see” (no awareness), “couldn’t identify” (awareness without identification), “unsure” (awareness with low certainty identification), and “sure” (awareness with high certainty identification). Stimulus-evoked neuromagnetic signals were grouped according to behavioral response choices. Three main cortical responses were elicited. The earliest response, peaking at ∼100 ms after stimulus presentation, showed no significant correlation with stimulus perception. A late response (∼290 ms) showed moderate correlation with stimulus awareness but could not adequately differentiate conscious access from its absence. By contrast, an intermediate response peaking at ∼240 ms was observed only for trials in which stimuli were consciously detected. That this signal was similar for all conditions in which awareness was reported is consistent with the hypothesis that conscious visual access is relatively sharply demarcated. PMID:23509248

Drugs and People: Repertory Grid Structure and the Construal of Two Different Kinds of Target.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Leenaars, Antoon A.

1981-01-01

Investigated comparisons of perceptions of drugs with perceptions of people, using the repertory grid technique. A significant result was finding a shift from seeing people as less positive and drugs as more positive when subjects shifted from a normal state of consciousness to a simulated altered state of consciousness. (Author)

A Neural Network Approach to fMRI Binocular Visual Rivalry Task Analysis

PubMed Central

Bertolino, Nicola; Ferraro, Stefania; Nigri, Anna; Bruzzone, Maria Grazia; Ghielmetti, Francesco; Leonardi, Matilde; Agostino Parati, Eugenio; Grazia Bruzzone, Maria; Franceschetti, Silvana; Caldiroli, Dario; Sattin, Davide; Giovannetti, Ambra; Pagani, Marco; Covelli, Venusia; Ciaraffa, Francesca; Vela Gomez, Jesus; Reggiori, Barbara; Ferraro, Stefania; Nigri, Anna; D'Incerti, Ludovico; Minati, Ludovico; Andronache, Adrian; Rosazza, Cristina; Fazio, Patrik; Rossi, Davide; Varotto, Giulia; Panzica, Ferruccio; Benti, Riccardo; Marotta, Giorgio; Molteni, Franco

2014-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether artificial neural networks (ANN) are able to decode participants’ conscious experience perception from brain activity alone, using complex and ecological stimuli. To reach the aim we conducted pattern recognition data analysis on fMRI data acquired during the execution of a binocular visual rivalry paradigm (BR). Twelve healthy participants were submitted to fMRI during the execution of a binocular non-rivalry (BNR) and a BR paradigm in which two classes of stimuli (faces and houses) were presented. During the binocular rivalry paradigm, behavioral responses related to the switching between consciously perceived stimuli were also collected. First, we used the BNR paradigm as a functional localizer to identify the brain areas involved the processing of the stimuli. Second, we trained the ANN on the BNR fMRI data restricted to these regions of interest. Third, we applied the trained ANN to the BR data as a ‘brain reading’ tool to discriminate the pattern of neural activity between the two stimuli. Fourth, we verified the consistency of the ANN outputs with the collected behavioral indicators of which stimulus was consciously perceived by the participants. Our main results showed that the trained ANN was able to generalize across the two different tasks (i.e. BNR and BR) and to identify with high accuracy the cognitive state of the participants (i.e. which stimulus was consciously perceived) during the BR condition. The behavioral response, employed as control parameter, was compared with the network output and a statistically significant percentage of correspondences (p-value <0.05) were obtained for all subjects. In conclusion the present study provides a method based on multivariate pattern analysis to investigate the neural basis of visual consciousness during the BR phenomenon when behavioral indicators lack or are inconsistent, like in disorders of consciousness or sedated patients. PMID:25121595

Automatic Online Motor Control Is Intact in Parkinson's Disease With and Without Perceptual Awareness.

PubMed

Merritt, Kate E; Seergobin, Ken N; Mendonça, Daniel A; Jenkins, Mary E; Goodale, Melvyn A; MacDonald, Penny A

2017-01-01

In the double-step paradigm, healthy human participants automatically correct reaching movements when targets are displaced. Motor deficits are prominent in Parkinson's disease (PD) patients. In the lone investigation of online motor correction in PD using the double-step task, a recent study found that PD patients performed unconscious adjustments appropriately but seemed impaired for consciously-perceived modifications. Conscious perception of target movement was achieved by linking displacement to movement onset. PD-related bradykinesia disproportionately prolonged preparatory phases for movements to original target locations for patients, potentially accounting for deficits. Eliminating this confound in a double-step task, we evaluated the effect of conscious awareness of trajectory change on online motor corrections in PD. On and off dopaminergic therapy, PD patients ( n = 14) and healthy controls ( n = 14) reached to peripheral visual targets that remained stationary or unexpectedly moved during an initial saccade. Saccade latencies in PD are comparable to controls'. Hence, target displacements occurred at equal times across groups. Target jump size affected conscious awareness, confirmed in an independent target displacement judgment task. Small jumps were subliminal, but large target displacements were consciously perceived. Contrary to the previous result, PD patients performed online motor corrections normally and automatically, irrespective of conscious perception. Patients evidenced equivalent movement durations for jump and stay trials, and trajectories for patients and controls were identical, irrespective of conscious perception. Dopaminergic therapy had no effect on performance. In summary, online motor control is intact in PD, unaffected by conscious perceptual awareness. The basal ganglia are not implicated in online corrective responses.

Automatic Online Motor Control Is Intact in Parkinson’s Disease With and Without Perceptual Awareness

PubMed Central

Seergobin, Ken N.; Mendonça, Daniel A.

2017-01-01

Abstract In the double-step paradigm, healthy human participants automatically correct reaching movements when targets are displaced. Motor deficits are prominent in Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients. In the lone investigation of online motor correction in PD using the double-step task, a recent study found that PD patients performed unconscious adjustments appropriately but seemed impaired for consciously-perceived modifications. Conscious perception of target movement was achieved by linking displacement to movement onset. PD-related bradykinesia disproportionately prolonged preparatory phases for movements to original target locations for patients, potentially accounting for deficits. Eliminating this confound in a double-step task, we evaluated the effect of conscious awareness of trajectory change on online motor corrections in PD. On and off dopaminergic therapy, PD patients (n = 14) and healthy controls (n = 14) reached to peripheral visual targets that remained stationary or unexpectedly moved during an initial saccade. Saccade latencies in PD are comparable to controls’. Hence, target displacements occurred at equal times across groups. Target jump size affected conscious awareness, confirmed in an independent target displacement judgment task. Small jumps were subliminal, but large target displacements were consciously perceived. Contrary to the previous result, PD patients performed online motor corrections normally and automatically, irrespective of conscious perception. Patients evidenced equivalent movement durations for jump and stay trials, and trajectories for patients and controls were identical, irrespective of conscious perception. Dopaminergic therapy had no effect on performance. In summary, online motor control is intact in PD, unaffected by conscious perceptual awareness. The basal ganglia are not implicated in online corrective responses. PMID:29085900

Nonconscious semantic processing of emotional words modulates conscious access

PubMed Central

Gaillard, Raphaël; Del Cul, Antoine; Naccache, Lionel; Vinckier, Fabien; Cohen, Laurent; Dehaene, Stanislas

2006-01-01

Whether masked words can be processed at a semantic level remains a controversial issue in cognitive psychology. Although recent behavioral studies have demonstrated masked semantic priming for number words, attempts to generalize this finding to other categories of words have failed. Here, as an alternative to subliminal priming, we introduce a sensitive behavioral method to detect nonconscious semantic processing of words. The logic of this method consists of presenting words close to the threshold for conscious perception and examining whether their semantic content modulates performance in objective and subjective tasks. Our results disclose two independent sources of modulation of the threshold for access to consciousness. First, prior conscious perception of words increases the detection rate of the same words when they are subsequently presented with stronger masking. Second, the threshold for conscious access is lower for emotional words than for neutral ones, even for words that have not been previously consciously perceived, thus implying that written words can receive nonconscious semantic processing. PMID:16648261

Consciousness weaves our internal view of the outside world.

PubMed

Gur, Moshe

2016-01-01

Low-level consciousness is fundamental to our understanding of the world. Within the conscious field, the constantly changing external visual information is transformed into stable, object-based percepts. Remarkably, holistic objects are perceived while we are cognizant of all of the spatial details comprising the objects and of the relationship between individual elements. This parallel conscious association is unique to the brain. Conscious contributions to motor activity come after our understanding of the world has been established.

A TMS Study of the Ventral Projections from V1 with Implications for the Finding of Neural Correlates of Consciousness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Overgaard, Morten; Nielsen, Jorgen Feldbaek; Fuglsang-Frederiksen, Anders

2004-01-01

The study of subliminal perception in normal and brain lesioned subjects has long been of interest to scholars studying the neural mechanisms behind conscious vision. Using brief durations and a developed methodology of introspective reporting, we present an experiment with visual stimuli that gives rise to little or no subliminal perception under…

Consciousness wanted, attention found: Reasons for the advantage of the left visual field in identifying T2 among rapidly presented series.

PubMed

Verleger, Rolf; Śmigasiewicz, Kamila

2015-09-01

Everyday experience suggests that people are equally aware of events in both hemi-fields. However, when two streams of stimuli are rapidly presented left and right containing two targets, the second target is better identified in the left than in the right visual field. This might be considered evidence for a right-hemisphere advantage in generating conscious percepts. However, this putative asymmetry of conscious perception cannot be measured independently of participants' access to their conscious percepts, and there is actually evidence from split-brain patients for the reverse, left-hemisphere advantage in having access to conscious percepts. Several other topics were studied in search of the responsible mechanism, among others: Mutual inhibition of hemispheres, cooperation of hemispheres in perceiving midline stimuli, and asymmetries in processing various perceptual inputs. Directing attention by salient cues turned out to be one of the few mechanisms capable of modifying the left visual-field advantage in this paradigm. Thus, this left visual-field advantage is best explained by the notion of a right-hemisphere advantage in directing attention to salient events. Dovetailing with the pathological asymmetries of attention after right-hemisphere lesions and with asymmetries of brain activation when healthy participants shift their attention, the present results extend that body of evidence by demonstrating unusually large and reliable behavioral asymmetries for attention-directing processes in healthy participants. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Afference copy as a quantitative neurophysiological model for consciousness.

PubMed

Cornelis, Hugo; Coop, Allan D

2014-06-01

Consciousness is a topic of considerable human curiosity with a long history of philosophical analysis and debate. We consider there is nothing particularly complicated about consciousness when viewed as a necessary process of the vertebrate nervous system. Here, we propose a physiological "explanatory gap" is created during each present moment by the temporal requirements of neuronal activity. The gap extends from the time exteroceptive and proprioceptive stimuli activate the nervous system until they emerge into consciousness. During this "moment", it is impossible for an organism to have any conscious knowledge of the ongoing evolution of its environment. In our schematic model, a mechanism of "afference copy" is employed to bridge the explanatory gap with consciously experienced percepts. These percepts are fabricated from the conjunction of the cumulative memory of previous relevant experience and the given stimuli. They are structured to provide the best possible prediction of the expected content of subjective conscious experience likely to occur during the period of the gap. The model is based on the proposition that the neural circuitry necessary to support consciousness is a product of sub/preconscious reflexive learning and recall processes. Based on a review of various psychological and neurophysiological findings, we develop a framework which contextualizes the model and briefly discuss further implications.

Does perceptual learning require consciousness or attention?

PubMed

Meuwese, Julia D I; Post, Ruben A G; Scholte, H Steven; Lamme, Victor A F

2013-10-01

It has been proposed that visual attention and consciousness are separate [Koch, C., & Tsuchiya, N. Attention and consciousness: Two distinct brain processes. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 16-22, 2007] and possibly even orthogonal processes [Lamme, V. A. F. Why visual attention and awareness are different. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 12-18, 2003]. Attention and consciousness converge when conscious visual percepts are attended and hence become available for conscious report. In such a view, a lack of reportability can have two causes: the absence of attention or the absence of a conscious percept. This raises an important question in the field of perceptual learning. It is known that learning can occur in the absence of reportability [Gutnisky, D. A., Hansen, B. J., Iliescu, B. F., & Dragoi, V. Attention alters visual plasticity during exposure-based learning. Current Biology, 19, 555-560, 2009; Seitz, A. R., Kim, D., & Watanabe, T. Rewards evoke learning of unconsciously processed visual stimuli in adult humans. Neuron, 61, 700-707, 2009; Seitz, A. R., & Watanabe, T. Is subliminal learning really passive? Nature, 422, 36, 2003; Watanabe, T., Náñez, J. E., & Sasaki, Y. Perceptual learning without perception. Nature, 413, 844-848, 2001], but it is unclear which of the two ingredients-consciousness or attention-is not necessary for learning. We presented textured figure-ground stimuli and manipulated reportability either by masking (which only interferes with consciousness) or with an inattention paradigm (which only interferes with attention). During the second session (24 hr later), learning was assessed neurally and behaviorally, via differences in figure-ground ERPs and via a detection task. Behavioral and neural learning effects were found for stimuli presented in the inattention paradigm and not for masked stimuli. Interestingly, the behavioral learning effect only became apparent when performance feedback was given on the task to measure learning, suggesting that the memory trace that is formed during inattention is latent until accessed. The results suggest that learning requires consciousness, and not attention, and further strengthen the idea that consciousness is separate from attention.

Are neural correlates of visual consciousness retinotopic?

PubMed

ffytche, Dominic H; Pins, Delphine

2003-11-14

Some visual neurons code what we see, their defining characteristic being a response profile which mirrors conscious percepts rather than veridical sensory attributes. One issue yet to be resolved is whether, within a given cortical area, conscious visual perception relates to diffuse activity across the entire population of such cells or focal activity within the sub-population mapping the location of the perceived stimulus. Here we investigate the issue in the human brain with fMRI, using a threshold stimulation technique to dissociate perceptual from non-perceptual activity. Our results point to a retinotopic organisation of perceptual activity in early visual areas, with independent perceptual activations for different regions of visual space.

Perceiving a story outside of conscious awareness: When we infer narrative attributes from subliminal sequential stimuli.

PubMed

Kawakami, Naoaki; Yoshida, Fujio

2015-05-01

Perceiving a story behind successive movements plays an important role in our lives. From a general perspective, such higher mental activity would seem to depend on conscious processes. Using a subliminal priming paradigm, we demonstrated that such story perception occurs without conscious awareness. In the experiments, participants were subliminally presented with sequential pictures that represented a story in which one geometrical figure was chased by the other figure, and in which one fictitious character defeated the other character in a tug-of-war. Although the participants could not report having seen the pictures, their automatic mental associations (i.e., associations that are activated unintentionally, difficult to control, and not necessarily endorsed at a conscious level) were shifted to line up with the story. The results suggest that story perception operates outside of conscious awareness. Implications for research on the unconscious were also briefly discussed. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Subliminal stimuli modulate somatosensory perception rhythmically and provide evidence for discrete perception.

PubMed

Baumgarten, Thomas J; Königs, Sara; Schnitzler, Alfons; Lange, Joachim

2017-03-09

Despite being experienced as continuous, there is an ongoing debate if perception is an intrinsically discrete process, with incoming sensory information treated as a succession of single perceptual cycles. Here, we provide causal evidence that somatosensory perception is composed of discrete perceptual cycles. We used in humans an electrotactile temporal discrimination task preceded by a subliminal (i.e., below perceptual threshold) stimulus. Although not consciously perceived, subliminal stimuli are known to elicit neuronal activity in early sensory areas and modulate the phase of ongoing neuronal oscillations. We hypothesized that the subliminal stimulus indirectly, but systematically modulates the ongoing oscillatory phase in S1, thereby rhythmically shaping perception. The present results confirm that, without being consciously perceived, the subliminal stimulus critically influenced perception in the discrimination task. Importantly, perception was modulated rhythmically, in cycles corresponding to the beta-band (13-18 Hz). This can be compellingly explained by a model of discrete perceptual cycles.

Insights on consciousness from taste memory research.

PubMed

Gallo, Milagros

2016-01-01

Taste research in rodents supports the relevance of memory in order to determine the content of consciousness by modifying both taste perception and later action. Associated with this issue is the fact that taste and visual modalities share anatomical circuits traditionally related to conscious memory. This challenges the view of taste memory as a type of non-declarative unconscious memory.

The perception of visual emotion: comparing different measures of awareness.

PubMed

Szczepanowski, Remigiusz; Traczyk, Jakub; Wierzchoń, Michał; Cleeremans, Axel

2013-03-01

Here, we explore the sensitivity of different awareness scales in revealing conscious reports on visual emotion perception. Participants were exposed to a backward masking task involving fearful faces and asked to rate their conscious awareness in perceiving emotion in facial expression using three different subjective measures: confidence ratings (CRs), with the conventional taxonomy of certainty, the perceptual awareness scale (PAS), through which participants categorize "raw" visual experience, and post-decision wagering (PDW), which involves economic categorization. Our results show that the CR measure was the most exhaustive and the most graded. In contrast, the PAS and PDW measures suggested instead that consciousness of emotional stimuli is dichotomous. Possible explanations of the inconsistency were discussed. Finally, our results also indicate that PDW biases awareness ratings by enhancing first-order accuracy of emotion perception. This effect was possibly a result of higher motivation induced by monetary incentives. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cortical activity is more stable when sensory stimuli are consciously perceived

PubMed Central

Schurger, Aaron; Sarigiannidis, Ioannis; Naccache, Lionel; Sitt, Jacobo D.; Dehaene, Stanislas

2015-01-01

According to recent evidence, stimulus-tuned neurons in the cerebral cortex exhibit reduced variability in firing rate across trials, after the onset of a stimulus. However, in order for a reduction in variability to be directly relevant to perception and behavior, it must be realized within trial—the pattern of activity must be relatively stable. Stability is characteristic of decision states in recurrent attractor networks, and its possible relevance to conscious perception has been suggested by theorists. However, it is difficult to measure on the within-trial time scales and broadly distributed spatial scales relevant to perception. We recorded simultaneous magneto- and electroencephalography (MEG and EEG) data while subjects observed threshold-level visual stimuli. Pattern-similarity analyses applied to the data from MEG gradiometers uncovered a pronounced decrease in variability across trials after stimulus onset, consistent with previous single-unit data. This was followed by a significant divergence in variability depending upon subjective report (seen/unseen), with seen trials exhibiting less variability. Applying the same analysis across time, within trial, we found that the latter effect coincided in time with a difference in the stability of the pattern of activity. Stability alone could be used to classify data from individual trials as “seen” or “unseen.” The same metric applied to EEG data from patients with disorders of consciousness exposed to auditory stimuli diverged parametrically according to clinically diagnosed level of consciousness. Differences in signal strength could not account for these results. Conscious perception may involve the transient stabilization of distributed cortical networks, corresponding to a global brain-scale decision. PMID:25847997

Visual consciousness and bodily self-consciousness.

PubMed

Faivre, Nathan; Salomon, Roy; Blanke, Olaf

2015-02-01

In recent years, consciousness has become a central topic in cognitive neuroscience. This review focuses on the relation between bodily self-consciousness - the feeling of being a subject in a body - and visual consciousness - the subjective experience associated with the perception of visual signals. Findings from clinical and experimental work have shown that bodily self-consciousness depends on specific brain networks and is related to the integration of signals from multiple sensory modalities including vision. In addition, recent experiments have shown that visual consciousness is shaped by the body, including vestibular, tactile, proprioceptive, and motor signals. Several lines of evidence suggest reciprocal relationships between vision and bodily signals, indicating that a comprehensive understanding of visual and bodily self-consciousness requires studying them in unison.

Evidence of conscious and subconscious olfactory information processing during word encoding: a magnetoencephalographic (MEG) study.

PubMed

Walla, Peter; Hufnagl, Bernd; Lehrner, Johann; Mayer, Dagmar; Lindinger, Gerald; Deecke, Lüder; Lang, Wilfried

2002-11-01

The present study was meant to distinguish between unconscious and conscious olfactory information processing and to investigate the influence of olfaction on word information processing. Magnetic field changes were recorded in healthy young participants during deep encoding of visually presented words whereby some of the words were randomly associated with an odor. All recorded data were then split into two groups. One group consisted of participants who did not consciously perceive the odor during the whole experiment whereas the other group did report continuous conscious odor perception. The magnetic field changes related to the condition 'words without odor' were subtracted from the magnetic field changes related to the condition 'words with odor' for both groups. First, an odor-induced effect occurred between about 200 and 500 ms after stimulus onset which was similar in both groups. It is interpreted to reflect an activity reduction during word encoding related to the additional olfactory stimulation. Second, a later effect occurred between about 600 and 900 ms after stimulus onset which differed between the two groups. This effect was due to higher brain activity related to the additional olfactory stimulation. It was more pronounced in the group consisting of participants who consciously perceived the odor during the whole experiment as compared to the other group. These results are interpreted as evidence that the later effect is related to conscious odor perception whereas the earlier effect reflects unconscious olfactory information processing. Furthermore, our study provides evidence that only the conscious perception of an odor which is simultaneously presented to the visual presentation of a word reduces its chance to be subsequently recognized.

A mathematical model of embodied consciousness.

PubMed

Rudrauf, David; Bennequin, Daniel; Granic, Isabela; Landini, Gregory; Friston, Karl; Williford, Kenneth

2017-09-07

We introduce a mathematical model of embodied consciousness, the Projective Consciousness Model (PCM), which is based on the hypothesis that the spatial field of consciousness (FoC) is structured by a projective geometry and under the control of a process of active inference. The FoC in the PCM combines multisensory evidence with prior beliefs in memory and frames them by selecting points of view and perspectives according to preferences. The choice of projective frames governs how expectations are transformed by consciousness. Violations of expectation are encoded as free energy. Free energy minimization drives perspective taking, and controls the switch between perception, imagination and action. In the PCM, consciousness functions as an algorithm for the maximization of resilience, using projective perspective taking and imagination in order to escape local minima of free energy. The PCM can account for a variety of psychological phenomena: the characteristic spatial phenomenology of subjective experience, the distinctions and integral relationships between perception, imagination and action, the role of affective processes in intentionality, but also perceptual phenomena such as the dynamics of bistable figures and body swap illusions in virtual reality. It relates phenomenology to function, showing the computational advantages of consciousness. It suggests that changes of brain states from unconscious to conscious reflect the action of projective transformations and suggests specific neurophenomenological hypotheses about the brain, guidelines for designing artificial systems, and formal principles for psychology. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Psychic reality and the nature of consciousness.

PubMed

Fonagy, Peter; Allison, Elizabeth

2016-02-01

In this paper we make the case for a psychoanalytically informed reconsideration of the phenomena of consciousness. Classically, following Freud, who viewed consciousness as merely a reflection or perception of unconscious mental activity, psychoanalysts have tended to regard a focus on conscious experience as potentially reductionistic and at risk of overlooking the mind's deeper structures. We describe the case of Mr K, a patient who experienced disturbances of consciousness that forced us to consider the possibility that the capacity to experience ourselves as conscious, intentional agents in a coherent world of objects is not merely a modality of perception but rather a maturational and developmental achievement that to some degree depends on adequate experiences of caregiving and is vital in ensuring the possibility of human communication. As such, it is a capacity that is vulnerable to experiences of neglect and maltreatment. We suggest that as well as compromising the capacity to think about one's own and other people's feelings, such experiences may have the further adverse consequence of leading the individual to experience and risk becoming conscious of certain dangerously maladaptive, destructive states of mind which in normal development remain inaccessible to conscious experience. Phenomenologically, such states of mind are experienced as fragmentation and disturbances of consciousness. We discuss the clinical implications of these reflections and the limitations they place on psychoanalytic work in the context of their impact on the work with Mr K. Copyright © 2015 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

Seeing and identifying with a virtual body decreases pain perception.

PubMed

Hänsel, Alexander; Lenggenhager, Bigna; von Känel, Roland; Curatolo, Michele; Blanke, Olaf

2011-09-01

Pain and the conscious mind (or the self) are experienced in our body. Both are intimately linked to the subjective quality of conscious experience. Here, we used virtual reality technology and visuo-tactile conflicts in healthy subjects to test whether experimentally induced changes of bodily self-consciousness (self-location; self-identification) lead to changes in pain perception. We found that visuo-tactile stroking of a virtual body but not of a control object led to increased pressure pain thresholds and self-location. This increase was not modulated by the synchrony of stroking as predicted based on earlier work. This differed for self-identification where we found as predicted that synchrony of stroking increased self-identification with the virtual body (but not a control object), and positively correlated with an increase in pain thresholds. We discuss the functional mechanisms of self-identification, self-location, and the visual perception of human bodies with respect to pain perception. Copyright © 2011 European Federation of International Association for the Study of Pain Chapters. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Attention, Awareness, and the Perception of Auditory Scenes

PubMed Central

Snyder, Joel S.; Gregg, Melissa K.; Weintraub, David M.; Alain, Claude

2011-01-01

Auditory perception and cognition entails both low-level and high-level processes, which are likely to interact with each other to create our rich conscious experience of soundscapes. Recent research that we review has revealed numerous influences of high-level factors, such as attention, intention, and prior experience, on conscious auditory perception. And recently, studies have shown that auditory scene analysis tasks can exhibit multistability in a manner very similar to ambiguous visual stimuli, presenting a unique opportunity to study neural correlates of auditory awareness and the extent to which mechanisms of perception are shared across sensory modalities. Research has also led to a growing number of techniques through which auditory perception can be manipulated and even completely suppressed. Such findings have important consequences for our understanding of the mechanisms of perception and also should allow scientists to precisely distinguish the influences of different higher-level influences. PMID:22347201

Are the Neural Correlates of Consciousness in the Front or in the Back of the Cerebral Cortex? Clinical and Neuroimaging Evidence

PubMed Central

Massimini, Marcello; Postle, Bradley R.; Koch, Christof

2017-01-01

The role of the frontal cortex in consciousness remains a matter of debate. In this Perspective, we will critically review the clinical and neuroimaging evidence for the involvement of the front versus the back of the cortex in specifying conscious contents and discuss promising research avenues. Dual Perspectives Companion Paper: Should a Few Null Findings Falsify Prefrontal Theories of Conscious Perception?, by Brian Odegaard, Robert T. Knight, and Hakwan Lau PMID:28978697

Gamma band activity and the P3 reflect post-perceptual processes, not visual awareness

PubMed Central

Pitts, Michael A.; Padwal, Jennifer; Fennelly, Daniel; Martínez, Antígona; Hillyard, Steven A.

2014-01-01

A primary goal in cognitive neuroscience is to identify neural correlates of conscious perception (NCC). By contrasting conditions in which subjects are aware versus unaware of identical visual stimuli, a number of candidate NCCs have emerged, among them induced gamma band activity in the EEG and the P3 event-related potential. In most previous studies, however, the critical stimuli were always directly relevant to the subjects’ task, such that aware versus unaware contrasts may well have included differences in post-perceptual processing in addition to differences in conscious perception per se. Here, in a series of EEG experiments, visual awareness and task relevance were manipulated independently. Induced gamma activity and the P3 were absent for task-irrelevant stimuli regardless of whether subjects were aware of such stimuli. For task-relevant stimuli, gamma and the P3 were robust and dissociable, indicating that each reflects distinct post-perceptual processes necessary for carrying-out the task but not for consciously perceiving the stimuli. Overall, this pattern of results challenges a number of previous proposals linking gamma band activity and the P3 to conscious perception. PMID:25063731

Natural Evolution and Human Consciousness

PubMed Central

Holmgren, Jan

2014-01-01

A visual conscious experience is my empirical basis. All that we know comes to us through conscious experiences. Thanks to natural evolution, we have nearly direct perception, and can largely trust the information we attain. There is full integration, with no gaps, of organisms in the continuous world. Human conscious experiences, on the other hand, are discrete. Consciousness has certain limits for its resolution. This is illustrated by the so-called light-cone, with consequences for foundations in physics. Traditional universals are replaced by feels and distributions. Conscious experiences can be ordered within a framework of conceptual spaces. Triple Aspect Monism (TAM) can represent the dynamics of conscious systems. However, to fully represent the creative power of human consciousness, an all-inclusive view is suggested: Multi Aspect Monism (MAM). PMID:24891802

Objectification in Virtual Romantic Contexts: Perceived Discrepancies between Self and Partner Ideals Differentially affect Body Consciousness in Women and Men

PubMed Central

Overstreet, Nicole M.; Quinn, Diane M.; Marsh, Kerry L.

2015-01-01

The current study examined whether exposure to sexually objectifying images in a potential romantic partner's virtual apartment affects discrepancies between people's perception of their own appearance (i.e., self-perceptions) and their perception of the body ideal that is considered desirable to a romantic partner (i.e., partner-ideals). Participants were 114 heterosexual undergraduate students (57 women and 57 men) from a northeastern U.S. university. The study used a 2 (Participant Gender) x 2 (Virtual Environment: Sexualized vs. Non-Sexualized) between-subjects design. We predicted that women exposed to sexually objectifying images in a virtual environment would report greater discrepancies between their self-perceptions and partner-ideals than men, which in turn would contribute to women's body consciousness. Findings support this hypothesis and show that perceived discrepancies account for the relationship between exposure to sexually objectifying images and body consciousness for women but not men. We also found gender asymmetries in objectification responses when each component of perceived discrepancies, i.e., self-perceptions versus perceptions of a romantic partner's body ideal, were examined separately. For men, exposure to muscular sexualized images was significantly associated with their self-perceptions but not their perceptions of the body size that is considered desirable to a romantic partner. For women, exposure to thin sexualized images was significantly associated with their perceptions that a romantic partner preferred a woman with a smaller body size. However, exposure to these images did not affect women's self-perceptions. Implications for gender asymmetries in objectification responses and perceived discrepancies that include a romantic partner's perceptions are discussed. PMID:26594085

Colour Perception in Ancient World

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Nesterov, D. I.; Fedorova, M. Yu

2017-11-01

How did the human thought form the surrounding color information into the persistent semantic images of a mythological, pseudoscientific and religious nature? The concepts associated with colour perception are suggested. The existence of colour environment does not depend on the human consciousness. The colour culture formation is directly related to the level of the human consciousness development and the possibility to influence the worldview and culture. The colour perception of a person goes through the stages similar to the development of colour vision in a child. Like any development, the colour consciousness has undergone stages of growth and decline, evolution and stagnation. The way of life and difficult conditions for existence made their own adjustments to the development of the human perception of the surrounding world. Wars have been both a powerful engine of progress in all spheres of life and a great destructive force demolishing the already created and preserved heritage. The surrounding world has always been interesting for humans, evoked images and fantasies in the consciousness of ancient people. Unusual and inexplicable natural phenomena spawned numerous legends and myths which was reflected in the ancient art and architecture and, accordingly, in a certain manifestation of colour in the human society. The colour perception of the ancient man, his pragmatic, utilitarian attitude to colour is considered as well as the influence of dependence on external conditions of existence and their reflection in the colour culture of antiquity. “Natural Science” conducts research in the field of the colour nature and their authorial interpretation of the Hellenic period. Several authorial concepts of the ancient world have been considered.

Tracking without perceiving: a dissociation between eye movements and motion perception.

PubMed

Spering, Miriam; Pomplun, Marc; Carrasco, Marisa

2011-02-01

Can people react to objects in their visual field that they do not consciously perceive? We investigated how visual perception and motor action respond to moving objects whose visibility is reduced, and we found a dissociation between motion processing for perception and for action. We compared motion perception and eye movements evoked by two orthogonally drifting gratings, each presented separately to a different eye. The strength of each monocular grating was manipulated by inducing adaptation to one grating prior to the presentation of both gratings. Reflexive eye movements tracked the vector average of both gratings (pattern motion) even though perceptual responses followed one motion direction exclusively (component motion). Observers almost never perceived pattern motion. This dissociation implies the existence of visual-motion signals that guide eye movements in the absence of a corresponding conscious percept.

Tracking Without Perceiving: A Dissociation Between Eye Movements and Motion Perception

PubMed Central

Spering, Miriam; Pomplun, Marc; Carrasco, Marisa

2011-01-01

Can people react to objects in their visual field that they do not consciously perceive? We investigated how visual perception and motor action respond to moving objects whose visibility is reduced, and we found a dissociation between motion processing for perception and for action. We compared motion perception and eye movements evoked by two orthogonally drifting gratings, each presented separately to a different eye. The strength of each monocular grating was manipulated by inducing adaptation to one grating prior to the presentation of both gratings. Reflexive eye movements tracked the vector average of both gratings (pattern motion) even though perceptual responses followed one motion direction exclusively (component motion). Observers almost never perceived pattern motion. This dissociation implies the existence of visual-motion signals that guide eye movements in the absence of a corresponding conscious percept. PMID:21189353

Different Signal Enhancement Pathways of Attention and Consciousness Underlie Perception in Humans.

PubMed

van Boxtel, Jeroen J A

2017-06-14

It is not yet known whether attention and consciousness operate through similar or largely different mechanisms. Visual processing mechanisms are routinely characterized by measuring contrast response functions (CRFs). In this report, behavioral CRFs were obtained in humans (both males and females) by measuring afterimage durations over the entire range of inducer stimulus contrasts to reveal visual mechanisms behind attention and consciousness. Deviations relative to the standard CRF, i.e., gain functions, describe the strength of signal enhancement, which were assessed for both changes due to attentional task and conscious perception. It was found that attention displayed a response-gain function, whereas consciousness displayed a contrast-gain function. Through model comparisons, which only included contrast-gain modulations, both contrast-gain and response-gain effects can be explained with a two-level normalization model, in which consciousness affects only the first level and attention affects only the second level. These results demonstrate that attention and consciousness can effectively show different gain functions because they operate through different signal enhancement mechanisms. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The relationship between attention and consciousness is still debated. Mapping contrast response functions (CRFs) has allowed (neuro)scientists to gain important insights into the mechanistic underpinnings of visual processing. Here, the influence of both attention and consciousness on these functions were measured and they displayed a strong dissociation. First, attention lowered CRFs, whereas consciousness raised them. Second, attention manifests itself as a response-gain function, whereas consciousness manifests itself as a contrast-gain function. Extensive model comparisons show that these results are best explained in a two-level normalization model in which consciousness affects only the first level, whereas attention affects only the second level. These findings show dissociations between both the computational mechanisms behind attention and consciousness and the perceptual consequences that they induce. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/375912-11$15.00/0.

Conscious visual memory with minimal attention.

PubMed

Pinto, Yair; Vandenbroucke, Annelinde R; Otten, Marte; Sligte, Ilja G; Seth, Anil K; Lamme, Victor A F

2017-02-01

Is conscious visual perception limited to the locations that a person attends? The remarkable phenomenon of change blindness, which shows that people miss nearly all unattended changes in a visual scene, suggests the answer is yes. However, change blindness is found after visual interference (a mask or a new scene), so that subjects have to rely on working memory (WM), which has limited capacity, to detect the change. Before such interference, however, a much larger capacity store, called fragile memory (FM), which is easily overwritten by newly presented visual information, is present. Whether these different stores depend equally on spatial attention is central to the debate on the role of attention in conscious vision. In 2 experiments, we found that minimizing spatial attention almost entirely erases visual WM, as expected. Critically, FM remains largely intact. Moreover, minimally attended FM responses yield accurate metacognition, suggesting that conscious memory persists with limited spatial attention. Together, our findings help resolve the fundamental issue of how attention affects perception: Both visual consciousness and memory can be supported by only minimal attention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Implications on visual apperception: energy, duration, structure and synchronization.

PubMed

Bókkon, I; Vimal, Ram Lakhan Pandey

2010-07-01

Although primary visual cortex (V1 or striate) activity per se is not sufficient for visual apperception (normal conscious visual experiences and conscious functions such as detection, discrimination, and recognition), the same is also true for extrastriate visual areas (such as V2, V3, V4/V8/VO, V5/M5/MST, IT, and GF). In the lack of V1 area, visual signals can still reach several extrastriate parts but appear incapable of generating normal conscious visual experiences. It is scarcely emphasized in the scientific literature that conscious perceptions and representations must have also essential energetic conditions. These energetic conditions are achieved by spatiotemporal networks of dynamic mitochondrial distributions inside neurons. However, the highest density of neurons in neocortex (number of neurons per degree of visual angle) devoted to representing the visual field is found in retinotopic V1. It means that the highest mitochondrial (energetic) activity can be achieved in mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase-rich V1 areas. Thus, V1 bear the highest energy allocation for visual representation. In addition, the conscious perceptions also demand structural conditions, presence of adequate duration of information representation, and synchronized neural processes and/or 'interactive hierarchical structuralism.' For visual apperception, various visual areas are involved depending on context such as stimulus characteristics such as color, form/shape, motion, and other features. Here, we focus primarily on V1 where specific mitochondrial-rich retinotopic structures are found; we will concisely discuss V2 where smaller riches of these structures are found. We also point out that residual brain states are not fully reflected in active neural patterns after visual perception. Namely, after visual perception, subliminal residual states are not being reflected in passive neural recording techniques, but require active stimulation to be revealed.

Subliminal Speech Perception and Auditory Streaming

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dupoux, Emmanuel; de Gardelle, Vincent; Kouider, Sid

2008-01-01

Current theories of consciousness assume a qualitative dissociation between conscious and unconscious processing: while subliminal stimuli only elicit a transient activity, supraliminal stimuli have long-lasting influences. Nevertheless, the existence of this qualitative distinction remains controversial, as past studies confounded awareness and…

Subliminal stimuli modulate somatosensory perception rhythmically and provide evidence for discrete perception

PubMed Central

Baumgarten, Thomas J.; Königs, Sara; Schnitzler, Alfons; Lange, Joachim

2017-01-01

Despite being experienced as continuous, there is an ongoing debate if perception is an intrinsically discrete process, with incoming sensory information treated as a succession of single perceptual cycles. Here, we provide causal evidence that somatosensory perception is composed of discrete perceptual cycles. We used in humans an electrotactile temporal discrimination task preceded by a subliminal (i.e., below perceptual threshold) stimulus. Although not consciously perceived, subliminal stimuli are known to elicit neuronal activity in early sensory areas and modulate the phase of ongoing neuronal oscillations. We hypothesized that the subliminal stimulus indirectly, but systematically modulates the ongoing oscillatory phase in S1, thereby rhythmically shaping perception. The present results confirm that, without being consciously perceived, the subliminal stimulus critically influenced perception in the discrimination task. Importantly, perception was modulated rhythmically, in cycles corresponding to the beta-band (13–18 Hz). This can be compellingly explained by a model of discrete perceptual cycles. PMID:28276493

Job satisfaction in relation to energy resource consciousness and perceptions of energy utilization in selected Illinois manufacturing firms

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Haynes, T.S.

1986-01-01

This study was developed through a synthesis and review of literature and research related to the current status of job satisfaction, energy resources, and perceptions of how energy is utilized in the manufacturing work environment. This synthesis and review revolved around several proven contributing factors of job satisfaction, such as age, education, and challenge from work itself. Quality of work life programs and their components are discussed in relation to their impact on job satisfaction. The nature of energy resource utilization is traced back through history with an emphasis on the limitations of current resources and options for the future.more » The review highlights the current debate over what should be the future path of energy resource development. The concept of satisfaction of human needs is reviewed and related to job satisfaction and energy resources. The purpose of this research study was to contribute to the understanding of how perceptions of energy resources relate to job satisfaction. Results of the study indicated that there were no significant differences between an individual's energy resource consciousness and perceptions of energy utilization in the work place, energy resource consciousness and job satisfaction, and job satisfaction and perceptions of energy utilization in the workplace.« less

[Self-consciousness, consciousness of the other and dementias].

PubMed

Gil, Roger

2007-06-01

Studies of self-consciousness in dementia concern essentially anosognosia or the loss of insight. However, Self-consciousness is multifaceted: it includes awareness of the body, perceptions, one's own history, identity, and one's own projects. Self-consciousness is linked to consciousness of others i.e. to social cognition supported by identification of others, but also by comprehension of facial expression of emotions, comprehension and expression of emotional prosody, pragmatic abilities, ability to infer other's people's mental states, thoughts, and feelings (theory of mind and empathy), knowledge of social norms and rules, social reasoning. The subtypes of dementias (and namely Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia) affect heterogeneously the different aspects of the self-and other-consciousness. Further studies are needed for a better knowledge of the complex relationship between Self-consciousness, social cognition, decision making and neuropsychiatric symptoms and behavioral disturbances occurring in demented patients.

Subconscious Visual Cues during Movement Execution Allow Correct Online Choice Reactions

PubMed Central

Leukel, Christian; Lundbye-Jensen, Jesper; Christensen, Mark Schram; Gollhofer, Albert; Nielsen, Jens Bo; Taube, Wolfgang

2012-01-01

Part of the sensory information is processed by our central nervous system without conscious perception. Subconscious processing has been shown to be capable of triggering motor reactions. In the present study, we asked the question whether visual information, which is not consciously perceived, could influence decision-making in a choice reaction task. Ten healthy subjects (28±5 years) executed two different experimental protocols. In the Motor reaction protocol, a visual target cue was shown on a computer screen. Depending on the displayed cue, subjects had to either complete a reaching movement (go-condition) or had to abort the movement (stop-condition). The cue was presented with different display durations (20–160 ms). In the second Verbalization protocol, subjects verbalized what they experienced on the screen. Again, the cue was presented with different display durations. This second protocol tested for conscious perception of the visual cue. The results of this study show that subjects achieved significantly more correct responses in the Motor reaction protocol than in the Verbalization protocol. This difference was only observed at the very short display durations of the visual cue. Since correct responses in the Verbalization protocol required conscious perception of the visual information, our findings imply that the subjects performed correct motor responses to visual cues, which they were not conscious about. It is therefore concluded that humans may reach decisions based on subconscious visual information in a choice reaction task. PMID:23049749

Sweet taste enhancement through pulsatile stimulation depends on pulsation period not on conscious pulse perception.

PubMed

Burseg, Kerstin Martha Mensien; Brattinga, Celine; de Kok, Petrus Maria Theresia; Bult, Johannes Hendrikus Franciscus

2010-06-16

When aqueous NaCl solutions are tasted at continuously alternating concentrations, overall saltiness ratings exceed those observed for solutions with the same averaged, but non-alternating concentrations. In the present study, this effect is replicated for alternating aqueous sucrose solutions. We tested the hypothesis that enhancement depends on the conscious perception of intensity contrasts. High sucrose pulses were continuously alternated with low sucrose intervals at pulsation periods between 1.5s and 20s. Tastant pulsation enhanced sweetness intensity and this enhancement varied between 8 and 14%, peaking for periods from 4.5s to 6s (Study 1). This range coincided with the average pulsation period at which perceived taste pulses blended into a continuous stimulus, i.e. the taste fusion period (TFP). When comparing intensity ratings of sucrose solutions at individualized pulse periods of 0.5, 1.0 and 2.0 times TFP to ratings for continuous sucrose solutions of the same net concentration, pulsatile stimuli were perceived as significantly sweeter (p<0.01; Study 2). However, sweetness intensity enhancement was the same for all pulsation periods. It was shown that sweet taste enhancement peaks at pulsation periods ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 TFP and that the level of conscious pulsation perception does not affect taste enhancement. The results suggest the introduction of enhancement effects at pre-conscious stages of gustatory processing. Further mechanisms that may account for such pre-conscious effects are discussed. (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rhythms of Consciousness: Binocular Rivalry Reveals Large-Scale Oscillatory Network Dynamics Mediating Visual Perception

PubMed Central

Doesburg, Sam M.; Green, Jessica J.; McDonald, John J.; Ward, Lawrence M.

2009-01-01

Consciousness has been proposed to emerge from functionally integrated large-scale ensembles of gamma-synchronous neural populations that form and dissolve at a frequency in the theta band. We propose that discrete moments of perceptual experience are implemented by transient gamma-band synchronization of relevant cortical regions, and that disintegration and reintegration of these assemblies is time-locked to ongoing theta oscillations. In support of this hypothesis we provide evidence that (1) perceptual switching during binocular rivalry is time-locked to gamma-band synchronizations which recur at a theta rate, indicating that the onset of new conscious percepts coincides with the emergence of a new gamma-synchronous assembly that is locked to an ongoing theta rhythm; (2) localization of the generators of these gamma rhythms reveals recurrent prefrontal and parietal sources; (3) theta modulation of gamma-band synchronization is observed between and within the activated brain regions. These results suggest that ongoing theta-modulated-gamma mechanisms periodically reintegrate a large-scale prefrontal-parietal network critical for perceptual experience. Moreover, activation and network inclusion of inferior temporal cortex and motor cortex uniquely occurs on the cycle immediately preceding responses signaling perceptual switching. This suggests that the essential prefrontal-parietal oscillatory network is expanded to include additional cortical regions relevant to tasks and perceptions furnishing consciousness at that moment, in this case image processing and response initiation, and that these activations occur within a time frame consistent with the notion that conscious processes directly affect behaviour. PMID:19582165

Perception of ensemble statistics requires attention.

PubMed

Jackson-Nielsen, Molly; Cohen, Michael A; Pitts, Michael A

2017-02-01

To overcome inherent limitations in perceptual bandwidth, many aspects of the visual world are represented as summary statistics (e.g., average size, orientation, or density of objects). Here, we investigated the relationship between summary (ensemble) statistics and visual attention. Recently, it was claimed that one ensemble statistic in particular, color diversity, can be perceived without focal attention. However, a broader debate exists over the attentional requirements of conscious perception, and it is possible that some form of attention is necessary for ensemble perception. To test this idea, we employed a modified inattentional blindness paradigm and found that multiple types of summary statistics (color and size) often go unnoticed without attention. In addition, we found attentional costs in dual-task situations, further implicating a role for attention in statistical perception. Overall, we conclude that while visual ensembles may be processed efficiently, some amount of attention is necessary for conscious perception of ensemble statistics. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Visual consciousness and intertrial feature priming.

PubMed

Peremen, Ziv; Hilo, Rinat; Lamy, Dominique

2013-04-01

Intertrial repetition priming plays a striking role in visual search. For instance, when searching for a target with a unique color, performance is substantially better when the specific color of the target repeats on successive trials (Maljkovic & Nakayama, 1994). Recent research has relied on objective measures of performance to show that priming improves the perceptual quality of the repeated target. Here, we examined the relation between priming and conscious perception of the target by adding a subjective measure of perception. We used backward masking to create liminal perception, that is, different levels of subjectively conscious perception of the target using exactly the same stimulus conditions. The displays in either probe trials (in which priming benefits are measured, experiment 1) or in prime trials (in which memory traces are laid down, experiment 2) were masked. The results showed that intertrial priming improves full access to awareness of the repeated target but only for targets that already achieved partial access to awareness. In addition, they show that full awareness of the target is necessary in both the prime and probe trials for intertrial priming effects to emerge. Implications for the role of implicit short-term memory in visual search are discussed.

Neuronal integration in visual cortex elevates face category tuning to conscious face perception

PubMed Central

Fahrenfort, Johannes J.; Snijders, Tineke M.; Heinen, Klaartje; van Gaal, Simon; Scholte, H. Steven; Lamme, Victor A. F.

2012-01-01

The human brain has the extraordinary capability to transform cluttered sensory input into distinct object representations. For example, it is able to rapidly and seemingly without effort detect object categories in complex natural scenes. Surprisingly, category tuning is not sufficient to achieve conscious recognition of objects. What neural process beyond category extraction might elevate neural representations to the level where objects are consciously perceived? Here we show that visible and invisible faces produce similar category-selective responses in the ventral visual cortex. The pattern of neural activity evoked by visible faces could be used to decode the presence of invisible faces and vice versa. However, only visible faces caused extensive response enhancements and changes in neural oscillatory synchronization, as well as increased functional connectivity between higher and lower visual areas. We conclude that conscious face perception is more tightly linked to neural processes of sustained information integration and binding than to processes accommodating face category tuning. PMID:23236162

Using ERPs for assessing the (sub) conscious perception of noise.

PubMed

Porbadnigk, Anne K; Antons, Jan-N; Blankertz, Benjamin; Treder, Matthias S; Schleicher, Robert; Moller, Sebastian; Curio, Gabriel

2010-01-01

In this paper, we investigate the use of event-related potentials (ERPs) as a quantitative measure for quality assessment of disturbed audio signals. For this purpose, we ran an EEG study (N=11) using an oddball paradigm, during which subjects were presented with the phoneme /a/, superimposed with varying degrees of signal-correlated noise. Based on this data set, we address the question to which degree the degradation of the auditory stimuli is reflected on a neural level, even if the disturbance is below the threshold of conscious perception. For those stimuli that are consciously recognized as being disturbed, we suggest the use of the amplitude and latency of the P300 component for assessing the level of disturbance. For disturbed stimuli for which the noise is not perceived consciously, we show for two subjects that a classifier based on shrinkage LDA can be applied successfully to single out stimuli, for which the noise was presumably processed subconsciously.

Split brain: divided perception but undivided consciousness.

PubMed

Pinto, Yair; Neville, David A; Otten, Marte; Corballis, Paul M; Lamme, Victor A F; de Haan, Edward H F; Foschi, Nicoletta; Fabri, Mara

2017-05-01

In extensive studies with two split-brain patients we replicate the standard finding that stimuli cannot be compared across visual half-fields, indicating that each hemisphere processes information independently of the other. Yet, crucially, we show that the canonical textbook findings that a split-brain patient can only respond to stimuli in the left visual half-field with the left hand, and to stimuli in the right visual half-field with the right hand and verbally, are not universally true. Across a wide variety of tasks, split-brain patients with a complete and radiologically confirmed transection of the corpus callosum showed full awareness of presence, and well above chance-level recognition of location, orientation and identity of stimuli throughout the entire visual field, irrespective of response type (left hand, right hand, or verbally). Crucially, we used confidence ratings to assess conscious awareness. This revealed that also on high confidence trials, indicative of conscious perception, response type did not affect performance. These findings suggest that severing the cortical connections between hemispheres splits visual perception, but does not create two independent conscious perceivers within one brain. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Conscious awareness is required for holistic face processing

PubMed Central

Axelrod, Vadim; Rees, Geraint

2014-01-01

Investigating the limits of unconscious processing is essential to understand the function of consciousness. Here, we explored whether holistic face processing, a mechanism believed to be important for face processing in general, can be accomplished unconsciously. Using a novel “eyes-face” stimulus we tested whether discrimination of pairs of eyes was influenced by the surrounding face context. While the eyes were fully visible, the faces that provided context could be rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression. Two experiments with three different sets of face stimuli and a subliminal learning procedure converged to show that invisible faces did not influence perception of visible eyes. In contrast, surrounding faces, when they were clearly visible, strongly influenced perception of the eyes. Thus, we conclude that conscious awareness might be a prerequisite for holistic face processing. PMID:24950500

Stigma consciousness: the psychological legacy of social stereotypes.

PubMed

Pinel, E C

1999-01-01

Whereas past researchers have treated targets of stereotypes as though they have uniform reactions to their stereotyped status (e.g., J. Crocker & B. Major, 1989; C. M. Steele & J. Aronson, 1995), it is proposed here that targets differ in the extent to which they expect to be stereotyped by others (i.e., stigma consciousness). Six studies, 5 of which validate the stigma-consciousness questionnaire (SCQ), are presented. The results suggest that the SCQ is a reliable and valid instrument for detecting differences in stigma consciousness. In addition, scores on the SCQ predict perceptions of discrimination and the ability to generate convincing examples of such discrimination. The final study highlights a behavioral consequence of stigma consciousness: the tendency for people high in stigma consciousness to forgo opportunities to invalidate stereotypes about their group. The relation of stigma consciousness to past research on targets of stereotypes is considered as is the issue of how stigma consciousness may encourage continued stereotyping.

A Heuristic Model of Consciousness with Applications to the Development of Science and Society

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Curreri, Peter A.

2010-01-01

A working model of consciousness is fundamental to understanding of the interactions of the observer in science. This paper examines contemporary understanding of consciousness. A heuristic model of consciousness is suggested that is consistent with psycophysics measurements of bandwidth of consciousness relative to unconscious perception. While the self reference nature of consciousness confers a survival benefit by assuring the all points of view regarding a problem are experienced in sufficiently large population, conscious bandwidth is constrained by design to avoid chaotic behavior. The multiple hypotheses provided by conscious reflection enable the rapid progression of science and technology. The questions of free will and the problem of attention are discussed in relation to the model. Finally the combination of rapid technology growth with the assurance of many unpredictable points of view is considered in respect to contemporary constraints to the development of society.

A higher-order theory of emotional consciousness

PubMed Central

LeDoux, Joseph E.; Brown, Richard

2017-01-01

Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programmed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. In this view, what differs in emotional and nonemotional states are the kinds of inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide nonconscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. PMID:28202735

Predictive Feedback and Conscious Visual Experience

PubMed Central

Panichello, Matthew F.; Cheung, Olivia S.; Bar, Moshe

2012-01-01

The human brain continuously generates predictions about the environment based on learned regularities in the world. These predictions actively and efficiently facilitate the interpretation of incoming sensory information. We review evidence that, as a result of this facilitation, predictions directly influence conscious experience. Specifically, we propose that predictions enable rapid generation of conscious percepts and bias the contents of awareness in situations of uncertainty. The possible neural mechanisms underlying this facilitation are discussed. PMID:23346068

Children's Dreaming and the Development of Consciousness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Foulkes, David

Noting that scientific observation of children's dreaming offers unparalleled opportunities to study experience of conscious mental states, this book presents findings from two studies on children's dreaming. Following an argument outlining the problems in equating dreaming with perception, the book explains the use of sleep laboratories and…

Perception, Psychedelics, And Social Change

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Kaiser, Charles; Gold, Robert

1973-01-01

The most profound consequences of the increasingly widespread use of psychedelics may be sociological in nature. Altered states of consciousness create nothing less than new perceptual configurations which may well spell the end of social institutions based upon modes of perception which are incongruent with new perceptions being attained by…

The effect of phasic auditory alerting on visual perception.

PubMed

Petersen, Anders; Petersen, Annemarie Hilkjær; Bundesen, Claus; Vangkilde, Signe; Habekost, Thomas

2017-08-01

Phasic alertness refers to a short-lived change in the preparatory state of the cognitive system following an alerting signal. In the present study, we examined the effect of phasic auditory alerting on distinct perceptual processes, unconfounded by motor components. We combined an alerting/no-alerting design with a pure accuracy-based single-letter recognition task. Computational modeling based on Bundesen's Theory of Visual Attention was used to examine the effect of phasic alertness on visual processing speed and threshold of conscious perception. Results show that phasic auditory alertness affects visual perception by increasing the visual processing speed and lowering the threshold of conscious perception (Experiment 1). By manipulating the intensity of the alerting cue, we further observed a positive relationship between alerting intensity and processing speed, which was not seen for the threshold of conscious perception (Experiment 2). This was replicated in a third experiment, in which pupil size was measured as a physiological marker of alertness. Results revealed that the increase in processing speed was accompanied by an increase in pupil size, substantiating the link between alertness and processing speed (Experiment 3). The implications of these results are discussed in relation to a newly developed mathematical model of the relationship between levels of alertness and the speed with which humans process visual information. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Using brain stimulation to disentangle neural correlates of conscious vision

PubMed Central

de Graaf, Tom A.; Sack, Alexander T.

2014-01-01

Research into the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs) has blossomed, due to the advent of new and increasingly sophisticated brain research tools. Neuroimaging has uncovered a variety of brain processes that relate to conscious perception, obtained in a range of experimental paradigms. But methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging or electroencephalography do not always afford inference on the functional role these brain processes play in conscious vision. Such empirical NCCs could reflect neural prerequisites, neural consequences, or neural substrates of a conscious experience. Here, we take a closer look at the use of non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) techniques in this context. We discuss and review how NIBS methodology can enlighten our understanding of brain mechanisms underlying conscious vision by disentangling the empirical NCCs. PMID:25295015

Theoretical Tinnitus Framework: A Neurofunctional Model.

PubMed

Ghodratitoostani, Iman; Zana, Yossi; Delbem, Alexandre C B; Sani, Siamak S; Ekhtiari, Hamed; Sanchez, Tanit G

2016-01-01

Subjective tinnitus is the conscious (attended) awareness perception of sound in the absence of an external source and can be classified as an auditory phantom perception. Earlier literature establishes three distinct states of conscious perception as unattended, attended, and attended awareness conscious perception. The current tinnitus development models depend on the role of external events congruently paired with the causal physical events that precipitate the phantom perception. We propose a novel Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model to indicate that the conscious (attended) awareness perception of phantom sound is essential in activating the cognitive-emotional value. The cognitive-emotional value plays a crucial role in governing attention allocation as well as developing annoyance within tinnitus clinical distress. Structurally, the Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model includes the peripheral auditory system, the thalamus, the limbic system, brainstem, basal ganglia, striatum, and the auditory along with prefrontal cortices. Functionally, we assume the model includes presence of continuous or intermittent abnormal signals at the peripheral auditory system or midbrain auditory paths. Depending on the availability of attentional resources, the signals may or may not be perceived. The cognitive valuation process strengthens the lateral-inhibition and noise canceling mechanisms in the mid-brain, which leads to the cessation of sound perception and renders the signal evaluation irrelevant. However, the "sourceless" sound is eventually perceived and can be cognitively interpreted as suspicious or an indication of a disease in which the cortical top-down processes weaken the noise canceling effects. This results in an increase in cognitive and emotional negative reactions such as depression and anxiety. The negative or positive cognitive-emotional feedbacks within the top-down approach may have no relation to the previous experience of the patients. They can also be associated with aversive stimuli similar to abnormal neural activity in generating the phantom sound. Cognitive and emotional reactions depend on general personality biases toward evaluative conditioning combined with a cognitive-emotional negative appraisal of stimuli such as the case of people with present hypochondria. We acknowledge that the projected Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model does not cover all tinnitus variations and patients. To support our model, we present evidence from several studies using neuroimaging, electrophysiology, brain lesion, and behavioral techniques.

Theoretical Tinnitus Framework: A Neurofunctional Model

PubMed Central

Ghodratitoostani, Iman; Zana, Yossi; Delbem, Alexandre C. B.; Sani, Siamak S.; Ekhtiari, Hamed; Sanchez, Tanit G.

2016-01-01

Subjective tinnitus is the conscious (attended) awareness perception of sound in the absence of an external source and can be classified as an auditory phantom perception. Earlier literature establishes three distinct states of conscious perception as unattended, attended, and attended awareness conscious perception. The current tinnitus development models depend on the role of external events congruently paired with the causal physical events that precipitate the phantom perception. We propose a novel Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model to indicate that the conscious (attended) awareness perception of phantom sound is essential in activating the cognitive-emotional value. The cognitive-emotional value plays a crucial role in governing attention allocation as well as developing annoyance within tinnitus clinical distress. Structurally, the Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model includes the peripheral auditory system, the thalamus, the limbic system, brainstem, basal ganglia, striatum, and the auditory along with prefrontal cortices. Functionally, we assume the model includes presence of continuous or intermittent abnormal signals at the peripheral auditory system or midbrain auditory paths. Depending on the availability of attentional resources, the signals may or may not be perceived. The cognitive valuation process strengthens the lateral-inhibition and noise canceling mechanisms in the mid-brain, which leads to the cessation of sound perception and renders the signal evaluation irrelevant. However, the “sourceless” sound is eventually perceived and can be cognitively interpreted as suspicious or an indication of a disease in which the cortical top-down processes weaken the noise canceling effects. This results in an increase in cognitive and emotional negative reactions such as depression and anxiety. The negative or positive cognitive-emotional feedbacks within the top-down approach may have no relation to the previous experience of the patients. They can also be associated with aversive stimuli similar to abnormal neural activity in generating the phantom sound. Cognitive and emotional reactions depend on general personality biases toward evaluative conditioning combined with a cognitive-emotional negative appraisal of stimuli such as the case of people with present hypochondria. We acknowledge that the projected Neurofunctional Tinnitus Model does not cover all tinnitus variations and patients. To support our model, we present evidence from several studies using neuroimaging, electrophysiology, brain lesion, and behavioral techniques. PMID:27594822

Visual masking and the dynamics of human perception, cognition, and consciousness A century of progress, a contemporary synthesis, and future directions.

PubMed

Ansorge, Ulrich; Francis, Gregory; Herzog, Michael H; Oğmen, Haluk

2008-07-15

The 1990s, the "decade of the brain," witnessed major advances in the study of visual perception, cognition, and consciousness. Impressive techniques in neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, electrophysiology, psychophysics and brain-imaging were developed to address how the nervous system transforms and represents visual inputs. Many of these advances have dealt with the steady-state properties of processing. To complement this "steady-state approach," more recent research emphasized the importance of dynamic aspects of visual processing. Visual masking has been a paradigm of choice for more than a century when it comes to the study of dynamic vision. A recent workshop (http://lpsy.epfl.ch/VMworkshop/), held in Delmenhorst, Germany, brought together an international group of researchers to present state-of-the-art research on dynamic visual processing with a focus on visual masking. This special issue presents peer-reviewed contributions by the workshop participants and provides a contemporary synthesis of how visual masking can inform the dynamics of human perception, cognition, and consciousness.

Visual masking and the dynamics of human perception, cognition, and consciousness A century of progress, a contemporary synthesis, and future directions

PubMed Central

Ansorge, Ulrich; Francis, Gregory; Herzog, Michael H.; Öğmen, Haluk

2008-01-01

The 1990s, the “decade of the brain,” witnessed major advances in the study of visual perception, cognition, and consciousness. Impressive techniques in neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, neuropsychology, electrophysiology, psychophysics and brain-imaging were developed to address how the nervous system transforms and represents visual inputs. Many of these advances have dealt with the steady-state properties of processing. To complement this “steady-state approach,” more recent research emphasized the importance of dynamic aspects of visual processing. Visual masking has been a paradigm of choice for more than a century when it comes to the study of dynamic vision. A recent workshop (http://lpsy.epfl.ch/VMworkshop/), held in Delmenhorst, Germany, brought together an international group of researchers to present state-of-the-art research on dynamic visual processing with a focus on visual masking. This special issue presents peer-reviewed contributions by the workshop participants and provides a contemporary synthesis of how visual masking can inform the dynamics of human perception, cognition, and consciousness. PMID:20517493

Phenomenal and access consciousness in olfaction.

PubMed

Stevenson, Richard J

2009-12-01

Contemporary literature on consciousness, with some exceptions, rarely considers the olfactory system. In this article the characteristics of olfactory consciousness, viewed from the standpoint of the phenomenal (P)/access (A) distinction, are examined relative to the major senses. The review details several qualitative differences in both olfactory P consciousness (shifts in the felt location, universal synesthesia-like and affect-rich experiences, and misperceptions) and A consciousness (recovery from habituation, capacity for conscious processing, access to semantic and episodic memory, learning, attention, and in the serial-unitary nature of olfactory percepts). The basis for these differences is argued to arise from the functions that the olfactory system performs and from the unique neural architecture needed to instantiate them. These data suggest, at a minimum, that P and A consciousness are uniquely configured in olfaction and an argument can be made that the P and A distinction may not hold for this sensory system.

Positive Perceptions of Genital Appearance and Feeling Sexually Attractive: Is It a Matter of Sexual Esteem?

PubMed

Amos, Natalie; McCabe, Marita

2016-07-01

The present study examined the relationship between perceptions of genital appearance and self-perceived sexual attractiveness. The study sample included men and women (aged 18-45 years, M = 23.7, SD = 4.98) who identified as heterosexual (n = 1017), gay or lesbian (n = 1225), or bisexual (n = 651). Participants responded to an online survey assessing their self-perceived sexual attractiveness, genital self-image, genital self-consciousness during sexual activity, and sexual esteem. Based on previous findings, we hypothesized a positive link between genital self-perceptions and self-perceived sexual attractiveness, with sexual esteem acting as a mediator. We tested this hypothesis using structural equation modeling. Analyses revealed a significant association between both genital self-image and genital self-consciousness and self-perceived sexual attractiveness. However, these relationships were at least partially mediated by sexual esteem, across both gender and sexual orientation. The findings suggest that, regardless of gender or sexual orientation, individuals who maintain a positive genital self-image or lack genital self-consciousness, are more likely to experience greater sexual esteem, and in turn, feel more sexually attractive. The findings have implications for the importance of genital appearance perceptions and improving individuals' sexual esteem and self-perceived sexual attractiveness.

A temporal dissociation of subliminal versus supraliminal fear perception: an event-related potential study.

PubMed

Liddell, Belinda J; Williams, Leanne M; Rathjen, Jennifer; Shevrin, Howard; Gordon, Evian

2004-04-01

Current theories of emotion suggest that threat-related stimuli are first processed via an automatically engaged neural mechanism, which occurs outside conscious awareness. This mechanism operates in conjunction with a slower and more comprehensive process that allows a detailed evaluation of the potentially harmful stimulus (LeDoux, 1998). We drew on the Halgren and Marinkovic (1995) model to examine these processes using event-related potentials (ERPs) within a backward masking paradigm. Stimuli used were faces with fear and neutral (as baseline control) expressions, presented above (supraliminal) and below (subliminal) the threshold for conscious detection. ERP data revealed a double dissociation for the supraliminal versus subliminal perception of fear. In the subliminal condition, responses to the perception of fear stimuli were enhanced relative to neutral for the N2 "excitatory" component, which is thought to represent orienting and automatic aspects of face processing. By contrast, supraliminal perception of fear was associated with relatively enhanced responses for the late P3 "inhibitory" component, implicated in the integration of emotional processes. These findings provide evidence in support of Halgren and Marinkovic's temporal model of emotion processing, and indicate that the neural mechanisms for appraising signals of threat may be initiated, not only automatically, but also without the need for conscious detection of these signals.

A between-subjects test of the lower-identification/ higher-priming paradox.

PubMed

Rubino, I Alex; Rociola, Giuseppe; Di Lorenzo, Giorgio; Magni, Valentina; Ribolsi, Michele; Mancini, Valentina; Saya, Anna; Pezzarossa, Bianca; Siracusano, Alberto; Suslow, Thomas

2013-01-01

An under-recognised U-shaped model states that unconscious and conscious perceptual effects are functionally exclusive and that unconscious perceptual effects manifest themselves only at the objective detection threshold, when conscious perception is completely absent. We tested the U-shaped line model with a between-subjects paradigm. Angry, happy, neutral faces, or blank slides were flashed for 5.5 ms and 19.5 ms before Chinese ideographs in a darkened room. A group of volunteers (n = 84) were asked to rate how much they liked each ideograph and performed an identification task. According to the median identification score two subgroups were composed; one with 50% or < 50% identification scores (n = 31), and one with above 50% identification scores (n = 53). The hypothesised U-shaped line was confirmed by the findings. Affective priming was found only at the two extreme points: the 5.5 ms condition of the low-identification group (subliminal perception) and the 19.5 ms condition of the > 50% high-identification group (supraliminal perception). The two intermediate points (19.5 ms of the low-identification group and 5.5 ms of the high-identification group) did not correspond to significant priming effects. These results confirm that a complete absence of conscious perception is the condition for the deployment of unconscious perceptual effects.

Dissociation between the neural correlates of conscious face perception and visual attention.

PubMed

Navajas, Joaquin; Nitka, Aleksander W; Quian Quiroga, Rodrigo

2017-08-01

Given the higher chance to recognize attended compared to unattended stimuli, the specific neural correlates of these two processes, attention and awareness, tend to be intermingled in experimental designs. In this study, we dissociated the neural correlates of conscious face perception from the effects of visual attention. To do this, we presented faces at the threshold of awareness and manipulated attention through the use of exogenous prestimulus cues. We show that the N170 component, a scalp EEG marker of face perception, was modulated independently by attention and by awareness. An earlier P1 component was not modulated by either of the two effects and a later P3 component was indicative of awareness but not of attention. These claims are supported by converging evidence from (a) modulations observed in the average evoked potentials, (b) correlations between neural and behavioral data at the single-subject level, and (c) single-trial analyses. Overall, our results show a clear dissociation between the neural substrates of attention and awareness. Based on these results, we argue that conscious face perception is triggered by a boost in face-selective cortical ensembles that can be modulated by, but are still independent from, visual attention. © 2017 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Load induced blindness.

PubMed

Macdonald, James S P; Lavie, Nilli

2008-10-01

Although the perceptual load theory of attention has stimulated a great deal of research, evidence for the role of perceptual load in determining perception has typically relied on indirect measures that infer perception from distractor effects on reaction times or neural activity (see N. Lavie, 2005, for a review). Here we varied the level of perceptual load in a letter-search task and assessed its effect on the conscious perception of a search-irrelevant shape stimulus appearing in the periphery, using a direct measure of awareness (present/absent reports). Detection sensitivity (d') was consistently reduced with high, compared to low, perceptual load but was unaffected by the level of working memory load. Because alternative accounts in terms of expectation, memory, response bias, and goal-neglect due to the more strenuous high load task were ruled out, these experiments clearly demonstrate that high perceptual load determines conscious perception, impairing the ability to merely detect the presence of a stimulus--a phenomenon of load induced blindness.

A comparison of signal detection theory to the objective threshold/strategic model of unconscious perception.

PubMed

Haase, Steven J; Fisk, Gary D

2011-08-01

A key problem in unconscious perception research is ruling out the possibility that weak conscious awareness of stimuli might explain the results. In the present study, signal detection theory was compared with the objective threshold/strategic model as explanations of results for detection and identification sensitivity in a commonly used unconscious perception task. In the task, 64 undergraduate participants detected and identified one of four briefly displayed, visually masked letters. Identification was significantly above baseline (i.e., proportion correct > .25) at the highest detection confidence rating. This result is most consistent with signal detection theory's continuum of sensory states and serves as a possible index of conscious perception. However, there was limited support for the other model in the form of a predicted "looker's inhibition" effect, which produced identification performance that was significantly below baseline. One additional result, an interaction between the target stimulus and type of mask, raised concerns for the generality of unconscious perception effects.

Volitional components of consciousness vary across wakefulness, dreaming and lucid dreaming

PubMed Central

Dresler, Martin; Eibl, Leandra; Fischer, Christian F. J.; Wehrle, Renate; Spoormaker, Victor I.; Steiger, Axel; Czisch, Michael; Pawlowski, Marcel

2014-01-01

Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem to be most pronounced in awake humans. Here we assess the experience of volition across different states of consciousness: 10 frequent lucid dreamers rated different aspects of volition according to the Volitional Components Questionnaire for phases of normal dreaming, lucid dreaming, and wakefulness. Overall, experienced volition was comparable for lucid dreaming and wakefulness, and rated significantly higher for both states compared to non-lucid dreaming. However, three subscales showed specific differences across states of consciousness: planning ability was most pronounced during wakefulness, intention enactment most pronounced during lucid dreaming, and self-determination most pronounced during both wakefulness and lucid dreaming. Our data confirm the multifaceted nature of consciousness: different higher-order aspects of consciousness are differentially expressed across different conscious states. PMID:24427149

Volitional components of consciousness vary across wakefulness, dreaming and lucid dreaming.

PubMed

Dresler, Martin; Eibl, Leandra; Fischer, Christian F J; Wehrle, Renate; Spoormaker, Victor I; Steiger, Axel; Czisch, Michael; Pawlowski, Marcel

2014-01-01

Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem to be most pronounced in awake humans. Here we assess the experience of volition across different states of consciousness: 10 frequent lucid dreamers rated different aspects of volition according to the Volitional Components Questionnaire for phases of normal dreaming, lucid dreaming, and wakefulness. Overall, experienced volition was comparable for lucid dreaming and wakefulness, and rated significantly higher for both states compared to non-lucid dreaming. However, three subscales showed specific differences across states of consciousness: planning ability was most pronounced during wakefulness, intention enactment most pronounced during lucid dreaming, and self-determination most pronounced during both wakefulness and lucid dreaming. Our data confirm the multifaceted nature of consciousness: different higher-order aspects of consciousness are differentially expressed across different conscious states.

Predictable internal brain dynamics in EEG and its relation to conscious states

PubMed Central

Yoo, Jaewook; Kwon, Jaerock; Choe, Yoonsuck

2014-01-01

Consciousness is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon defying scientific explanation. Part of the reason why this is the case is due to its subjective nature. In our previous computational experiments, to avoid such a subjective trap, we took a strategy to investigate objective necessary conditions of consciousness. Our basic hypothesis was that predictive internal dynamics serves as such a condition. This is in line with theories of consciousness that treat retention (memory), protention (anticipation), and primary impression as the tripartite temporal structure of consciousness. To test our hypothesis, we analyzed publicly available sleep and awake electroencephalogram (EEG) data. Our results show that EEG signals from awake or rapid eye movement (REM) sleep states have more predictable dynamics compared to those from slow-wave sleep (SWS). Since awakeness and REM sleep are associated with conscious states and SWS with unconscious or less consciousness states, these results support our hypothesis. The results suggest an intricate relationship among prediction, consciousness, and time, with potential applications to time perception and neurorobotics. PMID:24917813

Developing Historical Consciousness and a Community of History Practitioners: A Survey of Prospective History Teachers across Canada

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lévesque, Stéphane G.; Zanazanian, Paul

2015-01-01

This paper looks at the historical consciousness of prospective history teachers in Canada. Using a bilingual online survey instrument inspired by the pan-Canadian research "Canadians and their Pasts" with volunteer participants (N = 233), the study investigates their background knowledge, their perceptions of the trustworthiness of…

Consciousness platform: the greatest mystery of all time.

PubMed

Deutsch, Sid

2010-01-01

This article is about the model for a very controversial edifice--the many-sided foundation for consciousness. What I refer to is, undoubtedly, the greatest mystery of all time--why do we have an awareness of our own existence? What is the evolutionary advantage of consciousness? Much of the material printed about consciousness has a religious flavor, with references to the human spirit and/or extrasensory perception, but I will have none of that here. In this study, consciousness is tied in with a platform, not a physical platform, of course, but a conceptual platform. This is because we are most comfortable imagining or visualizing an actual platform that has many connections to various parts of the brain, a sort of an old-fashioned telephone switchboard.

Racial bias in pain perception and response: experimental examination of automatic and deliberate processes

PubMed Central

Mathur, Vani A.; Richeson, Jennifer A.; Paice, Judith A.; Muzyka, Michael; Chiao, Joan Y.

2014-01-01

Racial disparities in pain treatment pose a significant public health and scientific problem. Prior studies demonstrate clinicians and non-clinicians are less perceptive, and suggest less treatment for, the pain of African Americans, relative to European Americans. Here we investigate the effects of explicit/implicit patient race presentation, patient race, and perceiver race on pain perception and response. African American and European American participants rated pain perception, empathy, helping motivation, and treatment suggestion in response to vignettes about patients’ pain. Vignettes were accompanied by a rapid (implicit), or static (explicit) presentation of an African or European American patient’s face. Participants perceived and responded more to European American patients in the implicit prime condition, when the effect of patient race was below the level of conscious regulation. This effect was reversed when patient race was presented explicitly. Additionally, female participants perceived and responded more to the pain of all patients, relative to male participants, and in the implicit prime condition, African American participants were more perceptive and responsive than European Americans to the pain of all patients. Taken together, these results suggest that known disparities in pain treatment may be largely due to automatic (below the level of conscious regulation), rather than deliberate (subject to conscious regulation) biases. These biases were not associated with traditional implicit measures of racial attitudes, suggesting that biases in pain perception and response may be independent of general prejudice. Perspective Results suggest racial biases in pain perception and treatment are at least partially due to automatic processes. When the relevance of patient race is made explicit, however, biases are attenuated and even reversed. We also find preliminary evidence that African Americans may be more sensitive to the pain of others than European Americans. PMID:24462976

Neuroimaging somatosensory perception and masking.

PubMed

Meador, Kimford J; Revill, Kathleen Pirog; Epstein, Charles M; Sathian, K; Loring, David W; Rorden, Chris

2017-01-08

The specific cortical and subcortical regions involved in conscious perception and masking are uncertain. This study sought to identify brain areas involved in conscious perception of somatosensory stimuli during a masking task using functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) to contrast perceived vs. non-perceived targets. Electrical trains were delivered to the right index finger for targets and to the left index finger for masks. Target intensities were adjusted to compensate for threshold drift. Sham target trials were given in ~10% of the trials, and target stimuli without masks were delivered in one of the five runs (68 trials/run). When healthy dextral adult volunteers (n=15) perceived right hand targets, greater left- than right-cerebral activations were seen with similar patterns across the parietal cortex, thalamus, insula, claustrum, and midbrain. When targets were not perceived, left/right cerebral activations were similar overall. Directly comparing perceived vs. non-perceived stimuli with similar intensities in the masking task revealed predominate activations contralateral to masks. In contrast, activations were greater contralateral to perceived targets if no masks were given or if masks were given but target stimulus intensities were greater for perceived than non-perceived targets. The novel aspects of this study include: 1) imaging of cortical and subcortical activations in healthy humans related to somatosensory perception during a masking task, 2) activations in the human thalamus and midbrain related to perception of stimuli compared to matched non-perceived stimuli, and 3) similar left/right cerebral activation patterns across cortical, thalamic and midbrain structures suggesting interactions across all three levels during conscious perception in humans. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subliminal perception of complex visual stimuli.

PubMed

Ionescu, Mihai Radu

2016-01-01

Rationale: Unconscious perception of various sensory modalities is an active subject of research though its function and effect on behavior is uncertain. Objective: The present study tried to assess if unconscious visual perception could occur with more complex visual stimuli than previously utilized. Methods and Results: Videos containing slideshows of indifferent complex images with interspersed frames of interest of various durations were presented to 24 healthy volunteers. The perception of the stimulus was evaluated with a forced-choice questionnaire while awareness was quantified by self-assessment with a modified awareness scale annexed to each question with 4 categories of awareness. At values of 16.66 ms of stimulus duration, conscious awareness was not possible and answers regarding the stimulus were random. At 50 ms, nonrandom answers were coupled with no self-reported awareness suggesting unconscious perception of the stimulus. At larger durations of stimulus presentation, significantly correct answers were coupled with a certain conscious awareness. Discussion: At values of 50 ms, unconscious perception is possible even with complex visual stimuli. Further studies are recommended with a focus on a range of interest of stimulus duration between 50 to 16.66 ms.

Global workspace dynamics: cortical "binding and propagation" enables conscious contents.

PubMed

Baars, Bernard J; Franklin, Stan; Ramsoy, Thomas Zoega

2013-01-01

A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub of binding and propagation in a population of loosely coupled signaling elements. In computational applications, GW architectures recruit many distributed, specialized agents to cooperate in resolving focal ambiguities. In the brain, conscious experiences may reflect a GW function. For animals, the natural world is full of unpredictable dangers and opportunities, suggesting a general adaptive pressure for brains to resolve focal ambiguities quickly and accurately. GW theory aims to understand the differences between conscious and unconscious brain events. In humans and related species the cortico-thalamic (C-T) core is believed to underlie conscious aspects of perception, thinking, learning, feelings of knowing (FOK), felt emotions, visual imagery, working memory, and executive control. Alternative theoretical perspectives are also discussed. The C-T core has many anatomical hubs, but conscious percepts are unitary and internally consistent at any given moment. Over time, conscious contents constitute a very large, open set. This suggests that a brain-based GW capacity cannot be localized in a single anatomical hub. Rather, it should be sought in a functional hub - a dynamic capacity for binding and propagation of neural signals over multiple task-related networks, a kind of neuronal cloud computing. In this view, conscious contents can arise in any region of the C-T core when multiple input streams settle on a winner-take-all equilibrium. The resulting conscious gestalt may ignite an any-to-many broadcast, lasting ∼100-200 ms, and trigger widespread adaptation in previously established networks. To account for the great range of conscious contents over time, the theory suggests an open repertoire of binding coalitions that can broadcast via theta/gamma or alpha/gamma phase coupling, like radio channels competing for a narrow frequency band. Conscious moments are thought to hold only 1-4 unrelated items; this small focal capacity may be the biological price to pay for global access. Visuotopic maps in cortex specialize in features like color, retinal size, motion, object identity, and egocentric/allocentric framing, so that a binding coalition for the sight of a rolling billiard ball in nearby space may resonate among activity maps of LGN, V1-V4, MT, IT, as well as the dorsal stream. Spatiotopic activity maps can bind into coherent gestalts using adaptive resonance (reentry). Single neurons can join a dominant coalition by phase tuning to regional oscillations in the 4-12 Hz range. Sensory percepts may bind and broadcast from posterior cortex, while non-sensory FOKs may involve prefrontal and frontotemporal areas. The anatomy and physiology of the hippocampal complex suggest a GW architecture as well. In the intact brain the hippocampal complex may support conscious event organization as well as episodic memory storage.

Global Workspace Dynamics: Cortical “Binding and Propagation” Enables Conscious Contents

PubMed Central

Baars, Bernard J.; Franklin, Stan; Ramsoy, Thomas Zoega

2013-01-01

A global workspace (GW) is a functional hub of binding and propagation in a population of loosely coupled signaling elements. In computational applications, GW architectures recruit many distributed, specialized agents to cooperate in resolving focal ambiguities. In the brain, conscious experiences may reflect a GW function. For animals, the natural world is full of unpredictable dangers and opportunities, suggesting a general adaptive pressure for brains to resolve focal ambiguities quickly and accurately. GW theory aims to understand the differences between conscious and unconscious brain events. In humans and related species the cortico-thalamic (C-T) core is believed to underlie conscious aspects of perception, thinking, learning, feelings of knowing (FOK), felt emotions, visual imagery, working memory, and executive control. Alternative theoretical perspectives are also discussed. The C-T core has many anatomical hubs, but conscious percepts are unitary and internally consistent at any given moment. Over time, conscious contents constitute a very large, open set. This suggests that a brain-based GW capacity cannot be localized in a single anatomical hub. Rather, it should be sought in a functional hub – a dynamic capacity for binding and propagation of neural signals over multiple task-related networks, a kind of neuronal cloud computing. In this view, conscious contents can arise in any region of the C-T core when multiple input streams settle on a winner-take-all equilibrium. The resulting conscious gestalt may ignite an any-to-many broadcast, lasting ∼100–200 ms, and trigger widespread adaptation in previously established networks. To account for the great range of conscious contents over time, the theory suggests an open repertoire of binding1 coalitions that can broadcast via theta/gamma or alpha/gamma phase coupling, like radio channels competing for a narrow frequency band. Conscious moments are thought to hold only 1–4 unrelated items; this small focal capacity may be the biological price to pay for global access. Visuotopic maps in cortex specialize in features like color, retinal size, motion, object identity, and egocentric/allocentric framing, so that a binding coalition for the sight of a rolling billiard ball in nearby space may resonate among activity maps of LGN, V1-V4, MT, IT, as well as the dorsal stream. Spatiotopic activity maps can bind into coherent gestalts using adaptive resonance (reentry). Single neurons can join a dominant coalition by phase tuning to regional oscillations in the 4–12 Hz range. Sensory percepts may bind and broadcast from posterior cortex, while non-sensory FOKs may involve prefrontal and frontotemporal areas. The anatomy and physiology of the hippocampal complex suggest a GW architecture as well. In the intact brain the hippocampal complex may support conscious event organization as well as episodic memory storage. PMID:23974723

Promoting the use of personally relevant stimuli for investigating patients with disorders of consciousness

PubMed Central

Perrin, Fabien; Castro, Maïté; Tillmann, Barbara; Luauté, Jacques

2015-01-01

Sensory stimuli are used to evaluate and to restore cognitive functions and consciousness in patients with a disorder of consciousness (DOC) following a severe brain injury. Although sophisticated protocols can help assessing higher order cognitive functions and awareness, one major drawback is their lack of sensitivity. The aim of the present review is to show that stimulus selection is crucial for an accurate evaluation of the state of patients with disorders of consciousness as it determines the levels of processing that the patient can have with stimulation from his/her environment. The probability to observe a behavioral response or a cerebral response is increased when her/his personal history and/or her/his personal preferences are taken into account. We show that personally relevant stimuli (i.e., with emotional, autobiographical, or self-related characteristics) are associated with clearer signs of perception than are irrelevant stimuli in patients with DOC. Among personally relevant stimuli, music appears to be a promising clinical tool as it boosts perception and cognition in patients with DOC and could also serve as a prognostic tool. We suggest that the effect of music on cerebral processes in patients might reflect the music’s capacity to act both on the external and internal neural networks supporting consciousness. PMID:26284020

Medical Student Perceptions of Cost-Conscious Care in an Internal Medicine Clerkship: A Thematic Analysis.

PubMed

Tartaglia, Kimberly M; Kman, Nicholas; Ledford, Cynthia

2015-10-01

Although as much as 87 % of all healthcare spending is directed by physicians, studies have demonstrated that they lack knowledge about the costs of medical care. Similarly, learners have not traditionally received instruction on cost-conscious care. To examine medical students' perceptions of healthcare delivery as it relates to cost consciousness Retrospective qualitative analysis of medical student narratives Third-year medical students during their inpatient internal medicine clerkship Students completed a reflective exercise wherein they were asked to describe a scenario in which a patient experienced lack of attention to cost-conscious care, and were asked to identify solutions and barriers. We analyzed these reflections to learn more about students' awareness and perceptions regarding the practice of cost-conscious care within our medical center. Eighty students submitted the assignment between July and December 2012. The most common problems identified included unnecessary tests and treatments (n = 69) and duplicative tests and treatments (n = 20.) With regards to solutions, students described 82 scenarios, with 125 potential solutions identified. Students most commonly used discussion with the team (speak up, ask why) as the process they would use (n = 28) and most often wanted to focus lab testing (n = 38) as the intervention. The most common barriers to high-value care included increased time and effort (n = 19), ingrained practices (n = 17), and defensive medicine or fear of missing something (n = 18.) Even with minimal clinical experience, medical students were able to identify instances of lack of attention to cost-conscious care as well as potential solutions. Although students identified the hierarchy in healthcare teams as a potential barrier to improving high value care, most students stated they would feel comfortable engaging the team in discussion. Future efforts to empower learners at all levels to question value decisions and to develop and implement solutions may result in improved healthcare.

The role of perceptual load in inattentional blindness.

PubMed

Cartwright-Finch, Ula; Lavie, Nilli

2007-03-01

Perceptual load theory offers a resolution to the long-standing early vs. late selection debate over whether task-irrelevant stimuli are perceived, suggesting that irrelevant perception depends upon the perceptual load of task-relevant processing. However, previous evidence for this theory has relied on RTs and neuroimaging. Here we tested the effects of load on conscious perception using the "inattentional blindness" paradigm. As predicted by load theory, awareness of a task-irrelevant stimulus was significantly reduced by higher perceptual load (with increased numbers of search items, or a harder discrimination vs. detection task). These results demonstrate that conscious perception of task-irrelevant stimuli critically depends upon the level of task-relevant perceptual load rather than intentions or expectations, thus enhancing the resolution to the early vs. late selection debate offered by the perceptual load theory.

Posthypnotic suggestion alters conscious color perception in an automatic manner.

PubMed

Kallio, Sakari; Koivisto, Mika

2013-01-01

The authors studied whether a posthypnotic suggestion to see a brief, masked target as gray can change the color experience of a hypnotic virtuoso. The visibility of the target was manipulated by varying the delay between the target and the mask that followed it. The virtuoso's subjective reports indicated that her conscious color experience was altered already at short delays between the target and the subsequent mask. The virtuoso's objectively measured pattern of responding under posthypnotic suggestion could not be mimicked either by control participants nor the virtuoso herself. Due to posthypnotic amnesia, the virtuoso was unaware of suggestions given during hypnosis. Importantly, the virtuoso could not alter her color perception without a hypnotic suggestion. These results suggest that hypnosis can affect even a highly automatic process such as color perception.

Conscious awareness is required for holistic face processing.

PubMed

Axelrod, Vadim; Rees, Geraint

2014-07-01

Investigating the limits of unconscious processing is essential to understand the function of consciousness. Here, we explored whether holistic face processing, a mechanism believed to be important for face processing in general, can be accomplished unconsciously. Using a novel "eyes-face" stimulus we tested whether discrimination of pairs of eyes was influenced by the surrounding face context. While the eyes were fully visible, the faces that provided context could be rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression. Two experiments with three different sets of face stimuli and a subliminal learning procedure converged to show that invisible faces did not influence perception of visible eyes. In contrast, surrounding faces, when they were clearly visible, strongly influenced perception of the eyes. Thus, we conclude that conscious awareness might be a prerequisite for holistic face processing. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Visual perception and consciousness in dermatopathology: mechanisms of figure-ground segregation account for errors in diagnosis.

PubMed

Böer, Almut

2009-02-01

Visual perception has been the object of research in psychology for almost a century. Little has been written, however, about the effects of perceptive phenomena on methods in medicine that utilize interpretation of two-dimensional images for diagnosis. Starting from the work by Edgar Rubin in the beginning of the last century, this article gives a summary of observations of psychologists who investigated the mechanisms of so-called "figure-ground segregation." These unconscious mechanisms follow rules that explain why certain structures are perceived consciously as a figure, whereas other structures surrounding such a figure are neglected and not perceived consciously in detail. Perception of a structure as a figure can be due to, for example, a convex shape of its contour, proximity of lines around it, closed contours, a simple shape, and attribution of meaning to a structure. In examples from the practice of dermatopathology, those unconscious mechanisms of figure-ground segregation will be shown to be relevant to diagnosis of sections of tissue. The mechanisms help to explain why, for example, ill-defined and concave-shaped structures, stromal differences of neoplasms, interstitial infiltrates and deposits, and simulators of common diseases are often difficult to recognize at first sight. Teachers of dermatopathology need to be aware of these unconscious mechanisms of visual perception because they explain why novices struggle with certain diagnoses and differential diagnoses. Proper instruction about these phenomena, early in the process of training, will prevent a student from being frustrated with misperceptions.

Subjective visual perception: from local processing to emergent phenomena of brain activity.

PubMed

Panagiotaropoulos, Theofanis I; Kapoor, Vishal; Logothetis, Nikos K

2014-05-05

The combination of electrophysiological recordings with ambiguous visual stimulation made possible the detection of neurons that represent the content of subjective visual perception and perceptual suppression in multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions. These neuronal populations, commonly referred to as the neural correlates of consciousness, are more likely to be found in the temporal and prefrontal cortices as well as the pulvinar, indicating that the content of perceptual awareness is represented with higher fidelity in higher-order association areas of the cortical and thalamic hierarchy, reflecting the outcome of competitive interactions between conflicting sensory information resolved in earlier stages. However, despite the significant insights into conscious perception gained through monitoring the activities of single neurons and small, local populations, the immense functional complexity of the brain arising from correlations in the activity of its constituent parts suggests that local, microscopic activity could only partially reveal the mechanisms involved in perceptual awareness. Rather, the dynamics of functional connectivity patterns on a mesoscopic and macroscopic level could be critical for conscious perception. Understanding these emergent spatio-temporal patterns could be informative not only for the stability of subjective perception but also for spontaneous perceptual transitions suggested to depend either on the dynamics of antagonistic ensembles or on global intrinsic activity fluctuations that may act upon explicit neural representations of sensory stimuli and induce perceptual reorganization. Here, we review the most recent results from local activity recordings and discuss the potential role of effective, correlated interactions during perceptual awareness.

Subjective visual perception: from local processing to emergent phenomena of brain activity

PubMed Central

Panagiotaropoulos, Theofanis I.; Kapoor, Vishal; Logothetis, Nikos K.

2014-01-01

The combination of electrophysiological recordings with ambiguous visual stimulation made possible the detection of neurons that represent the content of subjective visual perception and perceptual suppression in multiple cortical and subcortical brain regions. These neuronal populations, commonly referred to as the neural correlates of consciousness, are more likely to be found in the temporal and prefrontal cortices as well as the pulvinar, indicating that the content of perceptual awareness is represented with higher fidelity in higher-order association areas of the cortical and thalamic hierarchy, reflecting the outcome of competitive interactions between conflicting sensory information resolved in earlier stages. However, despite the significant insights into conscious perception gained through monitoring the activities of single neurons and small, local populations, the immense functional complexity of the brain arising from correlations in the activity of its constituent parts suggests that local, microscopic activity could only partially reveal the mechanisms involved in perceptual awareness. Rather, the dynamics of functional connectivity patterns on a mesoscopic and macroscopic level could be critical for conscious perception. Understanding these emergent spatio-temporal patterns could be informative not only for the stability of subjective perception but also for spontaneous perceptual transitions suggested to depend either on the dynamics of antagonistic ensembles or on global intrinsic activity fluctuations that may act upon explicit neural representations of sensory stimuli and induce perceptual reorganization. Here, we review the most recent results from local activity recordings and discuss the potential role of effective, correlated interactions during perceptual awareness. PMID:24639588

Intracranial spectral amplitude dynamics of perceptual suppression in fronto-insular, occipito-temporal, and primary visual cortex

PubMed Central

Vidal, Juan R.; Perrone-Bertolotti, Marcela; Kahane, Philippe; Lachaux, Jean-Philippe

2015-01-01

If conscious perception requires global information integration across active distant brain networks, how does the loss of conscious perception affect neural processing in these distant networks? Pioneering studies on perceptual suppression (PS) described specific local neural network responses in primary visual cortex, thalamus and lateral prefrontal cortex of the macaque brain. Yet the neural effects of PS have rarely been studied with intracerebral recordings outside these cortices and simultaneously across distant brain areas. Here, we combined (1) a novel experimental paradigm in which we produced a similar perceptual disappearance and also re-appearance by using visual adaptation with transient contrast changes, with (2) electrophysiological observations from human intracranial electrodes sampling wide brain areas. We focused on broadband high-frequency (50–150 Hz, i.e., gamma) and low-frequency (8–24 Hz) neural activity amplitude modulations related to target visibility and invisibility. We report that low-frequency amplitude modulations reflected stimulus visibility in a larger ensemble of recording sites as compared to broadband gamma responses, across distinct brain regions including occipital, temporal and frontal cortices. Moreover, the dynamics of the broadband gamma response distinguished stimulus visibility from stimulus invisibility earlier in anterior insula and inferior frontal gyrus than in temporal regions, suggesting a possible role of fronto-insular cortices in top–down processing for conscious perception. Finally, we report that in primary visual cortex only low-frequency amplitude modulations correlated directly with perceptual status. Interestingly, in this sensory area broadband gamma was not modulated during PS but became positively modulated after 300 ms when stimuli were rendered visible again, suggesting that local networks could be ignited by top–down influences during conscious perception. PMID:25642199

Surprise-Induced Blindness: A Stimulus-Driven Attentional Limit to Conscious Perception

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Asplund, Christopher L.; Todd, J. Jay; Snyder, A. P.; Gilbert, Christopher M.; Marois, Rene

2010-01-01

The cost of attending to a visual event can be the failure to consciously detect other events. This processing limitation is well illustrated by the attentional blink paradigm, in which searching for and attending to a target presented in a rapid serial visual presentation stream of distractors can impair one's ability to detect a second target…

African American College Women's Body Image: An Examination of Body Mass, African Self-Consciousness, and Skin Color Satisfaction.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Falconer, Jameca Woody; Neville, Helen A.

2000-01-01

Investigated the general and cultural factors associated with body image perceptions of African American female college students. Data from surveys of 124 women at a historically black college indicated that African self-consciousness, skin color satisfaction, and body mass index collectively accounted for significant variance in dimensions of…

CCTV Surveillance in Primary Schools: Normalisation, Resistance, and Children's Privacy Consciousness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Birnhack, Michael; Perry-Hazan, Lotem; German Ben-Hayun, Shiran

2018-01-01

This study explored how primary school children perceive school surveillance by Closed Circuit TV systems (CCTVs) and how their perceptions relate to their privacy consciousness. It drew on interviews with 57 children, aged 9-12, who were enrolled in three Israeli public schools that had installed CCTVs, and on information gathered from members of…

Impact of Dysphoria and Self-Consciousness on Perceptions of Social Competence: Test of the Depressive Realism Hypothesis

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chau, Phuong M.; Milling, Leonard S.

2006-01-01

Depressive realism refers to a cognitive style wherein depressed people sometimes have more accurate perceptions of reality than nondepressed people. The notion of depressives being "sadder yet wiser" was controversial when first presented, and continues to be heavily debated. Self-perception studies provide maximum external validity,…

EEG and EMG responses to emotion-evoking stimuli processed without conscious awareness.

PubMed

Wexler, B E; Warrenburg, S; Schwartz, G E; Janer, L D

1992-12-01

Dichotic stimulus pairs were constructed with one word that was emotionally neutral and another that evoked either negative or positive feelings. Temporal and spectral overlap between the members of each pair was so great that the two words fused into a single auditory percept. Subjects were consciously aware of hearing only one word from most pairs; sometimes the emotion-evoking word was heard consciously, other times the neutral word was heard consciously. Subjects were instructed to let their thoughts wander in response to the word they heard, during which time EEG alpha activity over left and right frontal regions, and muscle activity (EMG) in the corrugator ("frowning") and zygomatic ("smiling") regions were recorded. Both EEG and EMG provided evidence of emotion-specific responses to stimuli that were processed without conscious awareness. Moreover both suggested relatively greater right hemisphere activity with unconscious rather than conscious processing.

Artificial consciousness and the consciousness-attention dissociation.

PubMed

Haladjian, Harry Haroutioun; Montemayor, Carlos

2016-10-01

Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial consciousness, with some arguing that it will be achievable once we overcome short-term engineering challenges. We believe, however, that phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines. This becomes clear when considering emotions and examining the dissociation between consciousness and attention in humans. While we may be able to program ethical behavior based on rules and machine learning, we will never be able to reproduce emotions or empathy by programming such control systems-these will be merely simulations. Arguments in favor of this claim include considerations about evolution, the neuropsychological aspects of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness found in humans. Ultimately, we are far from achieving artificial consciousness. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

A Sensorimotor Signature of the Transition to Conscious Social Perception: Co-regulation of Active and Passive Touch.

PubMed

Kojima, Hiroki; Froese, Tom; Oka, Mizuki; Iizuka, Hiroyuki; Ikegami, Takashi

2017-01-01

It is not yet well understood how we become conscious of the presence of other people as being other subjects in their own right. Developmental and phenomenological approaches are converging on a relational hypothesis: my perception of a "you" is primarily constituted by another subject's attention being directed toward "me." This is particularly the case when my body is being physically explored in an intentional manner. We set out to characterize the sensorimotor signature of the transition to being aware of the other by re-analyzing time series of embodied interactions between pairs of adults (recorded during a "perceptual crossing" experiment). Measures of turn-taking and movement synchrony were used to quantify social coordination, and transfer entropy was used to quantify direction of influence. We found that the transition leading to one's conscious perception of the other's presence was indeed characterized by a significant increase in one's passive reception of the other's tactile stimulations. Unexpectedly, one's clear experience of such passive touch was consistently followed by a switch to active touching of the other, while the other correspondingly became more passive, which suggests that this intersubjective experience was reciprocally co-regulated by both participants.

Unconscious Local Motion Alters Global Image Speed

PubMed Central

Khuu, Sieu K.; Chung, Charles Y. L.; Lord, Stephanie; Pearson, Joel

2014-01-01

Accurate motion perception of self and object speed is crucial for successful interaction in the world. The context in which we make such speed judgments has a profound effect on their accuracy. Misperceptions of motion speed caused by the context can have drastic consequences in real world situations, but they also reveal much about the underlying mechanisms of motion perception. Here we show that motion signals suppressed from awareness can warp simultaneous conscious speed perception. In Experiment 1, we measured global speed discrimination thresholds using an annulus of 8 local Gabor elements. We show that physically removing local elements from the array attenuated global speed discrimination. However, removing awareness of the local elements only had a small effect on speed discrimination. That is, unconscious local motion elements contributed to global conscious speed perception. In Experiment 2 we measured the global speed of the moving Gabor patterns, when half the elements moved at different speeds. We show that global speed averaging occurred regardless of whether local elements were removed from awareness, such that the speed of invisible elements continued to be averaged together with the visible elements to determine the global speed. These data suggest that contextual motion signals outside of awareness can both boost and affect our experience of motion speed, and suggest that such pooling of motion signals occurs before the conscious extraction of the surround motion speed. PMID:25503603

Unconscious integration of multisensory bodily inputs in the peripersonal space shapes bodily self-consciousness.

PubMed

Salomon, Roy; Noel, Jean-Paul; Łukowska, Marta; Faivre, Nathan; Metzinger, Thomas; Serino, Andrea; Blanke, Olaf

2017-09-01

Recent studies have highlighted the role of multisensory integration as a key mechanism of self-consciousness. In particular, integration of bodily signals within the peripersonal space (PPS) underlies the experience of the self in a body we own (self-identification) and that is experienced as occupying a specific location in space (self-location), two main components of bodily self-consciousness (BSC). Experiments investigating the effects of multisensory integration on BSC have typically employed supra-threshold sensory stimuli, neglecting the role of unconscious sensory signals in BSC, as tested in other consciousness research. Here, we used psychophysical techniques to test whether multisensory integration of bodily stimuli underlying BSC also occurs for multisensory inputs presented below the threshold of conscious perception. Our results indicate that visual stimuli rendered invisible through continuous flash suppression boost processing of tactile stimuli on the body (Exp. 1), and enhance the perception of near-threshold tactile stimuli (Exp. 2), only once they entered PPS. We then employed unconscious multisensory stimulation to manipulate BSC. Participants were presented with tactile stimulation on their body and with visual stimuli on a virtual body, seen at a distance, which were either visible or rendered invisible. We found that participants reported higher self-identification with the virtual body in the synchronous visuo-tactile stimulation (as compared to asynchronous stimulation; Exp. 3), and shifted their self-location toward the virtual body (Exp.4), even if stimuli were fully invisible. Our results indicate that multisensory inputs, even outside of awareness, are integrated and affect the phenomenological content of self-consciousness, grounding BSC firmly in the field of psychophysical consciousness studies. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Human single neuron activity precedes emergence of conscious perception.

PubMed

Gelbard-Sagiv, Hagar; Mudrik, Liad; Hill, Michael R; Koch, Christof; Fried, Itzhak

2018-05-25

Identifying the neuronal basis of spontaneous changes in conscious experience in the absence of changes in the external environment is a major challenge. Binocular rivalry, in which two stationary monocular images lead to continuously changing perception, provides a unique opportunity to address this issue. We studied the activity of human single neurons in the medial temporal and frontal lobes while patients were engaged in binocular rivalry. Here we report that internal changes in the content of perception are signaled by very early (~-2000 ms) nonselective medial frontal activity, followed by selective activity of medial temporal lobe neurons that precedes the perceptual change by ~1000 ms. Such early activations are not found for externally driven perceptual changes. These results suggest that a medial fronto-temporal network may be involved in the preconscious internal generation of perceptual transitions.

Quantum-like model of unconscious–conscious dynamics

PubMed Central

Khrennikov, Andrei

2015-01-01

We present a quantum-like model of sensation–perception dynamics (originated in Helmholtz theory of unconscious inference) based on the theory of quantum apparatuses and instruments. We illustrate our approach with the model of bistable perception of a particular ambiguous figure, the Schröder stair. This is a concrete model for unconscious and conscious processing of information and their interaction. The starting point of our quantum-like journey was the observation that perception dynamics is essentially contextual which implies impossibility of (straightforward) embedding of experimental statistical data in the classical (Kolmogorov, 1933) framework of probability theory. This motivates application of nonclassical probabilistic schemes. And the quantum formalism provides a variety of the well-approved and mathematically elegant probabilistic schemes to handle results of measurements. The theory of quantum apparatuses and instruments is the most general quantum scheme describing measurements and it is natural to explore it to model the sensation–perception dynamics. In particular, this theory provides the scheme of indirect quantum measurements which we apply to model unconscious inference leading to transition from sensations to perceptions. PMID:26283979

Global Consciousness and Pillars of Sustainable Development: A Study on Self-Perceptions of the First-Year University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Savelyeva, Tamara; Douglas, William

2017-01-01

Purpose: This paper aims to provide data on the self-perceived state of sustainability consciousness of first-year Hong Kong students. Design/methodology/approach: Within a mixed-method research design framework, the authors conducted 787 questionnaires and collected 989 reflective narratives of first-year students of a university in Hong Kong,…

The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception

PubMed Central

Pearson, Joel; Clifford, Colin; Tong, Frank

2008-01-01

Summary Mental imagery has been proposed to contribute to a variety of high-level cognitive functions, including memory encoding and retrieval, navigation and spatial planning, and even social communication and language comprehension [1–5]. However, it is debated whether mental imagery relies on the same sensory representations as perception [1, 6–10], and if so, what functional consequences such an overlap might have on perception itself. We report novel evidence that single instances of imagery can have a pronounced facilitatory influence on subsequent conscious perception. Either seeing or imagining a specific pattern could strongly bias which of two competing stimuli reach awareness during binocular rivalry. Effects of imagery and perception were location- and orientation-specific, accumulated in strength over time, and survived an intervening visual task lasting several seconds prior to presentation of the rivalry display. Interestingly, effects of imagery differed from those of feature-based attention. The results demonstrate that imagery, in the absence of any incoming visual signals, leads to the formation of a short-term sensory trace that can bias future perception, suggesting a means by which high-level processes that support imagination and memory retrieval may shape low-level sensory representations. PMID:18583132

The phase of prestimulus alpha oscillations affects tactile perception.

PubMed

Ai, Lei; Ro, Tony

2014-03-01

Previous studies have shown that neural oscillations in the 8- to 12-Hz range influence sensory perception. In the current study, we examined whether both the power and phase of these mu/alpha oscillations predict successful conscious tactile perception. Near-threshold tactile stimuli were applied to the left hand while electroencephalographic (EEG) activity was recorded over the contralateral right somatosensory cortex. We found a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between prestimulus mu/alpha power and detection rate, suggesting that there is an intermediate level of alpha power that is optimal for tactile perception. We also found a significant difference in phase angle concentration at stimulus onset that predicted whether the upcoming tactile stimulus was perceived or missed. As has been shown in the visual system, these findings suggest that these mu/alpha oscillations measured over somatosensory areas exert a strong inhibitory control on tactile perception and that pulsed inhibition by these oscillations shapes the state of brain activity necessary for conscious perception. They further suggest that these common phasic processing mechanisms across different sensory modalities and brain regions may reflect a common underlying encoding principle in perceptual processing that leads to momentary windows of perceptual awareness.

[Nursing education: integrating gender equity consciousness].

PubMed

Tzeng, Ya-Ling; Shih, Hsin-Hsin; Yang, Ya-Ling

2011-12-01

Gender sensitivity influences the way a nurse handles the nursing process and can influence both patient care and public perception of the nursing profession. Nurses unaware of the influences of gender are unable to perform holistic nursing, the practice of which centers on patient-centered care. Education is essential to promote gender consciousness. Providing scenario-based education to apply gender consciousness can help nursing students integrate gender and nursing care concepts and improve nursing care quality. In addition to raising attention to this important issue, this article makes comprehensive suggestions on how to apply gender concepts in nursing education. These suggestions include requiring instructors to consider and assess their own gender consciousness in order to enhance positive gender consciousness; reviewing teaching materials to identify and remove content tainted by sexual discrimination, and emphasizing gender education in the nursing education curriculum.

Implicit Semantic Perception in Object Substitution Masking

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goodhew, Stephanie C.; Visser, Troy A. W.; Lipp, Ottmar V.; Dux, Paul E.

2011-01-01

Decades of research on visual perception has uncovered many phenomena, such as binocular rivalry, backward masking, and the attentional blink, that reflect "failures of consciousness". Although stimuli do not reach awareness in these paradigms, there is evidence that they nevertheless undergo semantic processing. Object substitution masking (OSM),…

The levels of perceptual processing and the neural correlates of increasing subjective visibility.

PubMed

Binder, Marek; Gociewicz, Krzysztof; Windey, Bert; Koculak, Marcin; Finc, Karolina; Nikadon, Jan; Derda, Monika; Cleeremans, Axel

2017-10-01

According to the levels-of-processing hypothesis, transitions from unconscious to conscious perception may depend on stimulus processing level, with more gradual changes for low-level stimuli and more dichotomous changes for high-level stimuli. In an event-related fMRI study we explored this hypothesis using a visual backward masking procedure. Task requirements manipulated level of processing. Participants reported the magnitude of the target digit in the high-level task, its color in the low-level task, and rated subjective visibility of stimuli using the Perceptual Awareness Scale. Intermediate stimulus visibility was reported more frequently in the low-level task, confirming prior behavioral results. Visible targets recruited insulo-fronto-parietal regions in both tasks. Task effects were observed in visual areas, with higher activity in the low-level task across all visibility levels. Thus, the influence of level of processing on conscious perception may be mediated by attentional modulation of activity in regions representing features of consciously experienced stimuli. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Retrospective Attention Gates Discrete Conscious Access to Past Sensory Stimuli.

PubMed

Thibault, Louis; van den Berg, Ronald; Cavanagh, Patrick; Sergent, Claire

2016-01-01

Cueing attention after the disappearance of visual stimuli biases which items will be remembered best. This observation has historically been attributed to the influence of attention on memory as opposed to subjective visual experience. We recently challenged this view by showing that cueing attention after the stimulus can improve the perception of a single Gabor patch at threshold levels of contrast. Here, we test whether this retro-perception actually increases the frequency of consciously perceiving the stimulus, or simply allows for a more precise recall of its features. We used retro-cues in an orientation-matching task and performed mixture-model analysis to independently estimate the proportion of guesses and the precision of non-guess responses. We find that the improvements in performance conferred by retrospective attention are overwhelmingly determined by a reduction in the proportion of guesses, providing strong evidence that attracting attention to the target's location after its disappearance increases the likelihood of perceiving it consciously.

Consciousness, cognition and brain networks: New perspectives.

PubMed

Aldana, E M; Valverde, J L; Fábregas, N

2016-10-01

A detailed analysis of the literature on consciousness and cognition mechanisms based on the neural networks theory is presented. The immune and inflammatory response to the anesthetic-surgical procedure induces modulation of neuronal plasticity by influencing higher cognitive functions. Anesthetic drugs can cause unconsciousness, producing a functional disruption of cortical and thalamic cortical integration complex. The external and internal perceptions are processed through an intricate network of neural connections, involving the higher nervous activity centers, especially the cerebral cortex. This requires an integrated model, formed by neural networks and their interactions with highly specialized regions, through large-scale networks, which are distributed throughout the brain collecting information flow of these perceptions. Functional and effective connectivity between large-scale networks, are essential for consciousness, unconsciousness and cognition. It is what is called the "human connectome" or map neural networks. Copyright © 2014 Sociedad Española de Anestesiología, Reanimación y Terapéutica del Dolor. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

"Blindsight" and subjective awareness of fearful faces: Inversion reverses the deficits in fear perception associated with core psychopathic traits.

PubMed

Oliver, Lindsay D; Mao, Alexander; Mitchell, Derek G V

2015-01-01

Though emotional faces preferentially reach awareness, the present study utilised both objective and subjective indices of awareness to determine whether they enhance subjective awareness and "blindsight". Under continuous flash suppression, participants localised a disgusted, fearful or neutral face (objective index), and rated their confidence (subjective index). Psychopathic traits were also measured to investigate their influence on emotion perception. As predicted, fear increased localisation accuracy, subjective awareness and "blindsight" of upright faces. Coldhearted traits were inversely related to subjective awareness, but not "blindsight", of upright fearful faces. In a follow-up experiment using inverted faces, increased localisation accuracy and awareness, but not "blindsight", were observed for fear. Surprisingly, awareness of inverted fearful faces was positively correlated with coldheartedness. These results suggest that emotion enhances both pre-conscious processing and the qualitative experience of awareness, but that pre-conscious and conscious processing of emotional faces rely on at least partially dissociable cognitive mechanisms.

HYPOTHALAMIC DIGOXIN AND SCHIZOPHRENIA - A MODEL FOR CONSCIOUS AND SUBLIMINAL PERCEPTION AND ITS DYSFUNCTION IN SCHIZOPHRENIA

PubMed Central

Kurup, Ravikumar A.; Augustine, Jyothi; Kurup, P.A.

1999-01-01

In view of reports of an upregulated cation pump in genetically related Bipolar Affective Disorders the role of hypothalamic digoxin, an endogenous regulator of the cation pump was studied with special reference to its role as a modulator of glycoprotein synthesis. The study demonstrated elevated serum digoxin levels, elevated HMG CoA reductase activity suggesting increased digoxin synthesis, reduced sodium-potassium ATPase activity and altered sugar residues of serum glycoprotein in schizophrenia. A hypothalamic digoxin mediated model for conscious and subliminal perception is proposed and the significance of its dysfunction due to abnormal glycoprotein induced synaptic connectivity defects in schizophrenia is discussed. PMID:21455390

Racial bias in pain perception and response: experimental examination of automatic and deliberate processes.

PubMed

Mathur, Vani A; Richeson, Jennifer A; Paice, Judith A; Muzyka, Michael; Chiao, Joan Y

2014-05-01

Racial disparities in pain treatment pose a significant public health and scientific problem. Prior studies have demonstrated that clinicians and nonclinicians are less perceptive of, and suggest less treatment for, the pain of African Americans relative to European Americans. Here we investigate the effects of explicit/implicit patient race presentation, patient race, and perceiver race on pain perception and response. African American and European American participants rated pain perception, empathy, helping motivation, and treatment suggestion in response to vignettes about patients' pain. Vignettes were accompanied by a rapid (implicit) or static (explicit) presentation of an African or European American patient's face. Participants perceived and responded more to European American patients in the implicit prime condition, when the effect of patient race was below the level of conscious regulation. This effect was reversed when patient race was presented explicitly. Additionally, female participants perceived and responded more to the pain of all patients, relative to male participants, and in the implicit prime condition, African American participants were more perceptive and responsive than European Americans to the pain of all patients. Taken together, these results suggest that known disparities in pain treatment may be largely due to automatic (below the level of conscious regulation) rather than deliberate (subject to conscious regulation) biases. These biases were not associated with traditional implicit measures of racial attitudes, suggesting that biases in pain perception and response may be independent of general prejudice. Results suggest that racial biases in pain perception and treatment are at least partially due to automatic processes. When the relevance of patient race is made explicit, however, biases are attenuated and even reversed. We also find preliminary evidence that African Americans may be more sensitive to the pain of others than are European Americans. Copyright © 2014 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Raising Historical Consciousness in the Novel "The Giver", a Dystopic Work According to Social Studies Teacher Candidates

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yildirim, Sefa

2017-01-01

It is known that in many of the developed countries of the world, especially the U.S.A, educators benefit from dystopic works in education and training of the topics such as historical consciousness, metaphors, numbers, color perception and development of language. From this point forth, it can be suggested that dystopic works, as long as they are…

Visualizing the Perception Filter and Breaching It with Active-Learning Strategies

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

White, Harold B.

2012-01-01

Teachers' perception filter operates in all realms of their consciousness. It plays an important part in what and how students learn and should play a central role in what and how they teach. This may be obvious, but having a visual model of a perception filter can guide the way they think about education. In this article, the author talks about…

Mother-child interactions and young child behavior during procedural conscious sedation.

PubMed

Miranda-Remijo, Daniella; Orsini, Mara Rúbia; Corrêa-Faria, Patrícia; Costa, Luciane Rezende

2016-12-03

As many preschoolers are not able to cooperate with health-related invasive procedures, sedation can help with the child's comfort and allow the intervention to be done. It is scarcely known how parents affect children's behavior during dental treatment under conscious sedation. The aim of this exploratory study was to analyze the association between mother-child interactions in day-to-day family life and preschool children's behavior during dental treatment under conscious sedation. This cross-sectional study included 27 children aged 2-6 years and their mothers. The children's behavior during dental treatment under conscious sedation was verified through the analysis of videos and using an observational scale. Social skills of mothers were verified through interviews using the Parental Educative Social Skills Interview Script (RE-HSE-P); the sum of the scores allowed the establishment of the categories "clinical" and "non-clinical". We presented descriptive analyses and bivariate associations. Children's overall behavior during dental sedation was: very poor (n = 2), poor (n = 1), regular (n = 2), good (n = 9), very good (n = 9) and excellent (n = 4). Social skills varied: parental educational social skills (n = 24 clinical vs. n = 3 non-clinical); child social skills (n = 20 vs. n = 7), context variables (n = 15 vs. n = 12), negative educational practices (n = 12 vs. n = 15), child behavior problems (n = 7 vs. n = 20). There was no association between child behavior under sedation and social skills categories (P > 0.05). The majority of interviewed mothers reported issues in parental educational social skills and child social skills, which did not affect the outcomes of the children's behavior during the procedural conscious sedation.

Distinct cortical codes and temporal dynamics for conscious and unconscious percepts

PubMed Central

Salti, Moti; Monto, Simo; Charles, Lucie; King, Jean-Remi; Parkkonen, Lauri; Dehaene, Stanislas

2015-01-01

The neural correlates of consciousness are typically sought by comparing the overall brain responses to perceived and unperceived stimuli. However, this comparison may be contaminated by non-specific attention, alerting, performance, and reporting confounds. Here, we pursue a novel approach, tracking the neuronal coding of consciously and unconsciously perceived contents while keeping behavior identical (blindsight). EEG and MEG were recorded while participants reported the spatial location and visibility of a briefly presented target. Multivariate pattern analysis demonstrated that considerable information about spatial location traverses the cortex on blindsight trials, but that starting ≈270 ms post-onset, information unique to consciously perceived stimuli, emerges in superior parietal and superior frontal regions. Conscious access appears characterized by the entry of the perceived stimulus into a series of additional brain processes, each restricted in time, while the failure of conscious access results in the breaking of this chain and a subsequent slow decay of the lingering unconscious activity. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05652.001 PMID:25997100

A comparison of conscious and automatic memory processes for picture and word stimuli: a process dissociation analysis.

PubMed

McBride, Dawn M; Anne Dosher, Barbara

2002-09-01

Four experiments were conducted to evaluate explanations of picture superiority effects previously found for several tasks. In a process dissociation procedure (Jacoby, 1991) with word stem completion, picture fragment completion, and category production tasks, conscious and automatic memory processes were compared for studied pictures and words with an independent retrieval model and a generate-source model. The predictions of a transfer appropriate processing account of picture superiority were tested and validated in "process pure" latent measures of conscious and unconscious, or automatic and source, memory processes. Results from both model fits verified that pictures had a conceptual (conscious/source) processing advantage over words for all tasks. The effects of perceptual (automatic/word generation) compatibility depended on task type, with pictorial tasks favoring pictures and linguistic tasks favoring words. Results show support for an explanation of the picture superiority effect that involves an interaction of encoding and retrieval processes.

Non-Conscious Perception of Emotions in Psychiatric Disorders: The Unsolved Puzzle of Psychopathology.

PubMed

Lee, Seung A; Kim, Chai-Youn; Lee, Seung-Hwan

2016-03-01

Psychophysiological and functional neuroimaging studies have frequently and consistently shown that emotional information can be processed outside of the conscious awareness. Non-conscious processing comprises automatic, uncontrolled, and fast processing that occurs without subjective awareness. However, how such non-conscious emotional processing occurs in patients with various psychiatric disorders requires further examination. In this article, we reviewed and discussed previous studies on the non-conscious emotional processing in patients diagnosed with anxiety disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression, to further understand how non-conscious emotional processing varies across these psychiatric disorders. Although the symptom profile of each disorder does not often overlap with one another, these patients commonly show abnormal emotional processing based on the pathology of their mood and cognitive function. This indicates that the observed abnormalities of emotional processing in certain social interactions may derive from a biased mood or cognition process that precedes consciously controlled and voluntary processes. Since preconscious forms of emotional processing appear to have a major effect on behaviour and cognition in patients with these disorders, further investigation is required to understand these processes and their impact on patient pathology.

A Sensorimotor Signature of the Transition to Conscious Social Perception: Co-regulation of Active and Passive Touch

PubMed Central

Kojima, Hiroki; Froese, Tom; Oka, Mizuki; Iizuka, Hiroyuki; Ikegami, Takashi

2017-01-01

It is not yet well understood how we become conscious of the presence of other people as being other subjects in their own right. Developmental and phenomenological approaches are converging on a relational hypothesis: my perception of a “you” is primarily constituted by another subject’s attention being directed toward “me.” This is particularly the case when my body is being physically explored in an intentional manner. We set out to characterize the sensorimotor signature of the transition to being aware of the other by re-analyzing time series of embodied interactions between pairs of adults (recorded during a “perceptual crossing” experiment). Measures of turn-taking and movement synchrony were used to quantify social coordination, and transfer entropy was used to quantify direction of influence. We found that the transition leading to one’s conscious perception of the other’s presence was indeed characterized by a significant increase in one’s passive reception of the other’s tactile stimulations. Unexpectedly, one’s clear experience of such passive touch was consistently followed by a switch to active touching of the other, while the other correspondingly became more passive, which suggests that this intersubjective experience was reciprocally co-regulated by both participants. PMID:29085318

It is time to combine the two main traditions in the research on the neural correlates of consciousness: C = L × D

PubMed Central

Bachmann, Talis; Hudetz, Anthony G.

2014-01-01

Research on neural correlates of consciousness has been conducted and carried out mostly from within two relatively autonomous paradigmatic traditions – studying the specific contents of conscious experience and their brain-process correlates and studying the level of consciousness. In the present paper we offer a theoretical integration suggesting that an emphasis has to be put on understanding the mechanisms of consciousness (and not a mere correlates) and in doing this, the two paradigmatic traditions must be combined. We argue that consciousness emerges as a result of interaction of brain mechanisms specialized for representing the specific contents of perception/cognition – the data – and mechanisms specialized for regulating the level of activity of whatever data the content-carrying specific mechanisms happen to represent. Each of these mechanisms are necessary because without the contents there is no conscious experience and without the required level of activity the processed contents remain unconscious. Together the two mechanisms, when activated up to a necessary degree each, provide conditions sufficient for conscious experience to emerge. This proposal is related to pertinent experimental evidence. PMID:25202297

Knowledge applied to new domains: the unconscious succeeds where the conscious fails.

PubMed

Scott, Ryan B; Dienes, Zoltan

2010-03-01

A common view holds that consciousness is needed for knowledge acquired in one domain to be applied in a novel domain. We present evidence for the opposite; where the transfer of knowledge is achieved only in the absence of conscious awareness. Knowledge of artificial grammars was examined where training and testing occurred in different vocabularies or modalities. In all conditions grammaticality judgments attributed to random selection showed above-chance accuracy (60%), while those attributed to conscious decisions did not. Participants also rated each string's familiarity and performed a perceptual task assessing fluency. Familiarity was predicted by repetition structure and was thus related to grammaticality. Fluency, though increasing familiarity, was unrelated to grammaticality. While familiarity predicted all judgments only those attributed to random selection showed a significant additional contribution of grammaticality, deriving primarily from chunk novelty. In knowledge transfer, as in visual perception (Marcel, 1993), the unconscious may outperform the conscious.

Non-conscious visual cues related to affect and action alter perception of effort and endurance performance

PubMed Central

Blanchfield, Anthony; Hardy, James; Marcora, Samuele

2014-01-01

The psychobiological model of endurance performance proposes that endurance performance is determined by a decision-making process based on perception of effort and potential motivation. Recent research has reported that effort-based decision-making during cognitive tasks can be altered by non-conscious visual cues relating to affect and action. The effects of these non-conscious visual cues on effort and performance during physical tasks are however unknown. We report two experiments investigating the effects of subliminal priming with visual cues related to affect and action on perception of effort and endurance performance. In Experiment 1 thirteen individuals were subliminally primed with happy or sad faces as they cycled to exhaustion in a counterbalanced and randomized crossover design. A paired t-test (happy vs. sad faces) revealed that individuals cycled significantly longer (178 s, p = 0.04) when subliminally primed with happy faces. A 2 × 5 (condition × iso-time) ANOVA also revealed a significant main effect of condition on rating of perceived exertion (RPE) during the time to exhaustion (TTE) test with lower RPE when subjects were subliminally primed with happy faces (p = 0.04). In Experiment 2, a single-subject randomization tests design found that subliminal priming with action words facilitated a significantly longer TTE (399 s, p = 0.04) in comparison to inaction words. Like Experiment 1, this greater TTE was accompanied by a significantly lower RPE (p = 0.03). These experiments are the first to show that subliminal visual cues relating to affect and action can alter perception of effort and endurance performance. Non-conscious visual cues may therefore influence the effort-based decision-making process that is proposed to determine endurance performance. Accordingly, the findings raise notable implications for individuals who may encounter such visual cues during endurance competitions, training, or health related exercise. PMID:25566014

Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming

PubMed Central

Hobson, J. Allan; Hong, Charles C.-H.; Friston, Karl J.

2014-01-01

This article explores the notion that the brain is genetically endowed with an innate virtual reality generator that – through experience-dependent plasticity – becomes a generative or predictive model of the world. This model, which is most clearly revealed in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreaming, may provide the theater for conscious experience. Functional neuroimaging evidence for brain activations that are time-locked to rapid eye movements (REMs) endorses the view that waking consciousness emerges from REM sleep – and dreaming lays the foundations for waking perception. In this view, the brain is equipped with a virtual model of the world that generates predictions of its sensations. This model is continually updated and entrained by sensory prediction errors in wakefulness to ensure veridical perception, but not in dreaming. In contrast, dreaming plays an essential role in maintaining and enhancing the capacity to model the world by minimizing model complexity and thereby maximizing both statistical and thermodynamic efficiency. This perspective suggests that consciousness corresponds to the embodied process of inference, realized through the generation of virtual realities (in both sleep and wakefulness). In short, our premise or hypothesis is that the waking brain engages with the world to predict the causes of sensations, while in sleep the brain’s generative model is actively refined so that it generates more efficient predictions during waking. We review the evidence in support of this hypothesis – evidence that grounds consciousness in biophysical computations whose neuronal and neurochemical infrastructure has been disclosed by sleep research. PMID:25346710

Virtual reality and consciousness inference in dreaming.

PubMed

Hobson, J Allan; Hong, Charles C-H; Friston, Karl J

2014-01-01

This article explores the notion that the brain is genetically endowed with an innate virtual reality generator that - through experience-dependent plasticity - becomes a generative or predictive model of the world. This model, which is most clearly revealed in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep dreaming, may provide the theater for conscious experience. Functional neuroimaging evidence for brain activations that are time-locked to rapid eye movements (REMs) endorses the view that waking consciousness emerges from REM sleep - and dreaming lays the foundations for waking perception. In this view, the brain is equipped with a virtual model of the world that generates predictions of its sensations. This model is continually updated and entrained by sensory prediction errors in wakefulness to ensure veridical perception, but not in dreaming. In contrast, dreaming plays an essential role in maintaining and enhancing the capacity to model the world by minimizing model complexity and thereby maximizing both statistical and thermodynamic efficiency. This perspective suggests that consciousness corresponds to the embodied process of inference, realized through the generation of virtual realities (in both sleep and wakefulness). In short, our premise or hypothesis is that the waking brain engages with the world to predict the causes of sensations, while in sleep the brain's generative model is actively refined so that it generates more efficient predictions during waking. We review the evidence in support of this hypothesis - evidence that grounds consciousness in biophysical computations whose neuronal and neurochemical infrastructure has been disclosed by sleep research.

Negative, but not positive emotional images modulate the startle response independent of conscious awareness.

PubMed

Reagh, Zachariah M; Knight, David C

2013-08-01

The emotional response to a threat is influenced by the valence of other stimuli in the environment. This emotional modulation of the threat-elicited response occurs even when negative valence stimuli are not consciously perceived. Relatively little prior research has investigated whether nonconsciously perceived positive valence stimuli modify the response to a threat, and the work that has been completed is in need of additional rigorous testing of stimulus and valence perception. The current study presented images of negative, neutral, and positive valence (1,000 ms and 17 ms durations), followed by a mask. A startle probe (100 dB whitenoise) was presented during 33% of each trial type while eyeblink electromyography (EMG) and skin conductance response (SCR) were measured. During the study, participants rated the emotional content of each image to assess valence perception. Participants accurately classified the valence of 1,000 ms images, but not 17 ms images. Further, participants performed at chance levels on an independent postexperimental forced-choice perception task using 17 ms masked images, indicating they were unable to perceive the valence and content of these images. Greater EMG and SCR were elicited by the startle probe during perceived and unperceived negative images compared to perceived and unperceived positive and neutral images. In addition, perceived, but not unperceived positive images diminished startle responses. The current findings suggest that images of negative valence potentiate the startle response in the absence of conscious stimulus perception. However, the attenuation of the startle response by positive images appears to require perception of the emotional valence of an image. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Preserved subliminal processing and impaired conscious access in schizophrenia

PubMed Central

Del Cul, Antoine; Dehaene, Stanislas; Leboyer, Marion

2006-01-01

Background Studies of visual backward masking have frequently revealed an elevated masking threshold in schizophrenia. This finding has frequently been interpreted as indicating a low-level visual deficit. However, more recent models suggest that masking may also involve late and higher-level integrative processes, while leaving intact early “bottom-up” visual processing. Objectives We tested the hypothesis that the backward masking deficit in schizophrenia corresponds to a deficit in the late stages of conscious perception, whereas the subliminal processing of masked stimuli is fully preserved. Method 28 patients with schizophrenia and 28 normal controls performed two backward-masking experiments. We used Arabic digits as stimuli and varied quasi-continuously the interval with a subsequent mask, thus allowing us to progressively “unmask” the stimuli. We finely quantified their degree of visibility using both objective and subjective measures to evaluate the threshold duration for access to consciousness. We also studied the priming effect caused by the variably masked numbers on a comparison task performed on a subsequently presented and highly visible target number. Results The threshold delay between digit and mask necessary for the conscious perception of the masked stimulus was longer in patients compared to control subjects. This higher consciousness threshold in patients was confirmed by an objective and a subjective measure, and both measures were highly correlated for patients as well as for controls. However, subliminal priming of masked numbers was effective and identical in patients compared to controls. Conclusions Access to conscious report of masked stimuli is impaired in schizophrenia, while fast bottom-up processing of the same stimuli, as assessed by subliminal priming, is preserved. These findings suggest a high-level origin of the masking deficit in schizophrenia, although they leave open for further research its exact relation to previously identified bottom-up visual processing abnormalities. PMID:17146006

Neural Dynamic Logic of Consciousness: The Knowledge Instinct

DTIC Science & Technology

2007-09-07

have the drive for positive stimulation , regardless of the satisfaction of drives such as hunger [i]; David Berlyne emphasized curiosity as a desire...and stimulates differentiation. The simplest modification of eq.(9), accounting for influence of synthesis is dD/dt = aS. (13) These equations...perception (when it is usually subliminal )? Can we measure aesthetic emotions during more complex cognition (when it is more conscious)? Does brain

A new dimension in evolution: Impacts of human consciousness on sustainability - and beyond

Treesearch

Charles M. Jr. McKenna

2006-01-01

Starting with the concepts of the “noosphere” -- the sphere of thought -- and the evolution of consciousness developed by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the first half of the last century, we will introduce a hypothesis declaring the interdependence of the noosphere with global systems, and extrapolate to new perceptions that these concepts, and others which seem to...

Neural signatures of conscious and unconscious emotional face processing in human infants.

PubMed

Jessen, Sarah; Grossmann, Tobias

2015-03-01

Human adults can process emotional information both with and without conscious awareness, and it has been suggested that the two processes rely on partly distinct brain mechanisms. However, the developmental origins of these brain processes are unknown. In the present event-related brain potential (ERP) study, we examined the brain responses of 7-month-old infants in response to subliminally (50 and 100 msec) and supraliminally (500 msec) presented happy and fearful facial expressions. Our results revealed that infants' brain responses (Pb and Nc) over central electrodes distinguished between emotions irrespective of stimulus duration, whereas the discrimination between emotions at occipital electrodes (N290 and P400) only occurred when faces were presented supraliminally (above threshold). This suggests that early in development the human brain not only discriminates between happy and fearful facial expressions irrespective of conscious perception, but also that, similar to adults, supraliminal and subliminal emotion processing relies on distinct neural processes. Our data further suggest that the processing of emotional facial expressions differs across infants depending on their behaviorally shown perceptual sensitivity. The current ERP findings suggest that distinct brain processes underpinning conscious and unconscious emotion perception emerge early in ontogeny and can therefore be seen as a key feature of human social functioning. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Decomposing fear perception: A combination of psychophysics and neurometric modeling of fear perception

PubMed Central

Forscher, Emily C.; Zheng, Yan; Ke, Zijun; Folstein, Jonathan; Li, Wen

2016-01-01

Emotion perception is known to involve multiple operations and waves of analysis, but specific nature of these processes remains poorly understood. Combining psychophysical testing and neurometric analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) in a fear detection task with parametrically-varied fear intensities (N=45), we sought to elucidate key processes in fear perception. Building on psychophysics marking fear perception thresholds, our neurometric model fitting identified several putative operations and stages: four key processes arose in sequence following face presentation—fear-neutral categorization (P1 at 100 ms), fear detection (P300 at 320 ms), valuation (early subcomponent of the late positive potential/LPP at 400–500 ms) and conscious awareness (late subcomponent LPP at 500–600 ms). Furthermore, within-subject brain-behavior association suggests that initial emotion categorization was mandatory and detached from behavior whereas valuation and conscious awareness directly impacted behavioral outcome (explaining 17% and 31% of the total variance, respectively). The current study thus reveals the chronometry of fear perception, ascribing psychological meaning to distinct underlying processes. The combination of early categorization and late valuation of fear reconciles conflicting (categorical versus dimensional) emotion accounts, lending support to a hybrid model. Importantly, future research could specifically interrogate these psychological processes in various behaviors and psychopathologies (e.g., anxiety and depression). PMID:27546075

Attending to the Affective Dimensions of Bullying: Necessary Approaches for the School Leader

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Englehart, Joshua M.

2014-01-01

"Bullying" has permeated the public consciousness, and has become a knee-jerk explanation for virtually any negative event in school. Counter to public perception, however, most school conflict is in fact not bullying. School leaders must nonetheless manage community perception simultaneously with the realities within their schools, even…

Unconscious Learning versus Visual Perception: Dissociable Roles for Gamma Oscillations Revealed in MEG

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Chaumon, Maximilien; Schwartz, Denis; Tallon-Baudry, Catherine

2009-01-01

Oscillatory synchrony in the gamma band (30-120 Hz) has been involved in various cognitive functions including conscious perception and learning. Explicit memory encoding, in particular, relies on enhanced gamma oscillations. Does this finding extend to unconscious memory encoding? Can we dissociate gamma oscillations related to unconscious…

Coupling between perception and action timing during sensorimotor synchronization.

PubMed

Serrien, Deborah J; Spapé, Michiel M

2010-12-17

Time is an important parameter in behaviour, especially when synchronization with external events is required. To evaluate the nature of the association between perception and action timing, this study introduced pitch accented tones during performance of a sensorimotor tapping task. Furthermore, regularity of the pacing cues was modified by small (subliminal) or large (conscious) timing perturbations. A global analysis across the intervals showed that repeated accented tones increased the tap-tone asynchrony in the regular (control) and irregular (subliminal) trials but not in the irregular trials with awareness of the perturbations. Asynchrony variability demonstrated no effect of accentuation in the regular and subliminal irregular trials, whereas it increased in the conscious irregular trials. A local analysis of the intervals showed that pitch accentuation lengthened the duration of the tapping responses, but only in the irregular trials with large timing perturbations. These data underline that common timing processes are automatically engaged for perception and action, although this arrangement can be overturned by cognitive intervention. Overall, the findings highlight a flexible association between perception and action timing within a functional information processing framework. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Affective and cognitive reactions to subliminal flicker from fluorescent lighting.

PubMed

Knez, Igor

2014-05-01

This study renews the classical concept of subliminal perception (Peirce & Jastrow, 1884) by investigating the impact of subliminal flicker from fluorescent lighting on affect and cognitive performance. It was predicted that low compared to high frequency lighting (latter compared to former emits non-flickering light) would evoke larger changes in affective states and also impair cognitive performance. Subjects reported high rather than low frequency lighting to be more pleasant, which, in turn, enhanced their problem solving performance. This suggests that sensory processing can take place outside of conscious awareness resulting in conscious emotional consequences; indicating a role of affect in subliminal/implicit perception, and that positive affect may facilitate cognitive task performance. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Attention and working memory: two basic mechanisms for constructing temporal experiences

PubMed Central

Marchetti, Giorgio

2014-01-01

Various kinds of observations show that the ability of human beings to both consciously relive past events – episodic memory – and conceive future events, entails an active process of construction. This construction process also underpins many other important aspects of conscious human life, such as perceptions, language, and conscious thinking. This article provides an explanation of what makes the constructive process possible and how it works. The process mainly relies on attentional activity, which has a discrete and periodic nature, and working memory, which allows for the combination of discrete attentional operations. An explanation is also provided of how past and future events are constructed. PMID:25177305

[The mind-brain problem (II): about consciousness].

PubMed

Tirapu-Ustarroz, J; Goni-Saez, F

2016-08-16

Consciousness is the result of a series of neurobiological processes in the brain and is, in turn, a feature of the level of its complexity. In fact, being conscious and being aware place us before what Chalmers called the 'soft problem' and the 'hard problem' of consciousness. The first refers to aspects such as wakefulness, attention or knowledge, while the second is concerned with such complex concepts as self-awareness, 'neural self' or social cognition. In this sense it can be said that the concept of consciousness as a unitary thing poses problems of approaching a highly complex reality. We outline the main models that have addressed the topic of consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. On the one hand, there are the conscious experience models of Crick, Edelman and Tononi, and Llinas, and, on the other, the models and neuronal bases of self-consciousness by authors such as Damasio (core and extended consciousness), Tulving (autonoetic and noetic consciousness and chronesthesia), the problem of qualia (Dennett, Popper, Ramachandran) and the cognit model (Fuster). All the stimuli we receive from the outside world and from our own internal world are converted and processed by the brain so as to integrate them, and from there they become part of our identity. The perception of a dog and being able to recognise it as such or the understanding of our own consciousness are the result of the functioning of brain, neuronal and synaptic structures. The more complex processes of consciousness, such as self-awareness or empathy, are probably emergent brain processes.

Electrical Stimulation of the Left and Right Human Fusiform Gyrus Causes Different Effects in Conscious Face Perception

PubMed Central

Rangarajan, Vinitha; Hermes, Dora; Foster, Brett L.; Weiner, Kevin S.; Jacques, Corentin; Grill-Spector, Kalanit

2014-01-01

Neuroimaging and electrophysiological studies across species have confirmed bilateral face-selective responses in the ventral temporal cortex (VTC) and prosopagnosia is reported in patients with lesions in the VTC including the fusiform gyrus (FG). As imaging and electrophysiological studies provide correlative evidence, and brain lesions often comprise both white and gray matter structures beyond the FG, we designed the current study to explore the link between face-related electrophysiological responses in the FG and the causal effects of electrical stimulation of the left or right FG in face perception. We used a combination of electrocorticography (ECoG) and electrical brain stimulation (EBS) in 10 human subjects implanted with intracranial electrodes in either the left (5 participants, 30 FG sites) or right (5 participants, 26 FG sites) hemispheres. We identified FG sites with face-selective ECoG responses, and recorded perceptual reports during EBS of these sites. In line with existing literature, face-selective ECoG responses were present in both left and right FG sites. However, when the same sites were stimulated, we observed a striking difference between hemispheres. Only EBS of the right FG caused changes in the conscious perception of faces, whereas EBS of strongly face-selective regions in the left FG produced non-face-related visual changes, such as phosphenes. This study examines the relationship between correlative versus causal nature of ECoG and EBS, respectively, and provides important insight into the differential roles of the right versus left FG in conscious face perception. PMID:25232118

Manipulation of the extrastriate frontal loop can resolve visual disability in blindsight patients.

PubMed

Badgaiyan, Rajendra D

2012-12-01

Patients with blindsight are not consciously aware of visual stimuli in the affected field of vision but retain nonconscious perception. This disability can be resolved if nonconsciously perceived information can be brought to their conscious awareness. It can be accomplished by manipulating neural network of visual awareness. To understand this network, we studied the pattern of cortical activity elicited during processing of visual stimuli with or without conscious awareness. The analysis indicated that a re-entrant signaling loop between the area V3A (located in the extrastriate cortex) and the frontal cortex is critical for processing conscious awareness. The loop is activated by visual signals relayed in the primary visual cortex, which is damaged in blindsight patients. Because of the damage, V3A-frontal loop is not activated and the signals are not processed for conscious awareness. These patients however continue to receive visual signals through the lateral geniculate nucleus. Since these signals do not activate the V3A-frontal loop, the stimuli are not consciously perceived. If visual input from the lateral geniculate nucleus is appropriately manipulated and made to activate the V3A-frontal loop, blindsight patients can regain conscious vision. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Pain, dissociation and subliminal self-representations.

PubMed

Bob, Petr

2008-03-01

According to recent evidence, neurophysiological processes coupled to pain are closely related to the mechanisms of consciousness. This evidence is in accordance with findings that changes in states of consciousness during hypnosis or traumatic dissociation strongly affect conscious perception and experience of pain, and markedly influence brain functions. Past research indicates that painful experience may induce dissociated state and information about the experience may be stored or processed unconsciously. Reported findings suggest common neurophysiological mechanisms of pain and dissociation and point to a hypothesis of dissociation as a defense mechanism against psychological and physical pain that substantially influences functions of consciousness. The hypothesis is also supported by findings that information can be represented in the mind/brain without the subject's awareness. The findings of unconsciously present information suggest possible binding between conscious contents and self-functions that constitute self-representational dimensions of consciousness. The self-representation means that certain inner states of own body are interpreted as mental and somatic identity, while other bodily signals, currently not accessible to the dominant interpreter's access are dissociated and may be defined as subliminal self-representations. In conclusion, the neurophysiological aspects of consciousness and its integrative role in the therapy of painful traumatic memories are discussed.

Exploration of Functional Connectivity During Preferred Music Stimulation in Patients with Disorders of Consciousness

PubMed Central

Heine, Lizette; Castro, Maïté; Martial, Charlotte; Tillmann, Barbara; Laureys, Steven; Perrin, Fabien

2015-01-01

Preferred music is a highly emotional and salient stimulus, which has previously been shown to increase the probability of auditory cognitive event-related responses in patients with disorders of consciousness (DOC). To further investigate whether and how music modifies the functional connectivity of the brain in DOC, five patients were assessed with both a classical functional connectivity scan (control condition), and a scan while they were exposed to their preferred music (music condition). Seed-based functional connectivity (left or right primary auditory cortex), and mean network connectivity of three networks linked to conscious sound perception were assessed. The auditory network showed stronger functional connectivity with the left precentral gyrus and the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during music as compared to the control condition. Furthermore, functional connectivity of the external network was enhanced during the music condition in the temporo-parietal junction. Although caution should be taken due to small sample size, these results suggest that preferred music exposure might have effects on patients auditory network (implied in rhythm and music perception) and on cerebral regions linked to autobiographical memory. PMID:26617542

Segregating the neural correlates of physical and perceived change in auditory input using the change deafness effect.

PubMed

Puschmann, Sebastian; Weerda, Riklef; Klump, Georg; Thiel, Christiane M

2013-05-01

Psychophysical experiments show that auditory change detection can be disturbed in situations in which listeners have to monitor complex auditory input. We made use of this change deafness effect to segregate the neural correlates of physical change in auditory input from brain responses related to conscious change perception in an fMRI experiment. Participants listened to two successively presented complex auditory scenes, which consisted of six auditory streams, and had to decide whether scenes were identical or whether the frequency of one stream was changed between presentations. Our results show that physical changes in auditory input, independent of successful change detection, are represented at the level of auditory cortex. Activations related to conscious change perception, independent of physical change, were found in the insula and the ACC. Moreover, our data provide evidence for significant effective connectivity between auditory cortex and the insula in the case of correctly detected auditory changes, but not for missed changes. This underlines the importance of the insula/anterior cingulate network for conscious change detection.

A Magic Dwells in Each Beginning? Contextual Effects of Autonomy Support on Students' Intrinsic Motivation in Unfamiliar Situations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Thomas, Almut E.; Mueller, Florian H.

2017-01-01

In school classes students influence each other at conscious and subconscious levels and therefore, students' shared perceptions are considered meaningful for the development of the individual student. This article identified situations where students' class-average perceptions of autonomy support add to the predictive validity of students'…

How quantum brain biology can rescue conscious free will

PubMed Central

Hameroff, Stuart

2012-01-01

Conscious “free will” is problematic because (1) brain mechanisms causing consciousness are unknown, (2) measurable brain activity correlating with conscious perception apparently occurs too late for real-time conscious response, consciousness thus being considered “epiphenomenal illusion,” and (3) determinism, i.e., our actions and the world around us seem algorithmic and inevitable. The Penrose–Hameroff theory of “orchestrated objective reduction (Orch OR)” identifies discrete conscious moments with quantum computations in microtubules inside brain neurons, e.g., 40/s in concert with gamma synchrony EEG. Microtubules organize neuronal interiors and regulate synapses. In Orch OR, microtubule quantum computations occur in integration phases in dendrites and cell bodies of integrate-and-fire brain neurons connected and synchronized by gap junctions, allowing entanglement of microtubules among many neurons. Quantum computations in entangled microtubules terminate by Penrose “objective reduction (OR),” a proposal for quantum state reduction and conscious moments linked to fundamental spacetime geometry. Each OR reduction selects microtubule states which can trigger axonal firings, and control behavior. The quantum computations are “orchestrated” by synaptic inputs and memory (thus “Orch OR”). If correct, Orch OR can account for conscious causal agency, resolving problem 1. Regarding problem 2, Orch OR can cause temporal non-locality, sending quantum information backward in classical time, enabling conscious control of behavior. Three lines of evidence for brain backward time effects are presented. Regarding problem 3, Penrose OR (and Orch OR) invokes non-computable influences from information embedded in spacetime geometry, potentially avoiding algorithmic determinism. In summary, Orch OR can account for real-time conscious causal agency, avoiding the need for consciousness to be seen as epiphenomenal illusion. Orch OR can rescue conscious free will. PMID:23091452

Little behaviors with big impacts: Exploring the sense of community surrounding socially conscious consumption

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Devincenzo, Marie E. Hafey

The thesis is a study of socially conscious consumption practices and the meanings those behaviors have for consumers who participate in them. Psychological sense of community was used as the theoretical grounding for the study because it provided a way to examine socially conscious behaviors not solely as the behaviors of individuals but as behaviors within a social context with social meaning. Data were collected in two phases. First, a written, projective instrument compared cultural perceptions of various types of socially conscious consumption practices. Then, in-depth interviews were conducted to collect consumption narratives from participants and nonparticipants in a wind energy program called Blue Sky. The interviews were analyzed using a hermeneutical approach. The findings identified a new type of consumption community not recognized in prior literature: the principle based consumption community.

Object of desire self-consciousness theory.

PubMed

Bogaert, Anthony F; Brotto, Lori A

2014-01-01

In this article, the authors discuss the construct of object of desire self-consciousness, the perception that one is romantically and sexually desirable in another's eyes. The authors discuss the nature of the construct, variations in its expression, and how it may function as part of a self-schemata or script related to romance and sexuality. The authors suggest that object of desire self-consciousness may be an adaptive, evolved psychological mechanism allowing sexual and romantic tactics suitable to one's mate value. The authors also suggest that it can act as a signal that one has high mate value in the sexual marketplace. The authors then review literature (e.g., on fantasies, on sexual activity preferences, on sexual dysfunctions, on language) suggesting that object of desire self-consciousness plays a particularly important role in heterosexual women's sexual/romantic functioning and desires.

Who Learns More? Cultural Differences in Implicit Sequence Learning

PubMed Central

Fu, Qiufang; Dienes, Zoltan; Shang, Junchen; Fu, Xiaolan

2013-01-01

Background It is well documented that East Asians differ from Westerners in conscious perception and attention. However, few studies have explored cultural differences in unconscious processes such as implicit learning. Methodology/Principal Findings The global-local Navon letters were adopted in the serial reaction time (SRT) task, during which Chinese and British participants were instructed to respond to global or local letters, to investigate whether culture influences what people acquire in implicit sequence learning. Our results showed that from the beginning British expressed a greater local bias in perception than Chinese, confirming a cultural difference in perception. Further, over extended exposure, the Chinese learned the target regularity better than the British when the targets were global, indicating a global advantage for Chinese in implicit learning. Moreover, Chinese participants acquired greater unconscious knowledge of an irrelevant regularity than British participants, indicating that the Chinese were more sensitive to contextual regularities than the British. Conclusions/Significance The results suggest that cultural biases can profoundly influence both what people consciously perceive and unconsciously learn. PMID:23940773

Human Development IX: A Model of the Wholeness of Man, His Consciousness, and Collective Consciousness

PubMed Central

Ventegodt, Søren; Hermansen, Tyge Dahl; Flensborg-Madsen, Trine; Rald, Erik; Nielsen, Maj Lyck; Merrick, Joav

2006-01-01

In this paper we look at the rational and the emotional interpretation of reality in the human brain and being, and discuss the representation of the brain-mind (ego), the body-mind (Id), and the outer world in the human wholeness (the I or “soul”). Based on this we discuss a number of factors including the coherence between perception, attention and consciousness, and the relation between thought, fantasies, visions and dreams. We discuss and explain concepts as intent, will, morals and ethics. The Jungian concept of the human collective conscious and unconscious is also analyzed. We also hypothesis on the nature of intuition and consider the source of religious experience of man. These phenomena are explained based on the concept of deep quantum chemistry and infinite dancing fractal spirals making up the energetic backbone of the world. In this paper we consider man as a real wholeness and debate the concepts of subjectivity, consciousness and intent that can be deduced from such a perspective. PMID:17115085

The notion of "double consciousness" in Alfred Binet's psychological experimentalism.

PubMed

Foschi, Renato; Cicciola, Elisabetta

2006-01-01

Between 1889 and 1892, Binet published two remarkable essays, On Double Consciousness and Les alterations de la personnalité, which marked the end of a period of researches and interests closely linked to the doctrines on hypnosis and hysteria elaborated by the Ecole de la Salpêtrière. Later on, Binet was to abandon the utilization of hypnosis as a technique of experimentation, after he realized that the suggestibility of the "subjects" of these experiences had led to major experimental mistakes. However, during the years of his work at the Salpêtrière, he elaborated the notion of "double consciousness," which can be considered an alternative both to Ribot's idea of dissociation and to Janet's idea of disaggregation. The notion of double consciousness reveals both the originality of Binet's psychology--which was elaborated at the end of the nineteenth century--and its verifiable link to twentieth-century psychology. Unlike Janet, in fact, Binet did not support a theory of psychological deficiency or "misery," or of the retraction of the sphere of consciousness, which a normal capacity for psychological synthesis would oppose. On the contrary, Binet's psychology resulted in a theory stating that the duality of consciousness works in a perfect and autonomous way within the individual and, thanks to hypnosis, can be investigated in a laboratory.

Decomposing fear perception: A combination of psychophysics and neurometric modeling of fear perception.

PubMed

Forscher, Emily C; Zheng, Yan; Ke, Zijun; Folstein, Jonathan; Li, Wen

2016-10-01

Emotion perception is known to involve multiple operations and waves of analysis, but specific nature of these processes remains poorly understood. Combining psychophysical testing and neurometric analysis of event-related potentials (ERPs) in a fear detection task with parametrically varied fear intensities (N=45), we sought to elucidate key processes in fear perception. Building on psychophysics marking fear perception thresholds, our neurometric model fitting identified several putative operations and stages: four key processes arose in sequence following face presentation - fear-neutral categorization (P1 at 100ms), fear detection (P300 at 320ms), valuation (early subcomponent of the late positive potential/LPP at 400-500ms) and conscious awareness (late subcomponent LPP at 500-600ms). Furthermore, within-subject brain-behavior association suggests that initial emotion categorization was mandatory and detached from behavior whereas valuation and conscious awareness directly impacted behavioral outcome (explaining 17% and 31% of the total variance, respectively). The current study thus reveals the chronometry of fear perception, ascribing psychological meaning to distinct underlying processes. The combination of early categorization and late valuation of fear reconciles conflicting (categorical versus dimensional) emotion accounts, lending support to a hybrid model. Importantly, future research could specifically interrogate these psychological processes in various behaviors and psychopathologies (e.g., anxiety and depression). Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Consciousness: a neural capacity for objectivity, especially pronounced in humans

PubMed Central

Dijker, Anton J. M.

2014-01-01

Consciousness tends to be viewed either as subjective experience of sensations and feelings, or as perception and internal representation of objects. This paper argues that neither view sufficiently acknowledges that consciousness may refer to the brain’s most adaptive property: its capacity to produce states of objectivity. It is proposed that this capacity relies on multiple sensorimotor networks for internally representing objects and their properties in terms of expectancies, as well as on motivational and motor mechanisms involved in exploration, play, and care for vulnerable living and non-living objects. States of objectivity are associated with a very special phenomenal aspect; the experience that subjective aspects are absent and one is “just looking” at the world as it really is and can be. However, these states are normally closely preceded and followed by (and tend to be combined or fused with) sensations and feelings which are caused by activation of sensory and motivational mechanisms. A capacity for objectivity may have evolved in different species and can be conceived as a common basis for other elusive psychological properties such as intelligence, conscience, and esthetic experience; all three linked to crucial behaviors in human evolution such as tool making, cooperation, and art. The brain’s pervasive tendency to objectify may be responsible for wrongly equating consciousness with feelings and wrongly opposing it to well-learned or habitual (“unconscious”) patterns of perception and behavior. PMID:24672506

Unconscious Imagination and the Mental Imagery Debate

PubMed Central

Brogaard, Berit; Gatzia, Dimitria Electra

2017-01-01

Traditionally, philosophers have appealed to the phenomenological similarity between visual experience and visual imagery to support the hypothesis that there is significant overlap between the perceptual and imaginative domains. The current evidence, however, is inconclusive: while evidence from transcranial brain stimulation seems to support this conclusion, neurophysiological evidence from brain lesion studies (e.g., from patients with brain lesions resulting in a loss of mental imagery but not a corresponding loss of perception and vice versa) indicates that there are functional and anatomical dissociations between mental imagery and perception. Assuming that the mental imagery and perception do not overlap, at least, to the extent traditionally assumed, then the question arises as to what exactly mental imagery is and whether it parallels perception by proceeding via several functionally distinct mechanisms. In this review, we argue that even though there may not be a shared mechanism underlying vision for perception and conscious imagery, there is an overlap between the mechanisms underlying vision for action and unconscious visual imagery. On the basis of these findings, we propose a modification of Kosslyn’s model of imagery that accommodates unconscious imagination and explore possible explanations of the quasi-pictorial phenomenology of conscious visual imagery in light of the fact that its underlying neural substrates and mechanisms typically are distinct from those of visual experience. PMID:28588527

Conscious experience and episodic memory: hippocampus at the crossroads.

PubMed

Behrendt, Ralf-Peter

2013-01-01

If an instance of conscious experience of the seemingly objective world around us could be regarded as a newly formed event memory, much as an instance of mental imagery has the content of a retrieved event memory, and if, therefore, the stream of conscious experience could be seen as evidence for ongoing formation of event memories that are linked into episodic memory sequences, then unitary conscious experience could be defined as a symbolic representation of the pattern of hippocampal neuronal firing that encodes an event memory - a theoretical stance that may shed light into the mind-body and binding problems in consciousness research. Exceedingly detailed symbols that describe patterns of activity rapidly self-organizing, at each cycle of the θ rhythm, in the hippocampus are instances of unitary conscious experience that jointly constitute the stream of consciousness. Integrating object information (derived from the ventral visual stream and orbitofrontal cortex) with contextual emotional information (from the anterior insula) and spatial environmental information (from the dorsal visual stream), the hippocampus rapidly forms event codes that have the informational content of objects embedded in an emotional and spatiotemporally extending context. Event codes, formed in the CA3-dentate network for the purpose of their memorization, are not only contextualized but also allocentric representations, similarly to conscious experiences of events and objects situated in a seemingly objective and observer-independent framework of phenomenal space and time. Conscious perception, creating the spatially and temporally extending world that we perceive around us, is likely to be evolutionarily related to more fleeting and seemingly internal forms of conscious experience, such as autobiographical memory recall, mental imagery, including goal anticipation, and to other forms of externalized conscious experience, namely dreaming and hallucinations; and evidence pointing to an important contribution of the hippocampus to these conscious phenomena will be reviewed.

Color synesthesia. Insight into perception, emotion, and consciousness

PubMed Central

Safran, Avinoam B.; Sanda, Nicolae

2015-01-01

Purpose of review Synesthesia is an extraordinary perceptual phenomenon, in which individuals experience unusual percepts elicited by the activation of an unrelated sensory modality or by a cognitive process. Emotional reactions are commonly associated. The condition prompted philosophical debates on the nature of perception and impacted the course of art history. It recently generated a considerable interest among neuroscientists, but its clinical significance apparently remains underevaluated. This review focuses on the recent studies regarding variants of color synesthesia, the commonest form of the condition. Recent findings Synesthesia is commonly classified as developmental and acquired. Developmental forms predispose to changes in primary sensory processing and cognitive functions, usually with better performances in certain aspects and worse in others, and to heightened creativity. Acquired forms of synesthesia commonly arise from drug ingestion or neurological disorders, including thalamic lesions and sensory deprivation (e.g., blindness). Cerebral exploration using structural and functional imaging has demonstrated distinct patterns in cortical activation and brain connectivity for controls and synesthetes. Artworks of affected painters are most illustrative of the nature of synesthetic experiences. Summary Results of the recent investigations on synesthesia offered a remarkable insight into the mechanisms of perception, emotion and consciousness, and deserve attention both from neuroscientists and from clinicians. PMID:25545055

Color synesthesia. Insight into perception, emotion, and consciousness.

PubMed

Safran, Avinoam B; Sanda, Nicolae

2015-02-01

Synesthesia is an extraordinary perceptual phenomenon, in which individuals experience unusual percepts elicited by the activation of an unrelated sensory modality or by a cognitive process. Emotional reactions are commonly associated. The condition prompted philosophical debates on the nature of perception and impacted the course of art history. It recently generated a considerable interest among neuroscientists, but its clinical significance apparently remains underevaluated. This review focuses on the recent studies regarding variants of color synesthesia, the commonest form of the condition. Synesthesia is commonly classified as developmental and acquired. Developmental forms predispose to changes in primary sensory processing and cognitive functions, usually with better performances in certain aspects and worse in others, and to heightened creativity. Acquired forms of synesthesia commonly arise from drug ingestion or neurological disorders, including thalamic lesions and sensory deprivation (e.g., blindness). Cerebral exploration using structural and functional imaging has demonstrated distinct patterns in cortical activation and brain connectivity for controls and synesthetes. Artworks of affected painters are most illustrative of the nature of synesthetic experiences. Results of the recent investigations on synesthesia offered a remarkable insight into the mechanisms of perception, emotion and consciousness, and deserve attention both from neuroscientists and from clinicians.

The importance of vertical buildings in perception and memorising the city

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Alihodzic, Rifat; Zupančič, Domen

2018-03-01

Being aware of the surrounding we live in, among other things, means establishing of spatial relationships between oneself and the environment, equally important as relationship between oneself and others. Environment consists of facilities and space. Space, "gift by itself", is defined by terrain topography, sky horizon, plants and animals. The architecture, as a profession, is interested in space created distinctively. Perception, as elementary process of consciousness and psychological life, deals with being conscious about something. In this case, physical structures that create a city. Psychological experience of urban environment is important factor having effect on perception, memorising and orientation in urban space. Gestalt psychology of perceiving is area applying to and significant for architecture either. The importance of vertical lies in its perceiving the gravitation, forming perceiving focus, landmark, for urban units and subunits to be memorised, creating spatial hierarchy and perception logics, remembering and orientation in space. This work analyses reasons for building upright with comparative analyses in their participation in space and on human psychology. This paper's purpose is to, using fundamental facts, show the importance of vertical buildings, not as a spatial use phenomenon, but also as significant phenomenon.

Unconscious manipulation of free choice by novel primes.

PubMed

Ocampo, Brenda

2015-07-01

The extent to which non-conscious perception can influence behaviour has been a topic of considerable controversy in psychology for decades. Although a challenging task, convincing empirical demonstrations have emerged suggesting that non-consciously perceived 'prime' stimuli can influence motor responses to subsequent targets. Interestingly, recent studies have shown that the influence of masked primes is not restricted to target-elicited responses, but can also bias free-choices between alternative behaviours. The present experiment extends these findings by showing that free-choices could also be biased by novel primes that never appeared as targets and therefore could not trigger acquired stimulus-response (S-R) mappings. This new evidence suggests that free-choice behaviour can be influenced by non-consciously triggered semantic representations. Furthermore, the results reported here support accounts of masked priming that posit an automatic semantic categorisation of non-consciously perceived visual stimuli. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From sensation to perception: Using multivariate classification of visual illusions to identify neural correlates of conscious awareness in space and time.

PubMed

Hogendoorn, Hinze

2015-01-01

An important goal of cognitive neuroscience is understanding the neural underpinnings of conscious awareness. Although the low-level processing of sensory input is well understood in most modalities, it remains a challenge to understand how the brain translates such input into conscious awareness. Here, I argue that the application of multivariate pattern classification techniques to neuroimaging data acquired while observers experience perceptual illusions provides a unique way to dissociate sensory mechanisms from mechanisms underlying conscious awareness. Using this approach, it is possible to directly compare patterns of neural activity that correspond to the contents of awareness, independent from changes in sensory input, and to track these neural representations over time at high temporal resolution. I highlight five recent studies using this approach, and provide practical considerations and limitations for future implementations.

Using topographic networks to build a representation of consciousness.

PubMed

Tinsley, Chris J

2008-04-01

The subject of consciousness has intrigued both psychologists and neuroscientists for many years. Recently, following many recent advances in the emerging field of cognitive neuroscience, there is the possibility that this fundamental process may soon be explained. In particular, there have been dramatic insights gained into the mechanisms of attention, cognition and perception in recent decades. Here, simple network models are proposed which are used to create a representation of consciousness. The models are inspired by the structure of the thalamus and all incorporate topographic layers in their structure. Operation of the models allows filtering of the information reaching the representation according to (1) modality and/or (2) sub-modality, in addition several of the models allowing filtering at the topographic level. The models presented have different structures and employ different integrative mechanisms to produce gating or amplification at different levels; the resultant representations of consciousness are discussed.

Fine-Grained Parcellation of Brain Connectivity Improves Differentiation of States of Consciousness During Graded Propofol Sedation.

PubMed

Liu, Xiaolin; Lauer, Kathryn K; Ward, B Douglas; Roberts, Christopher J; Liu, Suyan; Gollapudy, Suneeta; Rohloff, Robert; Gross, William; Xu, Zhan; Chen, Guangyu; Binder, Jeffrey R; Li, Shi-Jiang; Hudetz, Anthony G

2017-08-01

Conscious perception relies on interactions between spatially and functionally distinct modules of the brain at various spatiotemporal scales. These interactions are altered by anesthesia, an intervention that leads to fading consciousness. Relatively little is known about brain functional connectivity and its anesthetic modulation at a fine spatial scale. Here, we used functional imaging to examine propofol-induced changes in functional connectivity in brain networks defined at a fine-grained parcellation based on a combination of anatomical and functional features. Fifteen healthy volunteers underwent resting-state functional imaging in wakeful baseline, mild sedation, deep sedation, and recovery of consciousness. Compared with wakeful baseline, propofol produced widespread, dose-dependent functional connectivity changes that scaled with the extent to which consciousness was altered. The dominant changes in connectivity were associated with the frontal lobes. By examining node pairs that demonstrated a trend of functional connectivity change between wakefulness and deep sedation, quadratic discriminant analysis differentiated the states of consciousness in individual participants more accurately at a fine-grained parcellation (e.g., 2000 nodes) than at a coarse-grained parcellation (e.g., 116 anatomical nodes). Our study suggests that defining brain networks at a high granularity may provide a superior imaging-based distinction of the graded effect of anesthesia on consciousness.

Lateral Information Processing by Spiking Neurons: A Theoretical Model of the Neural Correlate of Consciousness

PubMed Central

Ebner, Marc; Hameroff, Stuart

2011-01-01

Cognitive brain functions, for example, sensory perception, motor control and learning, are understood as computation by axonal-dendritic chemical synapses in networks of integrate-and-fire neurons. Cognitive brain functions may occur either consciously or nonconsciously (on “autopilot”). Conscious cognition is marked by gamma synchrony EEG, mediated largely by dendritic-dendritic gap junctions, sideways connections in input/integration layers. Gap-junction-connected neurons define a sub-network within a larger neural network. A theoretical model (the “conscious pilot”) suggests that as gap junctions open and close, a gamma-synchronized subnetwork, or zone moves through the brain as an executive agent, converting nonconscious “auto-pilot” cognition to consciousness, and enhancing computation by coherent processing and collective integration. In this study we implemented sideways “gap junctions” in a single-layer artificial neural network to perform figure/ground separation. The set of neurons connected through gap junctions form a reconfigurable resistive grid or sub-network zone. In the model, outgoing spikes are temporally integrated and spatially averaged using the fixed resistive grid set up by neurons of similar function which are connected through gap-junctions. This spatial average, essentially a feedback signal from the neuron's output, determines whether particular gap junctions between neurons will open or close. Neurons connected through open gap junctions synchronize their output spikes. We have tested our gap-junction-defined sub-network in a one-layer neural network on artificial retinal inputs using real-world images. Our system is able to perform figure/ground separation where the laterally connected sub-network of neurons represents a perceived object. Even though we only show results for visual stimuli, our approach should generalize to other modalities. The system demonstrates a moving sub-network zone of synchrony, within which the contents of perception are represented and contained. This mobile zone can be viewed as a model of the neural correlate of consciousness in the brain. PMID:22046178

Lateral information processing by spiking neurons: a theoretical model of the neural correlate of consciousness.

PubMed

Ebner, Marc; Hameroff, Stuart

2011-01-01

Cognitive brain functions, for example, sensory perception, motor control and learning, are understood as computation by axonal-dendritic chemical synapses in networks of integrate-and-fire neurons. Cognitive brain functions may occur either consciously or nonconsciously (on "autopilot"). Conscious cognition is marked by gamma synchrony EEG, mediated largely by dendritic-dendritic gap junctions, sideways connections in input/integration layers. Gap-junction-connected neurons define a sub-network within a larger neural network. A theoretical model (the "conscious pilot") suggests that as gap junctions open and close, a gamma-synchronized subnetwork, or zone moves through the brain as an executive agent, converting nonconscious "auto-pilot" cognition to consciousness, and enhancing computation by coherent processing and collective integration. In this study we implemented sideways "gap junctions" in a single-layer artificial neural network to perform figure/ground separation. The set of neurons connected through gap junctions form a reconfigurable resistive grid or sub-network zone. In the model, outgoing spikes are temporally integrated and spatially averaged using the fixed resistive grid set up by neurons of similar function which are connected through gap-junctions. This spatial average, essentially a feedback signal from the neuron's output, determines whether particular gap junctions between neurons will open or close. Neurons connected through open gap junctions synchronize their output spikes. We have tested our gap-junction-defined sub-network in a one-layer neural network on artificial retinal inputs using real-world images. Our system is able to perform figure/ground separation where the laterally connected sub-network of neurons represents a perceived object. Even though we only show results for visual stimuli, our approach should generalize to other modalities. The system demonstrates a moving sub-network zone of synchrony, within which the contents of perception are represented and contained. This mobile zone can be viewed as a model of the neural correlate of consciousness in the brain.

Appearance concerns among women with neurofibromatosis: examining sexual/bodily and social self-consciousness.

PubMed

Smith, Kelly B; Wang, Daphne L; Plotkin, Scott R; Park, Elyse R

2013-12-01

Neurofibromatosis (NF) 1 and 2 have distinct appearance effects, yet little research has examined patients' appearance concerns. We assessed appearance concerns and self-consciousness, self-esteem, and loneliness among women with NF. Women with NF1 (n = 79) and NF2 (n = 48) completed the Derriford Appearance Scale to assess appearance concerns and sexual/bodily and social self-consciousness, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and UCLA Loneliness Scale. Women's appearance concerns were coded to determine whether they were NF-related and whether psychosocial factors contributed to the concerns. A total of 85% of women reported appearance concerns, many of which were NF-related and attributed to psychosocial factors. Women with NF1 reported significantly more sexual/bodily self-consciousness but similar levels of social self-consciousness compared with women with NF2. Significantly higher sexual/bodily self-consciousness was found among married/cohabiting women regardless of NF group. Compared with general population norms and breast cancer survivors (BCS), women with NF1 reported significantly greater sexual/bodily and social self-consciousness. Women with NF2 reported less sexual/bodily self-consciousness compared with population norms, yet tended to report greater sexual/bodily self-consciousness than BCS. Women with NF2 reported significantly greater social self-consciousness compared with population norms and BCS. For both NF1 and NF2, higher levels of sexual/bodily and social self-consciousness were related to lower self-esteem and higher levels of social self-consciousness to more loneliness. Appearance concerns are prevalent, and social self-consciousness is high, among women with NF1 and NF2. Women with NF1 compared with NF2 experience more sexual/bodily self-consciousness. Providers should assess the impact of NF on women's self-perceptions and address sexual, body image, and social concerns. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Acute tryptophan depletion attenuates conscious appraisal of social emotional signals in healthy female volunteers.

PubMed

Beacher, Felix D C C; Gray, Marcus A; Minati, Ludovico; Whale, Richard; Harrison, Neil A; Critchley, Hugo D

2011-02-01

Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) decreases levels of central serotonin. ATD thus enables the cognitive effects of serotonin to be studied, with implications for the understanding of psychiatric conditions, including depression. To determine the role of serotonin in conscious (explicit) and unconscious/incidental processing of emotional information. A randomized, double-blind, cross-over design was used with 15 healthy female participants. Subjective mood was recorded at baseline and after 4 h, when participants performed an explicit emotional face processing task, and a task eliciting unconscious processing of emotionally aversive and neutral images presented subliminally using backward masking. ATD was associated with a robust reduction in plasma tryptophan at 4 h but had no effect on mood or autonomic physiology. ATD was associated with significantly lower attractiveness ratings for happy faces and attenuation of intensity/arousal ratings of angry faces. ATD also reduced overall reaction times on the unconscious perception task, but there was no interaction with emotional content of masked stimuli. ATD did not affect breakthrough perception (accuracy in identification) of masked images. ATD attenuates the attractiveness of positive faces and the negative intensity of threatening faces, suggesting that serotonin contributes specifically to the appraisal of the social salience of both positive and negative salient social emotional cues. We found no evidence that serotonin affects unconscious processing of negative emotional stimuli. These novel findings implicate serotonin in conscious aspects of active social and behavioural engagement and extend knowledge regarding the effects of ATD on emotional perception.

Dreams, reality and memory: confabulations in lucid dreamers implicate reality-monitoring dysfunction in dream consciousness.

PubMed

Corlett, P R; Canavan, S V; Nahum, L; Appah, F; Morgan, P T

2014-01-01

Dreams might represent a window on altered states of consciousness with relevance to psychotic experiences, where reality monitoring is impaired. We examined reality monitoring in healthy, non-psychotic individuals with varying degrees of dream awareness using a task designed to assess confabulatory memory errors - a confusion regarding reality whereby information from the past feels falsely familiar and does not constrain current perception appropriately. Confabulatory errors are common following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Ventromedial function has previously been implicated in dreaming and dream awareness. In a hospital research setting, physically and mentally healthy individuals with high (n = 18) and low (n = 13) self-reported dream awareness completed a computerised cognitive task that involved reality monitoring based on familiarity across a series of task runs. Signal detection theory analysis revealed a more liberal acceptance bias in those with high dream awareness, consistent with the notion of overlap in the perception of dreams, imagination and reality. We discuss the implications of these results for models of reality monitoring and psychosis with a particular focus on the role of vmPFC in default-mode brain function, model-based reinforcement learning and the phenomenology of dreaming and waking consciousness.

Missing a trick: Auditory load modulates conscious awareness in audition.

PubMed

Fairnie, Jake; Moore, Brian C J; Remington, Anna

2016-07-01

In the visual domain there is considerable evidence supporting the Load Theory of Attention and Cognitive Control, which holds that conscious perception of background stimuli depends on the level of perceptual load involved in a primary task. However, literature on the applicability of this theory to the auditory domain is limited and, in many cases, inconsistent. Here we present a novel "auditory search task" that allows systematic investigation of the impact of auditory load on auditory conscious perception. An array of simultaneous, spatially separated sounds was presented to participants. On half the trials, a critical stimulus was presented concurrently with the array. Participants were asked to detect which of 2 possible targets was present in the array (primary task), and whether the critical stimulus was present or absent (secondary task). Increasing the auditory load of the primary task (raising the number of sounds in the array) consistently reduced the ability to detect the critical stimulus. This indicates that, at least in certain situations, load theory applies in the auditory domain. The implications of this finding are discussed both with respect to our understanding of typical audition and for populations with altered auditory processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

From computing with numbers to computing with words. From manipulation of measurements to manipulation of perceptions.

PubMed

Zadeh, L A

2001-04-01

Interest in issues relating to consciousness has grown markedly during the last several years. And yet, nobody can claim that consciousness is a well-understood concept that lends itself to precise analysis. It may be argued that, as a concept, consciousness is much too complex to fit into the conceptual structure of existing theories based on Aristotelian logic and probability theory. An approach suggested in this paper links consciousness to perceptions and perceptions to their descriptors in a natural language. In this way, those aspects of consciousness which relate to reasoning and concept formation are linked to what is referred to as the methodology of computing with words (CW). Computing, in its usual sense, is centered on manipulation of numbers and symbols. In contrast, computing with words, or CW for short, is a methodology in which the objects of computation are words and propositions drawn from a natural language (e.g., small, large, far, heavy, not very likely, the price of gas is low and declining, Berkeley is near San Francisco, it is very unlikely that there will be a significant increase in the price of oil in the near future, etc.). Computing with words is inspired by the remarkable human capability to perform a wide variety of physical and mental tasks without any measurements and any computations. Familiar examples of such tasks are parking a car, driving in heavy traffic, playing golf, riding a bicycle, understanding speech, and summarizing a story. Underlying this remarkable capability is the brain's crucial ability to manipulate perceptions--perceptions of distance, size, weight, color, speed, time, direction, force, number, truth, likelihood, and other characteristics of physical and mental objects. Manipulation of perceptions plays a key role in human recognition, decision and execution processes. As a methodology, computing with words provides a foundation for a computational theory of perceptions: a theory which may have an important bearing on how humans make--and machines might make--perception-based rational decisions in an environment of imprecision, uncertainty, and partial truth. A basic difference between perceptions and measurements is that, in general, measurements are crisp, whereas perceptions are fuzzy. One of the fundamental aims of science has been and continues to be that of progressing from perceptions to measurements. Pursuit of this aim has led to brilliant successes. We have sent men to the moon; we can build computers that are capable of performing billions of computations per second; we have constructed telescopes that can explore the far reaches of the universe; and we can date the age of rocks that are millions of years old. But alongside the brilliant successes stand conspicuous underachievements and outright failures. We cannot build robots that can move with the agility of animals or humans; we cannot automate driving in heavy traffic; we cannot translate from one language to another at the level of a human interpreter; we cannot create programs that can summarize non-trivial stories; our ability to model the behavior of economic systems leaves much to be desired; and we cannot build machines that can compete with children in the performance of a wide variety of physical and cognitive tasks. It may be argued that underlying the underachievements and failures is the unavailability of a methodology for reasoning and computing with perceptions rather than measurements. An outline of such a methodology--referred to as a computational theory of perceptions--is presented in this paper. The computational theory of perceptions (CTP) is based on the methodology of CW. In CTP, words play the role of labels of perceptions, and, more generally, perceptions are expressed as propositions in a natural language. CW-based techniques are employed to translate propositions expressed in a natural language into what is called the Generalized Constraint Language (GCL). In this language, the meaning of a proposition is expressed as a generalized constraint, X isr R, where X is the constrained variable, R is the constraining relation, and isr is a variable copula in which r is an indexing variable whose value defines the way in which R constrains X. Among the basic types of constraints are possibilistic, veristic, probabilistic, random set, Pawlak set, fuzzy graph, and usuality. The wide variety of constraints in GCL makes GCL a much more expressive language than the language of predicate logic. In CW, the initial and terminal data sets, IDS and TDS, are assumed to consist of propositions expressed in a natural language. These propositions are translated, respectively, into antecedent and consequent constraints. Consequent constraints are derived from antecedent constraints through the use of rules of constraint propagation. The principal constraint propagation rule is the generalized extension principle. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)

A new neural framework for visuospatial processing.

PubMed

Kravitz, Dwight J; Saleem, Kadharbatcha S; Baker, Chris I; Mishkin, Mortimer

2011-04-01

The division of cortical visual processing into distinct dorsal and ventral streams is a key framework that has guided visual neuroscience. The characterization of the ventral stream as a 'What' pathway is relatively uncontroversial, but the nature of dorsal stream processing is less clear. Originally proposed as mediating spatial perception ('Where'), more recent accounts suggest it primarily serves non-conscious visually guided action ('How'). Here, we identify three pathways emerging from the dorsal stream that consist of projections to the prefrontal and premotor cortices, and a major projection to the medial temporal lobe that courses both directly and indirectly through the posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortices. These three pathways support both conscious and non-conscious visuospatial processing, including spatial working memory, visually guided action and navigation, respectively.

A study of structure of phenomenology of consciousness in meditative and non-meditative states.

PubMed

Venkatesh, S; Raju, T R; Shivani, Y; Tompkins, G; Meti, B L

1997-04-01

Twelve senior Kundalini (Chakra) meditators were assessed during meditation session and non-meditation or control session using Phenomenology of Consciousness Inventory. The data has been analyzed using structural analysis to measure the altered state of consciousness and the identity state by comparing meditative state with non-meditative state. The structural analysis of pattern of consciousness during the meditative state revealed altered experience in perception (percentile rank PR = 90), meaning (PR = 82) and time sense (PR = 87), while positive affect dimension showed increased joy (PR = 73) and love (PR = 67). The imagery vividness (PR = 72), self-awareness (PR = 77), rationality (PR = 73) and arousal (PR = 69) were found to be structurally different from the ordinary state. With regards to identity state meditative experience was found to produce statistically significant changes in terms of intensity in meaning (P < 0.05), time sense (P < 0.05), joy (P < 0.05), love (P < 0.05) and state of awareness (P < 0.01). Our results indicate that long term practice of meditation appears to produce structural as well as intensity changes in phenomenological experiences of consciousness.

Ultra-slow mechanical stimulation of olfactory epithelium modulates consciousness by slowing cerebral rhythms in humans.

PubMed

Piarulli, A; Zaccaro, A; Laurino, M; Menicucci, D; De Vito, A; Bruschini, L; Berrettini, S; Bergamasco, M; Laureys, S; Gemignani, A

2018-04-26

The coupling between respiration and neural activity within olfactory areas and hippocampus has recently been unambiguously demonstrated, its neurophysiological basis sustained by the well-assessed mechanical sensitivity of the olfactory epithelium. We herein hypothesize that this coupling reverberates to the whole brain, possibly modulating the subject's behavior and state of consciousness. The olfactory epithelium of 12 healthy subjects was stimulated with periodical odorless air-delivery (frequency 0.05 Hz, 8 s on, 12 off). Cortical electrical activity (High Density-EEG) and perceived state of consciousness have been studied. The stimulation induced i) an enhancement of delta-theta EEG activity over the whole cortex mainly involving the Limbic System and Default Mode Network structures, ii) a reversal of the overall information flow directionality from wake-like postero-anterior to NREM sleep-like antero-posterior, iii) the perception of having experienced an Altered State of Consciousness. These findings could shed further light via a neurophenomenological approach on the links between respiration, cerebral activity and subjective experience, suggesting a plausible neurophysiological basis for interpreting altered states of consciousness induced by respiration-based meditative practices.

Children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD) can adapt to perceptible and subliminal rhythm changes but are more variable.

PubMed

Roche, Renuka; Viswanathan, Priya; Clark, Jane E; Whitall, Jill

2016-12-01

Children with DCD demonstrate impairments in bimanual finger tapping during self-paced tapping and tapping in synchrony to different frequencies. In this study, we investigated the ability of children with DCD to adapt motorically to perceptible or subliminal changes of the auditory stimuli without a change in frequency, and compared their performance to typically developing controls (TDC). Nineteen children with DCD between ages 6-11years (mean age±SD=114±21months) and 17 TDC (mean age±SD=113±21months) participated in this study. Auditory perceptual threshold was established. Children initially tapped bimanually to an antiphase beat and then to either a perceptible change in rhythm or to gradual subliminal changes in rhythm. Children with DCD were able to perceive changes in rhythm similar to TDC. They were also able to adapt to both perceptible and subliminal changes in rhythms similar to their age- and gender- matched TDC. However, these children were significantly more variable compared with TDC in all phasing conditions. The results suggest that the performance impairments in bilateral tapping are not a result of poor conscious or sub-conscious perception of the auditory cue. The increased motor variability may be associated with cerebellar dysfunction but further behavioral and neurophysiological studies are needed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cortical dynamics of three-dimensional figure-ground perception of two-dimensional pictures.

PubMed

Grossberg, S

1997-07-01

This article develops the FACADE theory of 3-dimensional (3-D) vision and figure-ground separation to explain data concerning how 2-dimensional pictures give rise to 3-D percepts of occluding and occluded objects. The model describes how geometrical and contrastive properties of a picture can either cooperate or compete when forming the boundaries and surface representation that subserve conscious percepts. Spatially long-range cooperation and spatially short-range competition work together to separate the boundaries of occluding figures from their occluded neighbors. This boundary ownership process is sensitive to image T junctions at which occluded figures contact occluding figures. These boundaries control the filling-in of color within multiple depth-sensitive surface representations. Feedback between surface and boundary representations strengthens consistent boundaries while inhibiting inconsistent ones. Both the boundary and the surface representations of occluded objects may be amodally completed, while the surface representations of unoccluded objects become visible through modal completion. Functional roles for conscious modal and amodal representations in object recognition, spatial attention, and reaching behaviors are discussed. Model interactions are interpreted in terms of visual, temporal, and parietal cortices.

Perception and Cognition Are Largely Independent, but Still Affect Each Other in Systematic Ways: Arguments from Evolution and the Consciousness-Attention Dissociation

PubMed Central

Montemayor, Carlos; Haladjian, Harry H.

2017-01-01

The main thesis of this paper is that two prevailing theories about cognitive penetration are too extreme, namely, the view that cognitive penetration is pervasive and the view that there is a sharp and fundamental distinction between cognition and perception, which precludes any type of cognitive penetration. These opposite views have clear merits and empirical support. To eliminate this puzzling situation, we present an alternative theoretical approach that incorporates the merits of these views into a broader and more nuanced explanatory framework. A key argument we present in favor of this framework concerns the evolution of intentionality and perceptual capacities. An implication of this argument is that cases of cognitive penetration must have evolved more recently and that this is compatible with the cognitive impenetrability of early perceptual stages of processing information. A theoretical approach that explains why this should be the case is the consciousness and attention dissociation framework. The paper discusses why concepts, particularly issues concerning concept acquisition, play an important role in the interaction between perception and cognition. PMID:28174551

Definitely maybe: can unconscious processes perform the same functions as conscious processes?

PubMed Central

Hesselmann, Guido; Moors, Pieter

2015-01-01

Hassin recently proposed the “Yes It Can” (YIC) principle to describe the division of labor between conscious and unconscious processes in human cognition. According to this principle, unconscious processes can carry out every fundamental high-level cognitive function that conscious processes can perform. In our commentary, we argue that the author presents an overly idealized review of the literature in support of the YIC principle. Furthermore, we point out that the dissimilar trends observed in social and cognitive psychology, with respect to published evidence of strong unconscious effects, can better be explained by the way how awareness is defined and measured in both research fields. Finally, we show that the experimental paradigm chosen by Hassin to rule out remaining objections against the YIC principle is unsuited to verify the new default notion that all high-level cognitive functions can unfold unconsciously. PMID:25999896

A common neural code for similar conscious experiences in different individuals

PubMed Central

Naci, Lorina; Cusack, Rhodri; Anello, Mimma; Owen, Adrian M.

2014-01-01

The interpretation of human consciousness from brain activity, without recourse to speech or action, is one of the most provoking and challenging frontiers of modern neuroscience. We asked whether there is a common neural code that underpins similar conscious experiences, which could be used to decode these experiences in the absence of behavior. To this end, we used richly evocative stimulation (an engaging movie) portraying real-world events to elicit a similar conscious experience in different people. Common neural correlates of conscious experience were quantified and related to measurable, quantitative and qualitative, executive components of the movie through two additional behavioral investigations. The movie’s executive demands drove synchronized brain activity across healthy participants’ frontal and parietal cortices in regions known to support executive function. Moreover, the timing of activity in these regions was predicted by participants’ highly similar qualitative experience of the movie’s moment-to-moment executive demands, suggesting that synchronization of activity across participants underpinned their similar experience. Thus we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, that a neural index based on executive function reliably predicted every healthy individual’s similar conscious experience in response to real-world events unfolding over time. This approach provided strong evidence for the conscious experience of a brain-injured patient, who had remained entirely behaviorally nonresponsive for 16 y. The patient’s executive engagement and moment-to-moment perception of the movie content were highly similar to that of every healthy participant. These findings shed light on the common basis of human consciousness and enable the interpretation of conscious experience in the absence of behavior. PMID:25225384

Subliminal versus supraliminal stimuli activate neural responses in anterior cingulate cortex, fusiform gyrus and insula: a meta-analysis of fMRI studies.

PubMed

Meneguzzo, Paolo; Tsakiris, Manos; Schioth, Helgi B; Stein, Dan J; Brooks, Samantha J

2014-01-01

Non-conscious neural activation may underlie various psychological functions in health and disorder. However, the neural substrates of non-conscious processing have not been entirely elucidated. Examining the differential effects of arousing stimuli that are consciously, versus unconsciously perceived will improve our knowledge of neural circuitry involved in non-conscious perception. Here we conduct preliminary analyses of neural activation in studies that have used both subliminal and supraliminal presentation of the same stimulus. We use Activation Likelihood Estimation (ALE) to examine functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) studies that uniquely present the same stimuli subliminally and supraliminally to healthy participants during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We included a total of 193 foci from 9 studies representing subliminal stimulation and 315 foci from 10 studies representing supraliminal stimulation. The anterior cingulate cortex is significantly activated during both subliminal and supraliminal stimulus presentation. Subliminal stimuli are linked to significantly increased activation in the right fusiform gyrus and right insula. Supraliminal stimuli show significantly increased activation in the left rostral anterior cingulate. Non-conscious processing of arousing stimuli may involve primary visual areas and may also recruit the insula, a brain area involved in eventual interoceptive awareness. The anterior cingulate is perhaps a key brain region for the integration of conscious and non-conscious processing. These preliminary data provide candidate brain regions for further study in to the neural correlates of conscious experience.

What Explains Consciousness? Or…What Consciousness Explains?

PubMed Central

Dulany, Donelson E.

2014-01-01

In this invited commentary I focus on the topic addressed in three papers: De Sousa's (2013[1617]) Toward an Integrative Theory of Consciousness, a monograph with Parts 1 & 2, as well as commentaries by Pereira (2013a[59]) and Hirstein (2013[42]). All three are impressively scholarly and can stand—and shout—on their own. But theory of consciousness? My aim is to slice that topic into the two fundamentally different kinds of theories of consciousness, say what appears to be an ideology, out of behaviourism into cognitivism, now also influencing the quest for an “explanation of consciousness” in cognitive neuroscience. I will then say what can be expected given what we know of the complexity of brain structure, the richness of a conscious “vocabulary”, and current technological limits of brain imaging. This will then turn to the strategy for examining “what consciousness explains”—metatheory, theories, mappings, and a methodology of competitive support, a methodology especially important where there are competing commitments. There are also increasingly common identifications of methodological bias in, along with failures to replicate, studies reporting unconscious controls in decision, social priming—as there have been in perception, learning, problem solving, etc. The literature critique has provided evidence taken as reducing, and in some cases eliminating, a role for conscious controls—a position consistent with that ideology out of behaviourism into cognitivism. It is an ideological position that fails to recognize the fundamental distinction between theoretical and metaphysical assertions. PMID:24891796

Introduction to the fractality principle of consciousness and the sentyon postulate

PubMed Central

Bieberich, Erhard

2013-01-01

Recently, consciousness research has gained much attention. Indeed, the question at stake is significant: why is the brain not just a computing device, but generates a perception from within? Ambitious endeavors trying to simulate the entire human brain assume that the algorithm will do the trick: as soon as we assemble the brain in a computer and increase the number of operations per time, consciousness will emerge by itself. I disagree with this simplistic representation. My argument emerges from the “atomism paradox”: the irreducible space of the consciously perceived world, the endospace is incompatible with the reducible and decomposable architecture of the brain or a computer. I will first discuss the fundamental challenges in current consciousness models and then propose a new model based on the fractality principle: “the whole is in each of its parts”. This new model copes with the atomism paradox by implementing an iterative mapping of information from higher order brain structures to smaller scales on the cellular and molecular level, which I will refer to as “fractalization”. This information fractalization gives rise to a new form of matter that is conscious (“bright matter”). Bright matter is composed of conscious particles or units named “sentyons”. The internal fractality of these sentyons will close a loop (the “psychic loop”) in a recurrent fractal neural network (RFNN) that allows for continuous and complete information transformation and sharing between higher order brain structures and the endpoint substrate of consciousness at the molecular level. PMID:23950765

Tongue corticospinal modulation during attended verbal stimuli: priming and coarticulation effects.

PubMed

D'Ausilio, Alessandro; Jarmolowska, Joanna; Busan, Pierpaolo; Bufalari, Ilaria; Craighero, Laila

2011-11-01

Humans perceive continuous speech through interruptions or brief noise bursts cancelling entire phonemes. This robust phenomenon has been classically associated with mechanisms of perceptual restoration. In parallel, recent experimental evidence suggests that the motor system may actively participate in speech perception, even contributing to phoneme discrimination. In the present study we intended to verify if the motor system has a specific role in speech perceptual restoration as well. To this aim we recorded tongue corticospinal excitability during phoneme expectation induced by contextual information. Results showed that phoneme expectation determines an involvement of the individual's motor system specifically implicated in the production of the attended phoneme, exactly as it happens during actual listening of that phoneme, suggesting the presence of a speech imagery-like process. Very interestingly, this motoric phoneme expectation is also modulated by subtle coarticulation cues of which the listener is not consciously aware. Present data indicate that the rehearsal of a specific phoneme requires the contribution of the motor system exactly as it happens during the rehearsal of actions executed by the limbs, and that this process is abolished when an incongruent phonemic cue is presented, as similarly occurs during observation of anomalous hand actions. We propose that altogether these effects indicate that during speech listening an attentional-like mechanism driven by the motor system, based on a feed-forward anticipatory mechanism constantly verifying incoming information, is working allowing perceptual restoration. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective

PubMed Central

2016-01-01

Understanding the nature of consciousness is one of the grand outstanding scientific challenges. The fundamental methodological problem is how phenomenal first person experience can be accounted for in a third person verifiable form, while the conceptual challenge is to both define its function and physical realization. The distributed adaptive control theory of consciousness (DACtoc) proposes answers to these three challenges. The methodological challenge is answered relative to the hard problem and DACtoc proposes that it can be addressed using a convergent synthetic methodology using the analysis of synthetic biologically grounded agents, or quale parsing. DACtoc hypothesizes that consciousness in both its primary and secondary forms serves the ability to deal with the hidden states of the world and emerged during the Cambrian period, affording stable multi-agent environments to emerge. The process of consciousness is an autonomous virtualization memory, which serializes and unifies the parallel and subconscious simulations of the hidden states of the world that are largely due to other agents and the self with the objective to extract norms. These norms are in turn projected as value onto the parallel simulation and control systems that are driving action. This functional hypothesis is mapped onto the brainstem, midbrain and the thalamo-cortical and cortico-cortical systems and analysed with respect to our understanding of deficits of consciousness. Subsequently, some of the implications and predictions of DACtoc are outlined, in particular, the prediction that normative bootstrapping of conscious agents is predicated on an intentionality prior. In the view advanced here, human consciousness constitutes the ultimate evolutionary transition by allowing agents to become autonomous with respect to their evolutionary priors leading to a post-biological Anthropocene. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The major synthetic evolutionary transitions’. PMID:27431526

Synthetic consciousness: the distributed adaptive control perspective.

PubMed

Verschure, Paul F M J

2016-08-19

Understanding the nature of consciousness is one of the grand outstanding scientific challenges. The fundamental methodological problem is how phenomenal first person experience can be accounted for in a third person verifiable form, while the conceptual challenge is to both define its function and physical realization. The distributed adaptive control theory of consciousness (DACtoc) proposes answers to these three challenges. The methodological challenge is answered relative to the hard problem and DACtoc proposes that it can be addressed using a convergent synthetic methodology using the analysis of synthetic biologically grounded agents, or quale parsing. DACtoc hypothesizes that consciousness in both its primary and secondary forms serves the ability to deal with the hidden states of the world and emerged during the Cambrian period, affording stable multi-agent environments to emerge. The process of consciousness is an autonomous virtualization memory, which serializes and unifies the parallel and subconscious simulations of the hidden states of the world that are largely due to other agents and the self with the objective to extract norms. These norms are in turn projected as value onto the parallel simulation and control systems that are driving action. This functional hypothesis is mapped onto the brainstem, midbrain and the thalamo-cortical and cortico-cortical systems and analysed with respect to our understanding of deficits of consciousness. Subsequently, some of the implications and predictions of DACtoc are outlined, in particular, the prediction that normative bootstrapping of conscious agents is predicated on an intentionality prior. In the view advanced here, human consciousness constitutes the ultimate evolutionary transition by allowing agents to become autonomous with respect to their evolutionary priors leading to a post-biological Anthropocene.This article is part of the themed issue 'The major synthetic evolutionary transitions'. © 2016 The Author(s).

Understanding schizophrenia as a disorder of consciousness: biological correlates and translational implications from quantum theory perspectives.

PubMed

Venkatasubramanian, Ganesan

2015-04-30

From neurophenomenological perspectives, schizophrenia has been conceptualized as "a disorder with heterogeneous manifestations that can be integrally understood to involve fundamental perturbations in consciousness". While these theoretical constructs based on consciousness facilitate understanding the 'gestalt' of schizophrenia, systematic research to unravel translational implications of these models is warranted. To address this, one needs to begin with exploration of plausible biological underpinnings of "perturbed consciousness" in schizophrenia. In this context, an attractive proposition to understand the biology of consciousness is "the orchestrated object reduction (Orch-OR) theory" which invokes quantum processes in the microtubules of neurons. The Orch-OR model is particularly important for understanding schizophrenia especially due to the shared 'scaffold' of microtubules. The initial sections of this review focus on the compelling evidence to support the view that "schizophrenia is a disorder of consciousness" through critical summary of the studies that have demonstrated self-abnormalities, aberrant time perception as well as dysfunctional intentional binding in this disorder. Subsequently, these findings are linked with 'Orch-OR theory' through the research evidence for aberrant neural oscillations as well as microtubule abnormalities observed in schizophrenia. Further sections emphasize the applicability and translational implications of Orch-OR theory in the context of schizophrenia and elucidate the relevance of quantum biology to understand the origins of this puzzling disorder as "fundamental disturbances in consciousness".

Not explicit but implicit memory is influenced by individual perception style

PubMed Central

Tsushima, Yoshiaki

2018-01-01

Not only explicit but also implicit memory has considerable influence on our daily life. However, it is still unclear whether explicit and implicit memories are sensitive to individual differences. Here, we investigated how individual perception style (global or local) correlates with implicit and explicit memory. As a result, we found that not explicit but implicit memory was affected by the perception style: local perception style people more greatly used implicit memory than global perception style people. These results help us to make the new effective application adapting to individual perception style and understand some clinical symptoms such as autistic spectrum disorder. Furthermore, this finding might give us new insight of memory involving consciousness and unconsciousness as well as relationship between implicit/explicit memory and individual perception style. PMID:29370212

Not explicit but implicit memory is influenced by individual perception style.

PubMed

Hine, Kyoko; Tsushima, Yoshiaki

2018-01-01

Not only explicit but also implicit memory has considerable influence on our daily life. However, it is still unclear whether explicit and implicit memories are sensitive to individual differences. Here, we investigated how individual perception style (global or local) correlates with implicit and explicit memory. As a result, we found that not explicit but implicit memory was affected by the perception style: local perception style people more greatly used implicit memory than global perception style people. These results help us to make the new effective application adapting to individual perception style and understand some clinical symptoms such as autistic spectrum disorder. Furthermore, this finding might give us new insight of memory involving consciousness and unconsciousness as well as relationship between implicit/explicit memory and individual perception style.

The internal representation of head orientation differs for conscious perception and balance control

PubMed Central

Dalton, Brian H.; Rasman, Brandon G.; Inglis, J. Timothy

2017-01-01

Key points We tested perceived head‐on‐feet orientation and the direction of vestibular‐evoked balance responses in passively and actively held head‐turned postures.The direction of vestibular‐evoked balance responses was not aligned with perceived head‐on‐feet orientation while maintaining prolonged passively held head‐turned postures. Furthermore, static visual cues of head‐on‐feet orientation did not update the estimate of head posture for the balance controller.A prolonged actively held head‐turned posture did not elicit a rotation in the direction of the vestibular‐evoked balance response despite a significant rotation in perceived angular head posture.It is proposed that conscious perception of head posture and the transformation of vestibular signals for standing balance relying on this head posture are not dependent on the same internal representation. Rather, the balance system may operate under its own sensorimotor principles, which are partly independent from perception. Abstract Vestibular signals used for balance control must be integrated with other sensorimotor cues to allow transformation of descending signals according to an internal representation of body configuration. We explored two alternative models of sensorimotor integration that propose (1) a single internal representation of head‐on‐feet orientation is responsible for perceived postural orientation and standing balance or (2) conscious perception and balance control are driven by separate internal representations. During three experiments, participants stood quietly while passively or actively maintaining a prolonged head‐turned posture (>10 min). Throughout the trials, participants intermittently reported their perceived head angular position, and subsequently electrical vestibular stimuli were delivered to elicit whole‐body balance responses. Visual recalibration of head‐on‐feet posture was used to determine whether static visual cues are used to update the internal representation of body configuration for perceived orientation and standing balance. All three experiments involved situations in which the vestibular‐evoked balance response was not orthogonal to perceived head‐on‐feet orientation, regardless of the visual information provided. For prolonged head‐turned postures, balance responses consistent with actual head‐on‐feet posture occurred only during the active condition. Our results indicate that conscious perception of head‐on‐feet posture and vestibular control of balance do not rely on the same internal representation, but instead treat sensorimotor cues in parallel and may arrive at different conclusions regarding head‐on‐feet posture. The balance system appears to bypass static visual cues of postural orientation and mainly use other sensorimotor signals of head‐on‐feet position to transform vestibular signals of head motion, a mechanism appropriate for most daily activities. PMID:28035656

Brain-Mind Operational Architectonics Imaging: Technical and Methodological Aspects

PubMed Central

Fingelkurts, Andrew A; Fingelkurts, Alexander A

2008-01-01

This review paper deals with methodological and technical foundations of the Operational Architectonics framework of brain and mind functioning. This theory provides a framework for mapping and understanding important aspects of the brain mechanisms that constitute perception, cognition, and eventually consciousness. The methods utilized within Operational Architectonics framework allow analyzing with an incredible detail the operational behavior of local neuronal assemblies and their joint activity in the form of unified and metastable operational modules, which constitute the whole hierarchy of brain operations, operations of cognition and phenomenal consciousness. PMID:19526071

The vestibular system: a spatial reference for bodily self-consciousness

PubMed Central

Pfeiffer, Christian; Serino, Andrea; Blanke, Olaf

2014-01-01

Self-consciousness is the remarkable human experience of being a subject: the “I”. Self-consciousness is typically bound to a body, and particularly to the spatial dimensions of the body, as well as to its location and displacement in the gravitational field. Because the vestibular system encodes head position and movement in three-dimensional space, vestibular cortical processing likely contributes to spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness. We review here recent data showing vestibular effects on first-person perspective (the feeling from where “I” experience the world) and self-location (the feeling where “I” am located in space). We compare these findings to data showing vestibular effects on mental spatial transformation, self-motion perception, and body representation showing vestibular contributions to various spatial representations of the body with respect to the external world. Finally, we discuss the role for four posterior brain regions that process vestibular and other multisensory signals to encode spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness: temporoparietal junction, parietoinsular vestibular cortex, ventral intraparietal region, and medial superior temporal region. We propose that vestibular processing in these cortical regions is critical in linking multisensory signals from the body (personal and peripersonal space) with external (extrapersonal) space. Therefore, the vestibular system plays a critical role for neural representations of spatial aspects of bodily self-consciousness. PMID:24860446

Human single-neuron responses at the threshold of conscious recognition

PubMed Central

Quiroga, R. Quian; Mukamel, R.; Isham, E. A.; Malach, R.; Fried, I.

2008-01-01

We studied the responses of single neurons in the human medial temporal lobe while subjects viewed familiar faces, animals, and landmarks. By progressively shortening the duration of stimulus presentation, coupled with backward masking, we show two striking properties of these neurons. (i) Their responses are not statistically different for the 33-ms, 66-ms, and 132-ms stimulus durations, and only for the 264-ms presentations there is a significantly higher firing. (ii) These responses follow conscious perception, as indicated by the subjects' recognition report. Remarkably, when recognized, a single snapshot as brief as 33 ms was sufficient to trigger strong single-unit responses far outlasting stimulus presentation. These results suggest that neurons in the medial temporal lobe can reflect conscious recognition by “all-or-none” responses. PMID:18299568

A new neural framework for visuospatial processing

PubMed Central

Kravitz, Dwight J.; Saleem, Kadharbatcha S.; Baker, Chris I.; Mishkin, Mortimer

2012-01-01

The division of cortical visual processing into distinct dorsal and ventral streams is a key framework that has guided visual neuroscience. The characterization of the ventral stream as a ‘What’ pathway is relatively uncontroversial, but the nature of dorsal stream processing is less clear. Originally proposed as mediating spatial perception (‘Where’), more recent accounts suggest it primarily serves non-conscious visually guided action (‘How’). Here, we identify three pathways emerging from the dorsal stream that consist of projections to the prefrontal and premotor cortices, and a major projection to the medial temporal lobe that courses both directly and indirectly through the posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortices. These three pathways support both conscious and non-conscious visuospatial processing, including spatial working memory, visually guided action and navigation, respectively. PMID:21415848

Subliminal processes, dissociation and the 'I'.

PubMed

Bob, Petr

2003-06-01

The study of unconscious processes leads to the hypothesis of the limit of consciousness, which involves two main kinds of psychic activity. The first represents psychic contents which are subliminal for their low energy, the second subliminal contents which are inaccessible to consciousness because they are dissociated in the subliminal region. Dissociation is a concept introduced by Pierre Janet for splitting consciousness due to traumatic events or during hypnosis. It takes a more general form in Hilgard's neo-dissociation theory of hypnotic phenomena and also in Jung's theory of the collective unconscious. Further generalization links it to the modern findings of explicit and implicit perception, leading to a shift in dissociation from hypothesis to clinical, experimental and theoretical reality. Studies in hypnosis also point to the existence of an integrative psychic entity, that comprises the conscious 'I'. Hilgard called this the hidden observer, and his findings represent empirical confirmation of Jung's term for the Self as mirror 'I', which leads to many important consequences for self-discovery and the meaning of life.

Acute tryptophan depletion attenuates conscious appraisal of social emotional signals in healthy female volunteers

PubMed Central

Gray, Marcus A.; Minati, Ludovico; Whale, Richard; Harrison, Neil A.; Critchley, Hugo D.

2010-01-01

Rationale Acute tryptophan depletion (ATD) decreases levels of central serotonin. ATD thus enables the cognitive effects of serotonin to be studied, with implications for the understanding of psychiatric conditions, including depression. Objective To determine the role of serotonin in conscious (explicit) and unconscious/incidental processing of emotional information. Materials and methods A randomized, double-blind, cross-over design was used with 15 healthy female participants. Subjective mood was recorded at baseline and after 4 h, when participants performed an explicit emotional face processing task, and a task eliciting unconscious processing of emotionally aversive and neutral images presented subliminally using backward masking. Results ATD was associated with a robust reduction in plasma tryptophan at 4 h but had no effect on mood or autonomic physiology. ATD was associated with significantly lower attractiveness ratings for happy faces and attenuation of intensity/arousal ratings of angry faces. ATD also reduced overall reaction times on the unconscious perception task, but there was no interaction with emotional content of masked stimuli. ATD did not affect breakthrough perception (accuracy in identification) of masked images. Conclusions ATD attenuates the attractiveness of positive faces and the negative intensity of threatening faces, suggesting that serotonin contributes specifically to the appraisal of the social salience of both positive and negative salient social emotional cues. We found no evidence that serotonin affects unconscious processing of negative emotional stimuli. These novel findings implicate serotonin in conscious aspects of active social and behavioural engagement and extend knowledge regarding the effects of ATD on emotional perception. PMID:20596858

Fish intelligence, sentience and ethics.

PubMed

Brown, Culum

2015-01-01

Fish are one of the most highly utilised vertebrate taxa by humans; they are harvested from wild stocks as part of global fishing industries, grown under intensive aquaculture conditions, are the most common pet and are widely used for scientific research. But fish are seldom afforded the same level of compassion or welfare as warm-blooded vertebrates. Part of the problem is the large gap between people's perception of fish intelligence and the scientific reality. This is an important issue because public perception guides government policy. The perception of an animal's intelligence often drives our decision whether or not to include them in our moral circle. From a welfare perspective, most researchers would suggest that if an animal is sentient, then it can most likely suffer and should therefore be offered some form of formal protection. There has been a debate about fish welfare for decades which centres on the question of whether they are sentient or conscious. The implications for affording the same level of protection to fish as other vertebrates are great, not least because of fishing-related industries. Here, I review the current state of knowledge of fish cognition starting with their sensory perception and moving on to cognition. The review reveals that fish perception and cognitive abilities often match or exceed other vertebrates. A review of the evidence for pain perception strongly suggests that fish experience pain in a manner similar to the rest of the vertebrates. Although scientists cannot provide a definitive answer on the level of consciousness for any non-human vertebrate, the extensive evidence of fish behavioural and cognitive sophistication and pain perception suggests that best practice would be to lend fish the same level of protection as any other vertebrate.

Visual anticipation biases conscious decision making but not bottom-up visual processing.

PubMed

Mathews, Zenon; Cetnarski, Ryszard; Verschure, Paul F M J

2014-01-01

Prediction plays a key role in control of attention but it is not clear which aspects of prediction are most prominent in conscious experience. An evolving view on the brain is that it can be seen as a prediction machine that optimizes its ability to predict states of the world and the self through the top-down propagation of predictions and the bottom-up presentation of prediction errors. There are competing views though on whether prediction or prediction errors dominate the formation of conscious experience. Yet, the dynamic effects of prediction on perception, decision making and consciousness have been difficult to assess and to model. We propose a novel mathematical framework and a psychophysical paradigm that allows us to assess both the hierarchical structuring of perceptual consciousness, its content and the impact of predictions and/or errors on conscious experience, attention and decision-making. Using a displacement detection task combined with reverse correlation, we reveal signatures of the usage of prediction at three different levels of perceptual processing: bottom-up fast saccades, top-down driven slow saccades and consciousnes decisions. Our results suggest that the brain employs multiple parallel mechanism at different levels of perceptual processing in order to shape effective sensory consciousness within a predicted perceptual scene. We further observe that bottom-up sensory and top-down predictive processes can be dissociated through cognitive load. We propose a probabilistic data association model from dynamical systems theory to model the predictive multi-scale bias in perceptual processing that we observe and its role in the formation of conscious experience. We propose that these results support the hypothesis that consciousness provides a time-delayed description of a task that is used to prospectively optimize real time control structures, rather than being engaged in the real-time control of behavior itself.

Dreams, reality and memory: confabulations in lucid dreamers implicate reality-monitoring dysfunction in dream consciousness

PubMed Central

Corlett, P.R.; Canavan, S.V.; Nahum, L.; Appah, F.; Morgan, P.T.

2014-01-01

Introduction. Dreams might represent a window on altered states of consciousness with relevance to psychotic experiences, where reality monitoring is impaired. We examined reality monitoring in healthy, non-psychotic individuals with varying degrees of dream awareness using a task designed to assess confabulatory memory errors – a confusion regarding reality whereby information from the past feels falsely familiar and does not constrain current perception appropriately. Confabulatory errors are common following damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Ventromedial function has previously been implicated in dreaming and dream awareness. Methods. In a hospital research setting, physically and mentally healthy individuals with high (n = 18) and low (n = 13) self-reported dream awareness completed a computerised cognitive task that involved reality monitoring based on familiarity across a series of task runs. Results. Signal detection theory analysis revealed a more liberal acceptance bias in those with high dream awareness, consistent with the notion of overlap in the perception of dreams, imagination and reality. Conclusions. We discuss the implications of these results for models of reality monitoring and psychosis with a particular focus on the role of vmPFC in default-mode brain function, model-based reinforcement learning and the phenomenology of dreaming and waking consciousness. PMID:25028078

Rapid processing of emotional expressions without conscious awareness.

PubMed

Smith, Marie L

2012-08-01

Rapid accurate categorization of the emotional state of our peers is of critical importance and as such many have proposed that facial expressions of emotion can be processed without conscious awareness. Typically, studies focus selectively on fearful expressions due to their evolutionary significance, leaving the subliminal processing of other facial expressions largely unexplored. Here, I investigated the time course of processing of 3 facial expressions (fearful, disgusted, and happy) plus an emotionally neutral face, during objectively unaware and aware perception. Participants completed the challenging "which expression?" task in response to briefly presented backward-masked expressive faces. Although participant's behavioral responses did not differentiate between the emotional content of the stimuli in the unaware condition, activity over frontal and occipitotemporal (OT) brain regions indicated an emotional modulation of the neuronal response. Over frontal regions this was driven by negative facial expressions and was present on all emotional trials independent of later categorization. Whereas the N170 component, recorded on lateral OT electrodes, was enhanced for all facial expressions but only on trials that would later be categorized as emotional. The results indicate that emotional faces, not only fearful, are processed without conscious awareness at an early stage and highlight the critical importance of considering categorization response when studying subliminal perception.

You can't stop the music: reduced auditory alpha power and coupling between auditory and memory regions facilitate the illusory perception of music during noise.

PubMed

Müller, Nadia; Keil, Julian; Obleser, Jonas; Schulz, Hannah; Grunwald, Thomas; Bernays, René-Ludwig; Huppertz, Hans-Jürgen; Weisz, Nathan

2013-10-01

Our brain has the capacity of providing an experience of hearing even in the absence of auditory stimulation. This can be seen as illusory conscious perception. While increasing evidence postulates that conscious perception requires specific brain states that systematically relate to specific patterns of oscillatory activity, the relationship between auditory illusions and oscillatory activity remains mostly unexplained. To investigate this we recorded brain activity with magnetoencephalography and collected intracranial data from epilepsy patients while participants listened to familiar as well as unknown music that was partly replaced by sections of pink noise. We hypothesized that participants have a stronger experience of hearing music throughout noise when the noise sections are embedded in familiar compared to unfamiliar music. This was supported by the behavioral results showing that participants rated the perception of music during noise as stronger when noise was presented in a familiar context. Time-frequency data show that the illusory perception of music is associated with a decrease in auditory alpha power pointing to increased auditory cortex excitability. Furthermore, the right auditory cortex is concurrently synchronized with the medial temporal lobe, putatively mediating memory aspects associated with the music illusion. We thus assume that neuronal activity in the highly excitable auditory cortex is shaped through extensive communication between the auditory cortex and the medial temporal lobe, thereby generating the illusion of hearing music during noise. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The effectiveness of ultrasonography in verifying the placement of a nasogastric tube in patients with low consciousness at an emergency center

PubMed Central

2012-01-01

Background This study was designed to compare the effectiveness of using auscultation, pH measurements of gastric aspirates, and ultrasonography as physical examination methods to verify nasogastric tube(NGT) placement in emergency room patients with low consciousness who require NGT insertion. Methods The study included 47 patients who were all over 18 years of age. In all patients, tube placement was verified by chest X-rays. Auscultation, pH analysis of gastric aspirates, and ultrasonography were conducted on each patient in random order. The mean patient age was 57.62 ± 17.24 years, and 28 males (59.6%) and 19 females (40.4%) were included. The NGT was inserted by an emergency room resident. For pH testing, gastric aspirates were dropped onto litmus paper, and the resulting color of the paper was compared with a reference table. Ultrasonography was performed by an emergency medicine specialist, and the chest X-ray examination was interpreted by a different emergency medicine specialist who did not conduct the ultrasonography test. The results of the auscultation, gastric aspirate pH, and ultrasonography examinations were compared with the results of the chest x-ray examination. Results The sensitivity and specificity were 100% and 33.3%, respectively, for auscultation and 86.4% and 66.7%, respectively, for ultrasonography. Kappa values were the highest for auscultation at 0.484 compared to chest x-rays, followed by 0.299 for ultrasonography and 0.444 for pH analysis of the gastric aspirate. The ultrasonography has a positive predictive value of 97.4% and a negative predictive value of 25%. Conclusions Ultrasonography is useful for confirming the results of auscultation after NGT insertion among patients with low consciousness at an emergency center. When ultrasound findings suggest that the NGT placement is not gastric, additional chest X-ray should be performed. PMID:22691418

The effectiveness of ultrasonography in verifying the placement of a nasogastric tube in patients with low consciousness at an emergency center.

PubMed

Kim, Hyung Min; So, Byung Hak; Jeong, Won Jung; Choi, Se Min; Park, Kyu Nam

2012-06-12

This study was designed to compare the effectiveness of using auscultation, pH measurements of gastric aspirates, and ultrasonography as physical examination methods to verify nasogastric tube(NGT) placement in emergency room patients with low consciousness who require NGT insertion. The study included 47 patients who were all over 18 years of age. In all patients, tube placement was verified by chest X-rays. Auscultation, pH analysis of gastric aspirates, and ultrasonography were conducted on each patient in random order. The mean patient age was 57.62 ± 17.24 years, and 28 males (59.6%) and 19 females (40.4%) were included. The NGT was inserted by an emergency room resident. For pH testing, gastric aspirates were dropped onto litmus paper, and the resulting color of the paper was compared with a reference table. Ultrasonography was performed by an emergency medicine specialist, and the chest X-ray examination was interpreted by a different emergency medicine specialist who did not conduct the ultrasonography test. The results of the auscultation, gastric aspirate pH, and ultrasonography examinations were compared with the results of the chest x-ray examination. The sensitivity and specificity were 100% and 33.3%, respectively, for auscultation and 86.4% and 66.7%, respectively, for ultrasonography. Kappa values were the highest for auscultation at 0.484 compared to chest x-rays, followed by 0.299 for ultrasonography and 0.444 for pH analysis of the gastric aspirate. The ultrasonography has a positive predictive value of 97.4% and a negative predictive value of 25%. Ultrasonography is useful for confirming the results of auscultation after NGT insertion among patients with low consciousness at an emergency center. When ultrasound findings suggest that the NGT placement is not gastric, additional chest X-ray should be performed.

Unaware Processing of Tools in the Neural System for Object-Directed Action Representation.

PubMed

Tettamanti, Marco; Conca, Francesca; Falini, Andrea; Perani, Daniela

2017-11-01

The hypothesis that the brain constitutively encodes observed manipulable objects for the actions they afford is still debated. Yet, crucial evidence demonstrating that, even in the absence of perceptual awareness, the mere visual appearance of a manipulable object triggers a visuomotor coding in the action representation system including the premotor cortex, has hitherto not been provided. In this fMRI study, we instantiated reliable unaware visual perception conditions by means of continuous flash suppression, and we tested in 24 healthy human participants (13 females) whether the visuomotor object-directed action representation system that includes left-hemispheric premotor, parietal, and posterior temporal cortices is activated even under subliminal perceptual conditions. We found consistent activation in the target visuomotor cortices, both with and without perceptual awareness, specifically for pictures of manipulable versus non-manipulable objects. By means of a multivariate searchlight analysis, we also found that the brain activation patterns in this visuomotor network enabled the decoding of manipulable versus non-manipulable object picture processing, both with and without awareness. These findings demonstrate the intimate neural coupling between visual perception and motor representation that underlies manipulable object processing: manipulable object stimuli specifically engage the visuomotor object-directed action representation system, in a constitutive manner that is independent from perceptual awareness. This perceptuo-motor coupling endows the brain with an efficient mechanism for monitoring and planning reactions to external stimuli in the absence of awareness. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Our brain constantly encodes the visual information that hits the retina, leading to a stimulus-specific activation of sensory and semantic representations, even for objects that we do not consciously perceive. Do these unconscious representations encompass the motor programming of actions that could be accomplished congruently with the objects' functions? In this fMRI study, we instantiated unaware visual perception conditions, by dynamically suppressing the visibility of manipulable object pictures with mondrian masks. Despite escaping conscious perception, manipulable objects activated an object-directed action representation system that includes left-hemispheric premotor, parietal, and posterior temporal cortices. This demonstrates that visuomotor encoding occurs independently of conscious object perception. Copyright © 2017 the authors 0270-6474/17/3710712-13$15.00/0.

Near-death experience: arising from the borderlands of consciousness in crisis.

PubMed

Nelson, Kevin R

2014-11-01

Brain activity explains the essential features of near-death experience, including the perceptions of envelopment by light, out-of-body, and meeting deceased loved ones or spiritual beings. To achieve their fullest expression, such near-death experiences require a confluence of events and draw upon more than a single physiological or biochemical system, or one anatomical structure. During impaired cerebral blood flow from syncope or cardiac arrest that commonly precedes near-death, the boundary between consciousness and unconsciousness is often indistinct and a person may enter a borderland and be far more aware than is appreciated by others. Consciousness can also come and go if blood flow rises and falls across a crucial threshold. During crisis the brain's prime biologic purpose to keep itself alive lies at the heart of many spiritual experiences and inextricably binds them to the primal brain. Brain ischemia can disrupt the physiological balance between conscious states by leading the brainstem to blend rapid eye movement (REM) and waking into another borderland of consciousness during near-death. Evidence converges from many points to support this notion, including the observation that the majority of people with a near-death experience possess brains predisposed to fusing REM and waking consciousness into an unfamiliar reality, and are as likely to have out-of-body experience while blending REM and waking consciousness as they are to have out-of-body experience during near-death. © 2014 New York Academy of Sciences.

Is Your Gut Conscious? Is an Extraterrestrial?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Vos Post, Jonathan

2011-10-01

This paper speculates on questions intending to be taken scientifically rather than metaphysically: "Can the human gut (enteric nervous system) be conscious?"; "Can your immune system think?"; "Could consciousness be coded in DNA?"; "What do we mean when asserting that an Extraterrestrial is Thinking, or is Conscious? We explore through reference to theory, experiment, and computational models by Christof Koch (Caltech), Barbara Wold (Caltech), and Stuart Kauffman (University of Calgary, Tampere University of Technology, Santa Fe Institute). We use a tentative new definition of thinking, designed to be applicable for humans, cetecea, corvids, artificial intelligences, and extraterrestrial intelligences of any substrate (i.e. Life as We Do Not Know It): "Thinking is the occurrence, transformation, and storage in a mind or brain (or simulation thereof) of information-bearing structures (representations) of one kind or another, such as thoughts, concept, percepts, ideas, impressions, notions, rules, schemas, images, phantasms, or subpersonal representations." We use the framework for Consciousness developed by Francis Crick and Christof Koch. We try to describe scientific goals, but discuss Philosophy sufficient to avoid naïve philosophical category errors (thus are careful not to conflate thought, consciousness, and language) Penrose, Hameroff, and Kauffman speculate (differently) that CNS consciousness is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon. Might intestinal, immune system, or genetic regulatory network dynamics exhibit emergent cooperative quantum effects? The speculations are in the context of Evolution by Natural Selection, presumed to operate throughout the Cosmos, and recent work in the foundations of Computational Biology and Quantum Mechanics.

High-frequency neural activity predicts word parsing in ambiguous speech streams.

PubMed

Kösem, Anne; Basirat, Anahita; Azizi, Leila; van Wassenhove, Virginie

2016-12-01

During speech listening, the brain parses a continuous acoustic stream of information into computational units (e.g., syllables or words) necessary for speech comprehension. Recent neuroscientific hypotheses have proposed that neural oscillations contribute to speech parsing, but whether they do so on the basis of acoustic cues (bottom-up acoustic parsing) or as a function of available linguistic representations (top-down linguistic parsing) is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography study, we contrasted acoustic and linguistic parsing using bistable speech sequences. While listening to the speech sequences, participants were asked to maintain one of the two possible speech percepts through volitional control. We predicted that the tracking of speech dynamics by neural oscillations would not only follow the acoustic properties but also shift in time according to the participant's conscious speech percept. Our results show that the latency of high-frequency activity (specifically, beta and gamma bands) varied as a function of the perceptual report. In contrast, the phase of low-frequency oscillations was not strongly affected by top-down control. Whereas changes in low-frequency neural oscillations were compatible with the encoding of prelexical segmentation cues, high-frequency activity specifically informed on an individual's conscious speech percept. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

High-frequency neural activity predicts word parsing in ambiguous speech streams

PubMed Central

Basirat, Anahita; Azizi, Leila; van Wassenhove, Virginie

2016-01-01

During speech listening, the brain parses a continuous acoustic stream of information into computational units (e.g., syllables or words) necessary for speech comprehension. Recent neuroscientific hypotheses have proposed that neural oscillations contribute to speech parsing, but whether they do so on the basis of acoustic cues (bottom-up acoustic parsing) or as a function of available linguistic representations (top-down linguistic parsing) is unknown. In this magnetoencephalography study, we contrasted acoustic and linguistic parsing using bistable speech sequences. While listening to the speech sequences, participants were asked to maintain one of the two possible speech percepts through volitional control. We predicted that the tracking of speech dynamics by neural oscillations would not only follow the acoustic properties but also shift in time according to the participant's conscious speech percept. Our results show that the latency of high-frequency activity (specifically, beta and gamma bands) varied as a function of the perceptual report. In contrast, the phase of low-frequency oscillations was not strongly affected by top-down control. Whereas changes in low-frequency neural oscillations were compatible with the encoding of prelexical segmentation cues, high-frequency activity specifically informed on an individual's conscious speech percept. PMID:27605528

Dissociations and dissociation theory in hypnosis: comment on Kirsch and Lynn (1998)

PubMed

Kihlstrom, J F

1998-03-01

I. Kirsch and S. J. Lynn's (1998) critique of the neodissociation theory of divided consciousness fails to consider evidence of dissociations between explicit and implicit memory and perception in hypnosis. Contrary to their conclusions, evidence that the rate of hidden observer response (like other hypnotic responses) varies with the wording of instructions does not contradict neodissociation theory; rather, it underscores the fact that hypnosis entails social interaction as well as alterations in conscious awareness. Neodissociation and sociocognitive theories of hypnosis complement each other. Each draws attention to aspects of the experience of hypnosis that the other neglects.

Gestalt isomorphism and the primacy of subjective conscious experience: a Gestalt Bubble model.

PubMed

Lehar, Steven

2003-08-01

A serious crisis is identified in theories of neurocomputation, marked by a persistent disparity between the phenomenological or experiential account of visual perception and the neurophysiological level of description of the visual system. In particular, conventional concepts of neural processing offer no explanation for the holistic global aspects of perception identified by Gestalt theory. The problem is paradigmatic and can be traced to contemporary concepts of the functional role of the neural cell, known as the Neuron Doctrine. In the absence of an alternative neurophysiologically plausible model, I propose a perceptual modeling approach, to model the percept as experienced subjectively, rather than modeling the objective neurophysiological state of the visual system that supposedly subserves that experience. A Gestalt Bubble model is presented to demonstrate how the elusive Gestalt principles of emergence, reification, and invariance can be expressed in a quantitative model of the subjective experience of visual consciousness. That model in turn reveals a unique computational strategy underlying visual processing, which is unlike any algorithm devised by man, and certainly unlike the atomistic feed-forward model of neurocomputation offered by the Neuron Doctrine paradigm. The perceptual modeling approach reveals the primary function of perception as that of generating a fully spatial virtual-reality replica of the external world in an internal representation. The common objections to this "picture-in-the-head" concept of perceptual representation are shown to be ill founded.

The evolutionary and genetic origins of consciousness in the Cambrian Period over 500 million years ago

PubMed Central

Feinberg, Todd E.; Mallatt, Jon

2013-01-01

Vertebrates evolved in the Cambrian Period before 520 million years ago, but we do not know when or how consciousness arose in the history of the vertebrate brain. Here we propose multiple levels of isomorphic or somatotopic neural representations as an objective marker for sensory consciousness. All extant vertebrates have these, so we deduce that consciousness extends back to the group's origin. The first conscious sense may have been vision. Then vision, coupled with additional sensory systems derived from ectodermal placodes and neural crest, transformed primitive reflexive systems into image forming brains that map and perceive the external world and the body's interior. We posit that the minimum requirement for sensory consciousness and qualia is a brain including a forebrain (but not necessarily a developed cerebral cortex/pallium), midbrain, and hindbrain. This brain must also have (1) hierarchical systems of intercommunicating, isomorphically organized, processing nuclei that extensively integrate the different senses into representations that emerge in upper levels of the neural hierarchy; and (2) a widespread reticular formation that integrates the sensory inputs and contributes to attention, awareness, and neural synchronization. We propose a two-step evolutionary history, in which the optic tectum was the original center of multi-sensory conscious perception (as in fish and amphibians: step 1), followed by a gradual shift of this center to the dorsal pallium or its cerebral cortex (in mammals, reptiles, birds: step 2). We address objections to the hypothesis and call for more studies of fish and amphibians. In our view, the lamprey has all the neural requisites and is likely the simplest extant vertebrate with sensory consciousness and qualia. Genes that pattern the proposed elements of consciousness (isomorphism, neural crest, placodes) have been identified in all vertebrates. Thus, consciousness is in the genes, some of which are already known. PMID:24109460

The evolutionary and genetic origins of consciousness in the Cambrian Period over 500 million years ago.

PubMed

Feinberg, Todd E; Mallatt, Jon

2013-01-01

Vertebrates evolved in the Cambrian Period before 520 million years ago, but we do not know when or how consciousness arose in the history of the vertebrate brain. Here we propose multiple levels of isomorphic or somatotopic neural representations as an objective marker for sensory consciousness. All extant vertebrates have these, so we deduce that consciousness extends back to the group's origin. The first conscious sense may have been vision. Then vision, coupled with additional sensory systems derived from ectodermal placodes and neural crest, transformed primitive reflexive systems into image forming brains that map and perceive the external world and the body's interior. We posit that the minimum requirement for sensory consciousness and qualia is a brain including a forebrain (but not necessarily a developed cerebral cortex/pallium), midbrain, and hindbrain. This brain must also have (1) hierarchical systems of intercommunicating, isomorphically organized, processing nuclei that extensively integrate the different senses into representations that emerge in upper levels of the neural hierarchy; and (2) a widespread reticular formation that integrates the sensory inputs and contributes to attention, awareness, and neural synchronization. We propose a two-step evolutionary history, in which the optic tectum was the original center of multi-sensory conscious perception (as in fish and amphibians: step 1), followed by a gradual shift of this center to the dorsal pallium or its cerebral cortex (in mammals, reptiles, birds: step 2). We address objections to the hypothesis and call for more studies of fish and amphibians. In our view, the lamprey has all the neural requisites and is likely the simplest extant vertebrate with sensory consciousness and qualia. Genes that pattern the proposed elements of consciousness (isomorphism, neural crest, placodes) have been identified in all vertebrates. Thus, consciousness is in the genes, some of which are already known.

Age differences in conscious versus subconscious social perception: the influence of face age and valence on gaze following.

PubMed

Bailey, Phoebe E; Slessor, Gillian; Rendell, Peter G; Bennetts, Rachel J; Campbell, Anna; Ruffman, Ted

2014-09-01

Gaze following is the primary means of establishing joint attention with others and is subject to age-related decline. In addition, young but not older adults experience an own-age bias in gaze following. The current research assessed the effects of subconscious processing on these age-related differences. Participants responded to targets that were either congruent or incongruent with the direction of gaze displayed in supraliminal and subliminal images of young and older faces. These faces displayed either neutral (Study 1) or happy and fearful (Study 2) expressions. In Studies 1 and 2, both age groups demonstrated gaze-directed attention by responding faster to targets that were congruent as opposed to incongruent with gaze-cues. In Study 1, subliminal stimuli did not attenuate the age-related decline in gaze-cuing, but did result in an own-age bias among older participants. In Study 2, gaze-cuing was reduced for older relative to young adults in response to supraliminal stimuli, and this could not be attributed to reduced visual acuity or age group differences in the perceived emotional intensity of the gaze-cue faces. Moreover, there were no age differences in gaze-cuing when responding to subliminal faces that were emotionally arousing. In addition, older adults demonstrated an own-age bias for both conscious and subconscious gaze-cuing when faces expressed happiness but not fear. We discuss growing evidence for age-related preservation of subconscious relative to conscious social perception, as well as an interaction between face age and valence in social perception. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Conceptual short term memory in perception and thought.

PubMed

Potter, Mary C

2012-01-01

Conceptual short term memory (CSTM) is a theoretical construct that provides one answer to the question of how perceptual and conceptual processes are related. CSTM is a mental buffer and processor in which current perceptual stimuli and their associated concepts from long term memory (LTM) are represented briefly, allowing meaningful patterns or structures to be identified (Potter, 1993, 1999, 2009). CSTM is different from and complementary to other proposed forms of working memory: it is engaged extremely rapidly, has a large but ill-defined capacity, is largely unconscious, and is the basis for the unreflective understanding that is characteristic of everyday experience. The key idea behind CSTM is that most cognitive processing occurs without review or rehearsal of material in standard working memory and with little or no conscious reasoning. When one perceives a meaningful stimulus such as a word, picture, or object, it is rapidly identified at a conceptual level and in turn activates associated information from LTM. New links among concurrently active concepts are formed in CSTM, shaped by parsing mechanisms of language or grouping principles in scene perception and by higher-level knowledge and current goals. The resulting structure represents the gist of a picture or the meaning of a sentence, and it is this structure that we are conscious of and that can be maintained in standard working memory and consolidated into LTM. Momentarily activated information that is not incorporated into such structures either never becomes conscious or is rapidly forgotten. This whole cycle - identification of perceptual stimuli, memory recruitment, structuring, consolidation in LTM, and forgetting of non-structured material - may occur in less than 1 s when viewing a pictured scene or reading a sentence. The evidence for such a process is reviewed and its implications for the relation of perception and cognition are discussed.

Music and emotion: an EEG connectivity study in patients with disorders of consciousness.

PubMed

Varotto, G; Fazio, P; Rossi Sebastiano, D; Avanzini, G; Franceschetti, S; Panzica, F; CRC

2012-01-01

Human emotion perception is a topic of great interest for both cognitive and clinical neuroscience, but its electrophysiological correlates are still poorly understood. The present study is aimed at evaluating if measures of synchronization and indexes based on graph-theory are a tool suitable to study and quantify electrophysiological changes due to emotional stimuli perception. In particular, our study is aimed at evaluating if different EEG connectivity patterns can be induced by pleasant (consonant) or unpleasant (dissonant) music, in a population of healthy subjects, and in patients with severe disorders of consciousness (DOCs), namely vegetative state (VS) patients. In the control group, pleasant music induced an increase in network number of connections, compared with the resting condition, while no changes were caused by the unpleasant stimuli. However, clustering coefficient and path length, two indexes derived from graph theory, able to characterise segregation and integration properties of a network, were not affected by the stimuli, neither pleasant nor unpleasant. In the VS group, changes were found only in those patients with the less severe consciousness impairment, according to the clinical assessment. In these patients a stronger synchronization was found during the unpleasant condition; moreover we observed changes in the network topology, with decreased values of clustering coefficient and path length during both musical stimuli.Our results show that measures of synchronization can provide new insights into the study of the electro physiological correlates of emotion perception, indicating that these tools can be used to study patients with DOCs, in whom the issue of objective measures and quantification of the degree of impairment is still an open and unsolved question.

Perception and eye movements in simulated traffic situations.

PubMed

Luoma, J

1984-01-01

In an experiment to simulate the perception task of a driver, subjects were shown uninterrupted series of colour slides of different kinds of highway scenes. The dependent variables were eye fixations, fixation times and conscious perceptions for the part of the traffic signs and roadside advertisements. Perceptions were achieved mostly as a result of fixation, but partly also by using peripheral vision. On the other hand fixation did not always cause perception. The lengthening of fixation time increased the number of correct perceptions. When the traffic sign and the roadside advertisement were in the same slide, the advertisement disturbed the perception of the sign, but in the daylight conditions this effect was not noticed as an alteration of the fixation of the sign, but as prevention of further information processing. The disturbing influence of the advertisement was increased by its bad information ergonomics which caused a long fixation time.

Parallel recovery of consciousness and sleep in acute traumatic brain injury.

PubMed

Duclos, Catherine; Dumont, Marie; Arbour, Caroline; Paquet, Jean; Blais, Hélène; Menon, David K; De Beaumont, Louis; Bernard, Francis; Gosselin, Nadia

2017-01-17

To investigate whether the progressive recuperation of consciousness was associated with the reconsolidation of sleep and wake states in hospitalized patients with acute traumatic brain injury (TBI). This study comprised 30 hospitalized patients (age 29.1 ± 13.5 years) in the acute phase of moderate or severe TBI. Testing started 21.0 ± 13.7 days postinjury. Consciousness level and cognitive functioning were assessed daily with the Rancho Los Amigos scale of cognitive functioning (RLA). Sleep and wake cycle characteristics were estimated with continuous wrist actigraphy. Mixed model analyses were performed on 233 days with the RLA (fixed effect) and sleep-wake variables (random effects). Linear contrast analyses were performed in order to verify if consolidation of the sleep and wake states improved linearly with increasing RLA score. Associations were found between scores on the consciousness/cognitive functioning scale and measures of sleep-wake cycle consolidation (p < 0.001), nighttime sleep duration (p = 0.018), and nighttime fragmentation index (p < 0.001). These associations showed strong linear relationships (p < 0.01 for all), revealing that consciousness and cognition improved in parallel with sleep-wake quality. Consolidated 24-hour sleep-wake cycle occurred when patients were able to give context-appropriate, goal-directed responses. Our results showed that when the brain has not sufficiently recovered a certain level of consciousness, it is also unable to generate a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle and consolidated nighttime sleep. This study contributes to elucidating the pathophysiology of severe sleep-wake cycle alterations in the acute phase of moderate to severe TBI. © 2016 American Academy of Neurology.

The internal representation of head orientation differs for conscious perception and balance control.

PubMed

Dalton, Brian H; Rasman, Brandon G; Inglis, J Timothy; Blouin, Jean-Sébastien

2017-04-15

We tested perceived head-on-feet orientation and the direction of vestibular-evoked balance responses in passively and actively held head-turned postures. The direction of vestibular-evoked balance responses was not aligned with perceived head-on-feet orientation while maintaining prolonged passively held head-turned postures. Furthermore, static visual cues of head-on-feet orientation did not update the estimate of head posture for the balance controller. A prolonged actively held head-turned posture did not elicit a rotation in the direction of the vestibular-evoked balance response despite a significant rotation in perceived angular head posture. It is proposed that conscious perception of head posture and the transformation of vestibular signals for standing balance relying on this head posture are not dependent on the same internal representation. Rather, the balance system may operate under its own sensorimotor principles, which are partly independent from perception. Vestibular signals used for balance control must be integrated with other sensorimotor cues to allow transformation of descending signals according to an internal representation of body configuration. We explored two alternative models of sensorimotor integration that propose (1) a single internal representation of head-on-feet orientation is responsible for perceived postural orientation and standing balance or (2) conscious perception and balance control are driven by separate internal representations. During three experiments, participants stood quietly while passively or actively maintaining a prolonged head-turned posture (>10 min). Throughout the trials, participants intermittently reported their perceived head angular position, and subsequently electrical vestibular stimuli were delivered to elicit whole-body balance responses. Visual recalibration of head-on-feet posture was used to determine whether static visual cues are used to update the internal representation of body configuration for perceived orientation and standing balance. All three experiments involved situations in which the vestibular-evoked balance response was not orthogonal to perceived head-on-feet orientation, regardless of the visual information provided. For prolonged head-turned postures, balance responses consistent with actual head-on-feet posture occurred only during the active condition. Our results indicate that conscious perception of head-on-feet posture and vestibular control of balance do not rely on the same internal representation, but instead treat sensorimotor cues in parallel and may arrive at different conclusions regarding head-on-feet posture. The balance system appears to bypass static visual cues of postural orientation and mainly use other sensorimotor signals of head-on-feet position to transform vestibular signals of head motion, a mechanism appropriate for most daily activities. © 2016 The Authors. The Journal of Physiology © 2016 The Physiological Society.

Exploring racial influences on flu vaccine attitudes and behavior: Results of a national survey of White and African American adults.

PubMed

Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Jamison, Amelia; Freimuth, Vicki S; An, Ji; Hancock, Gregory R; Musa, Donald

2017-02-22

Racial disparities in adult flu vaccination rates persist with African Americans falling below Whites in vaccine acceptance. Although the literature has examined traditional variables including barriers, access, attitudes, among others, there has been virtually no examination of the extent to which racial factors including racial consciousness, fairness, and discrimination may affect vaccine attitudes and behaviors. We contracted with GfK to conduct an online, nationally representative survey with 819 African American and 838 White respondents. Measures included risk perception, trust, vaccine attitudes, hesitancy and confidence, novel measures on racial factors, and vaccine behavior. There were significant racial differences in vaccine attitudes, risk perception, trust, hesitancy and confidence. For both groups, racial fairness had stronger direct effects on the vaccine-related variables with more positive coefficients associated with more positive vaccine attitudes. Racial consciousness in a health care setting emerged as a more powerful influence on attitudes and beliefs, particularly for African Americans, with higher scores on racial consciousness associated with lower trust in the vaccine and the vaccine process, higher perceived vaccine risk, less knowledge of flu vaccine, greater vaccine hesitancy, and less confidence in the flu vaccine. The effect of racial fairness on vaccine behavior was mediated by trust in the flu vaccine for African Americans only (i.e., higher racial fairness increased trust in the vaccine process and thus the probability of getting a flu vaccine). The effect of racial consciousness and discrimination for African Americans on vaccine uptake was mediated by perceived vaccine risk and flu vaccine knowledge. Racial factors can be a useful new tool for understanding and addressing attitudes toward the flu vaccine and actual vaccine behavior. These new concepts can facilitate more effective tailored and targeted vaccine communications. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

What You See Isn’t Always What You Get: Auditory Word Signals Trump Consciously Perceived Words in Lexical Access

PubMed Central

Ostrand, Rachel; Blumstein, Sheila E.; Ferreira, Victor S.; Morgan, James L.

2016-01-01

Human speech perception often includes both an auditory and visual component. A conflict in these signals can result in the McGurk illusion, in which the listener perceives a fusion of the two streams, implying that information from both has been integrated. We report two experiments investigating whether auditory-visual integration of speech occurs before or after lexical access, and whether the visual signal influences lexical access at all. Subjects were presented with McGurk or Congruent primes and performed a lexical decision task on related or unrelated targets. Although subjects perceived the McGurk illusion, McGurk and Congruent primes with matching real-word auditory signals equivalently primed targets that were semantically related to the auditory signal, but not targets related to the McGurk percept. We conclude that the time course of auditory-visual integration is dependent on the lexicality of the auditory and visual input signals, and that listeners can lexically access one word and yet consciously perceive another. PMID:27011021

Manipulation of Pre-Target Activity on the Right Frontal Eye Field Enhances Conscious Visual Perception in Humans

PubMed Central

Chanes, Lorena; Chica, Ana B.; Quentin, Romain; Valero-Cabré, Antoni

2012-01-01

The right Frontal Eye Field (FEF) is a region of the human brain, which has been consistently involved in visuo-spatial attention and access to consciousness. Nonetheless, the extent of this cortical site’s ability to influence specific aspects of visual performance remains debated. We hereby manipulated pre-target activity on the right FEF and explored its influence on the detection and categorization of low-contrast near-threshold visual stimuli. Our data show that pre-target frontal neurostimulation has the potential when used alone to induce enhancements of conscious visual detection. More interestingly, when FEF stimulation was combined with visuo-spatial cues, improvements remained present only for trials in which the cue correctly predicted the location of the subsequent target. Our data provide evidence for the causal role of the right FEF pre-target activity in the modulation of human conscious vision and reveal the dependence of such neurostimulatory effects on the state of activity set up by cue validity in the dorsal attentional orienting network. PMID:22615759

Motivational and emotional aspects of the self.

PubMed

Leary, Mark R

2007-01-01

Recent theory and research are reviewed regarding self-related motives (self-enhancement, self-verification, and self-expansion) and self-conscious emotions (guilt, shame, pride, social anxiety, and embarrassment), with an emphasis on how these motivational and emotional aspects of the self might be related. Specifically, these motives and emotions appear to function to protect people's social well-being. The motives to self-enhance, self-verify, and self-expand are partly rooted in people's concerns with social approval and acceptance, and self-conscious emotions arise in response to events that have real or imagined implications for others' judgments of the individual. Thus, these motives and emotions do not operate to maintain certain states of the self, as some have suggested, but rather to facilitate people's social interactions and relationships.

Trait Dominance Promotes Reflexive Staring at Masked Angry Body Postures

PubMed Central

Hortensius, Ruud; van Honk, Jack; de Gelder, Beatrice; Terburg, David

2014-01-01

It has been shown that dominant individuals sustain eye-contact when non-consciously confronted with angry faces, suggesting reflexive mechanisms underlying dominance behaviors. However, dominance and submission can be conveyed and provoked by means of not only facial but also bodily features. So far few studies have investigated the interplay of body postures with personality traits and behavior, despite the biological relevance and ecological validity of these postures. Here we investigate whether non-conscious exposure to bodily expressions of anger evokes reflex-like dominance behavior. In an interactive eye-tracking experiment thirty-two participants completed three social dominance tasks with angry, happy and neutral facial, bodily and face and body compound expressions that were masked from consciousness. We confirmed our predictions of slower gaze-aversion from both non-conscious bodily and compound expressions of anger compared to happiness in high dominant individuals. Results from a follow-up experiment suggest that the dominance behavior triggered by exposure to bodily anger occurs with basic detection of the category, but not recognition of the emotional content. Together these results suggest that dominant staring behavior is reflexively driven by non-conscious perception of the emotional content and triggered by not only facial but also bodily expression of anger. PMID:25549321

Toward a new cosmic consciousness: Psychoeducational aspects of contact with extraterrestrial civilizations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

De la Torre, Gabriel G.

2014-02-01

This study presents a new approach to the concept of cosmic consciousness integrated in current neuroscience knowledge and discusses implications for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. It also examines different aspects related to consciousness and how it may play a key role in the understanding of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and life in the Universe and its implications. Subjects (n=116) were college students from Spain, the United States, and Italy. Subjects responded to a questionnaire comprising five different sections: (A) religious beliefs, (B) environment and general opinion, (C) astronomy, (D) contact, and (E) attention and perception. The results showed the importance of several modular aspects that affect Space awareness in humans. Preliminary results are discussed with regard to current neuroscience, factor analysis, and possible implications for the understanding of contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. The roles of education, new search strategies, and possible contact scenarios are also discussed.

Subliminal speech perception and auditory streaming.

PubMed

Dupoux, Emmanuel; de Gardelle, Vincent; Kouider, Sid

2008-11-01

Current theories of consciousness assume a qualitative dissociation between conscious and unconscious processing: while subliminal stimuli only elicit a transient activity, supraliminal stimuli have long-lasting influences. Nevertheless, the existence of this qualitative distinction remains controversial, as past studies confounded awareness and stimulus strength (energy, duration). Here, we used a masked speech priming method in conjunction with a submillisecond interaural delay manipulation to contrast subliminal and supraliminal processing at constant prime, mask and target strength. This delay induced a perceptual streaming effect, with the prime popping out in the supraliminal condition. By manipulating the prime-target interval (ISI), we show a qualitatively distinct profile of priming longevity as a function of prime awareness. While subliminal priming disappeared after half a second, supraliminal priming was independent of ISI. This shows that the distinction between conscious and unconscious processing depends on high-level perceptual streaming factors rather than low-level features (energy, duration).

Human olfactory consciousness and cognition: its unusual features may not result from unusual functions but from limited neocortical processing resources

PubMed Central

Stevenson, Richard J.; Attuquayefio, Tuki

2013-01-01

Human and animal olfactory perception is shaped both by functional demands and by various environmental constraints seemingly peculiar to chemical stimuli. These demands and constraints may have generated a sensory system that is cognitively distinct from the major senses. In this article we identify these various functional demands and constraints, and examine whether they can be used to account for olfaction's unique cognitive features on a case-by-case basis. We then use this as grounds to argue that specific conscious processes do have functional value, a finding that naturally emerges when a comparative approach to consciousness across the senses is adopted. More generally, we conclude that certain peculiar features of olfactory cognition may owe more to limited neocortical processing resources, than they do to the challenges faced by perceiving chemical stimuli. PMID:24198808

Impaired information processing triggers altered states of consciousness.

PubMed

Fritzsche, M

2002-04-01

Schizophrenia, intoxication with tetrahydrocannabinol (Delta-THC), and cannabis psychosis induce characteristic time and space distortions suggesting a common psychotic dysfunction. Since genetic research into schizophrenia has led into disappointing dead ends, the present study is focusing on this phenotype. It is shown that information theory can account for the dynamical basis of higher sensorimotor information processing and consciousness under physiologic as well as pathologic conditions. If Kolmogorov entropy (inherent in the processing of action and time) breaks down in acute psychosis, it is predicted that Shannon entropy (inherent in the processing of higher dimensional perception) will increase, provoking positive symptoms and altered states of consciousness. In the search for candidate genes and the protection of vulnerable individuals from cannabis abuse, non-linear EEG analysis of Kolmogorov information could thus present us with a novel diagnostic tool to directly assess the breakdown of information processing in schizophrenia. Copyright 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Computational consciousness: building a self-preserving organism.

PubMed

Barros, Allan Kardec

2010-01-01

Consciousness has been a subject of crescent interest among the neuroscience community. However, building machine models of it is quite challenging, as it involves many characteristics and properties of the human brain which are poorly defined or are very abstract. Here I propose to use information theory (IT) to give a mathematical framework to understand consciousness. For this reason, I used the term "computational". This work is grounded on some recent results on the use of IT to understand how the cortex codes information, where redundancy reduction plays a fundamental role. Basically, I propose a system, here called "organism", whose strategy is to extract the maximal amount of information from the environment in order to survive. To highlight the proposed framework, I show a simple organism composed of a single neuron which adapts itself to the outside dynamics by taking into account its internal state, whose perception is understood here to be related to "feelings".

The Impact of a Year-Long, Same School Social Skills Instruction Program on Students' with Verified Behavioral Disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders Perceptions of Program Effectiveness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gaden, Gregory G.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of a year-long, same school classroom social skills instruction program on students' with verified Emotional Behavior Disorders, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorders perceptions of program effectiveness. This study indicated that youth can demonstrate…

Lucid dreaming verified by volitional communication during REM sleep.

PubMed

La Berge, S P; Nagel, L E; Dement, W C; Zarcone, V P

1981-06-01

The occurrence of lucid dreaming (dreaming while being conscious that one is dreaming) has been verified for 5 selected subjects who signaled that they knew they were dreaming while continuing to dream during unequivocal REM sleep. The signals consisted of particular dream actions having observable concomitants and were performed in accordance with pre-sleep agreement. The ability of proficient lucid dreamers to signal in this manner makes possible a new approach to dream research--such subjects, while lucid, could carry out diverse dream experiments marking the exact time of particular dream events, allowing derivation of of precise psychophysiological correlations and methodical testing of hypotheses.

Visual anticipation biases conscious decision making but not bottom-up visual processing

PubMed Central

Mathews, Zenon; Cetnarski, Ryszard; Verschure, Paul F. M. J.

2015-01-01

Prediction plays a key role in control of attention but it is not clear which aspects of prediction are most prominent in conscious experience. An evolving view on the brain is that it can be seen as a prediction machine that optimizes its ability to predict states of the world and the self through the top-down propagation of predictions and the bottom-up presentation of prediction errors. There are competing views though on whether prediction or prediction errors dominate the formation of conscious experience. Yet, the dynamic effects of prediction on perception, decision making and consciousness have been difficult to assess and to model. We propose a novel mathematical framework and a psychophysical paradigm that allows us to assess both the hierarchical structuring of perceptual consciousness, its content and the impact of predictions and/or errors on conscious experience, attention and decision-making. Using a displacement detection task combined with reverse correlation, we reveal signatures of the usage of prediction at three different levels of perceptual processing: bottom-up fast saccades, top-down driven slow saccades and consciousnes decisions. Our results suggest that the brain employs multiple parallel mechanism at different levels of perceptual processing in order to shape effective sensory consciousness within a predicted perceptual scene. We further observe that bottom-up sensory and top-down predictive processes can be dissociated through cognitive load. We propose a probabilistic data association model from dynamical systems theory to model the predictive multi-scale bias in perceptual processing that we observe and its role in the formation of conscious experience. We propose that these results support the hypothesis that consciousness provides a time-delayed description of a task that is used to prospectively optimize real time control structures, rather than being engaged in the real-time control of behavior itself. PMID:25741290

Neural dynamics of 3-D surface perception: figure-ground separation and lightness perception.

PubMed

Kelly, F; Grossberg, S

2000-11-01

This article develops the FACADE theory of three-dimensional (3-D) vision to simulate data concerning how two-dimensional pictures give rise to 3-D percepts of occluded and occluding surfaces. The theory suggests how geometrical and contrastive properties of an image can either cooperate or compete when forming the boundary and surface representations that subserve conscious visual percepts. Spatially long-range cooperation and short-range competition work together to separate boundaries of occluding figures from their occluded neighbors, thereby providing sensitivity to T-junctions without the need to assume that T-junction "detectors" exist. Both boundary and surface representations of occluded objects may be amodally completed, whereas the surface representations of unoccluded objects become visible through modal processes. Computer simulations include Bregman-Kanizsa figure-ground separation, Kanizsa stratification, and various lightness percepts, including the Münker-White, Benary cross, and checkerboard percepts.

Sensory perception: lessons from synesthesia: using synesthesia to inform the understanding of sensory perception.

PubMed

Harvey, Joshua Paul

2013-06-01

Synesthesia, the conscious, idiosyncratic, repeatable, and involuntary sensation of one sensory modality in response to another, is a condition that has puzzled both researchers and philosophers for centuries. Much time has been spent proving the condition's existence as well as investigating its etiology, but what can be learned from synesthesia remains a poorly discussed topic. Here, synaesthesia is presented as a possible answer rather than a question to the current gaps in our understanding of sensory perception. By first appreciating the similarities between normal sensory perception and synesthesia, one can use what is known about synaesthesia, from behavioral and imaging studies, to inform our understanding of "normal" sensory perception. In particular, in considering synesthesia, one can better understand how and where the different sensory modalities interact in the brain, how different sensory modalities can interact without confusion - the binding problem - as well as how sensory perception develops.

Electrophysiological correlates of processing subject's own name.

PubMed

Li, Ran; Song, Weiqun; Du, Jubao; Huo, Su; Shan, Guixiang

2015-11-11

To understand the neurological mechanisms associated with the perception of subject's own name (SON) and provide a reference for assessing residual cognitive functions in patients with disorders of consciousness, event-related potentials were recorded in 16 healthy volunteers. Compared with event-related potentials elicited by tone stimuli, SON elicited larger MMN and P300. The amplitudes and latencies of MMN and P300 induced by subject's derived name (SDN) were similar to those induced by SON. Discriminating SON from SDN resulted in longer MMN and P300 latencies. These data showed that the SDN had similar quality as SON and might provide a useful reference for quantitatively evaluating disorders of consciousness.

Anosognosia for obvious visual field defects in stroke patients.

PubMed

Baier, Bernhard; Geber, Christian; Müller-Forell, Wiebke; Müller, Notger; Dieterich, Marianne; Karnath, Hans-Otto

2015-01-01

Patients with anosognosia for visual field defect (AVFD) fail to recognize consciously their visual field defect. There is still unclarity whether specific neural correlates are associated with AVFD. We studied AVFD in 54 patients with acute stroke and a visual field defect. Nineteen percent of this unselected sample showed AVFD. By using modern voxelwise lesion-behaviour mapping techniques we found an association between AVFD and parts of the lingual gyrus, the cuneus as well as the posterior cingulate and corpus callosum. Damage to these regions appears to induce unawareness of visual field defects and thus may play a significant role for conscious visual perception.

Suppressing unwanted memories reduces their unconscious influence via targeted cortical inhibition

PubMed Central

Gagnepain, Pierre; Henson, Richard N.; Anderson, Michael C.

2014-01-01

Suppressing retrieval of unwanted memories reduces their later conscious recall. It is widely believed, however, that suppressed memories can continue to exert strong unconscious effects that may compromise mental health. Here we show that excluding memories from awareness not only modulates medial temporal lobe regions involved in explicit retention, but also neocortical areas underlying unconscious expressions of memory. Using repetition priming in visual perception as a model task, we found that excluding memories of visual objects from consciousness reduced their later indirect influence on perception, literally making the content of suppressed memories harder for participants to see. Critically, effective connectivity and pattern similarity analysis revealed that suppression mechanisms mediated by the right middle frontal gyrus reduced activity in neocortical areas involved in perceiving objects and targeted the neural populations most activated by reminders. The degree of inhibitory modulation of the visual cortex while people were suppressing visual memories predicted, in a later perception test, the disruption in the neural markers of sensory memory. These findings suggest a neurobiological model of how motivated forgetting affects the unconscious expression of memory that may be generalized to other types of memory content. More generally, they suggest that the century-old assumption that suppression leaves unconscious memories intact should be reconsidered. PMID:24639546

Fostering Academic Vocabulary Use in Writing

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brun-Mercer, Nicole; Zimmerman, Cheryl Boyd

2015-01-01

Though research has established a relationship between vocabulary knowledge and academic success and identified features to guide the L2 word learner through academic tasks (see Nation, 2013), less is known regarding student perceptions of academic vocabulary and the conscious decision-making process of these learners while they are writing. In…

The Affective Gatekeeper: A Synthesis of Perspectives on Creativity.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bagley, Dan S., III

1979-01-01

The article presents research reports on the nature of creativity, including such elements as its characteristics; the function of the affective gatekeeper (which filters the "reality" perceived by each individual); the constructs of perception; and the functions of role playing, altered states of consciousness, and fantasy. (PHR)

Identities and Social Justice Values of Prospective Teachers of Color

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Agosto, Vonzell

2009-01-01

This empirical study of social justice values among three prospective teachers who identity as being "of color" emphasizes the constellations of social justice sensibilities (perceptions of injustice, concern for the situations of others, socio-political and cultural consciousness, sensitivity regarding the conditions of others) they derived from…

Midlife and Beyond: Issues for Aging Women.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saucier, Maggi G.

2004-01-01

The author discusses issues confronted by aging women, particularly those related to ageism and body image, emphasizing society's role in influencing women's perceptions of their bodies. Although body image issues cause anxiety throughout most women's lives, women entering middle age become more conscious of this concern. Problems related to a…

A Survey of Methods in the Human Potential Movement

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Margolis, Fredric

1977-01-01

Training methods which affect the mind, body consciousness, values, and purpose of life, according to this article, include biofeedback, extrasensory perception, Yoga, transcendental meditation, and Zen. The article describes some elements common to these systems, lists a number of the systems with their costs, and gives some considerations in…

Creative Grammar and Art Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cunliffe, Leslie

2011-01-01

The grammar of creative practices is described by George Steiner as the "articulate organisation of perception, reflection and experience, the nerve structure of consciousness when it communicates with itself and with others." Steiner's description of creative grammar is consistent with Lev Vygotsky's comment that "art is the social within us, and…

Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology: Nancy E. Adler

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

American Psychologist, 2009

2009-01-01

Nancy E. Adler, winner of the Award for Distinguished Scientific Applications of Psychology, is cited for her research on reproductive health examining adolescent decision making with regard to contraception, conscious and preconscious motivations for pregnancy, and perception of risk for sexually transmitted diseases, and for her groundbreaking…

About influencing specificity of space flights on the information, perceived by astronauts

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Prisniakova, L.; Prisniakov, V.

Research of influence of gravitational fields on character of decision-making by the cosmonaut in reply to the information acting to him is the purpose of the report. The magnitude of perceived consciously of flow of the information for all sensory systems (visual, acoustical, somatosensory, chemical, kinaesthetical, balance of a head and time) is analysed. The coefficient of transformation of the incoming information from an environment to the person and the information realized by him has been received equal κ =105. As the susceptibility of the cosmonaut to the incoming of information to him depends on his temperament, the hypothesis about modification of his temperament and accordingly about modification of character of activity of the cosmonaut during duration of flight is voiced. B.Tsukanov's hypothesis is used, that as a measure of mobility of nervous system (temperament) of the person it is possible to use of the magnitude of subjectively experienced time τz. The formula for definition τz is offered using the period of an of alpha waves. The known data of authors, on the one hand, about communication of a time constant of information processing in memory of person T with frequency of alpha waves f and on the other hand, on its relationship with overloads j were used. This dependence of the period of fluctuations of alpha waves Tα from overloads (or microgravitation) enable to find magnitude of change of individually experienced time τ z at action of distinct from normal gravitational fields. The increase of this value of magnitude in case of presence of overloads can lead to to uncontrollable change of behaviour of cosmonauts in connection by erroneous perception of time and space. Acknowledgement to this is display by pilots - verifiers of "loss of orientation''.This result essentially supplements an explanation of this effect which was considered by authors in Houston on the basis of the analysis of the basic psychophysical law. Dependence of change of character of activity of the cosmonaut from conditions of space flight influences on the conscious perception of the incoming information to him from environment, and as result, on efficiency of decisions accepted by him. Results can form a theoretical basis of forecasting of behaviour of cosmonauts during long space flight.

Right insular damage decreases heartbeat awareness and alters cardio-visual effects on bodily self-consciousness.

PubMed

Ronchi, Roberta; Bello-Ruiz, Javier; Lukowska, Marta; Herbelin, Bruno; Cabrilo, Ivan; Schaller, Karl; Blanke, Olaf

2015-04-01

Recent evidence suggests that multisensory integration of bodily signals involving exteroceptive and interoceptive information modulates bodily aspects of self-consciousness such as self-identification and self-location. In the so-called Full Body Illusion subjects watch a virtual body being stroked while they perceive tactile stimulation on their own body inducing illusory self-identification with the virtual body and a change in self-location towards the virtual body. In a related illusion, it has recently been shown that similar changes in self-identification and self-location can be observed when an interoceptive signal is used in association with visual stimulation of the virtual body (i.e., participants observe a virtual body illuminated in synchrony with their heartbeat). Although brain imaging and neuropsychological evidence suggest that the insular cortex is a core region for interoceptive processing (such as cardiac perception and awareness) as well as for self-consciousness, it is currently not known whether the insula mediates cardio-visual modulation of self-consciousness. Here we tested the involvement of insular cortex in heartbeat awareness and cardio-visual manipulation of bodily self-consciousness in a patient before and after resection of a selective right neoplastic insular lesion. Cardio-visual stimulation induced an abnormally enhanced state of bodily self-consciousness; in addition, cardio-visual manipulation was associated with an experienced loss of the spatial unity of the self (illusory bi-location and duplication of his body), not observed in healthy subjects. Heartbeat awareness was found to decrease after insular resection. Based on these data we propose that the insula mediates interoceptive awareness as well as cardio-visual effects on bodily self-consciousness and that insular processing of interoceptive signals is an important mechanism for the experienced unity of the self. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Wave particle duality, the observer and retrocausality

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Narasimhan, Ashok; Kafatos, Menas C.

2017-05-01

We approach wave particle duality, the role of the observer and implications on Retrocausality, by starting with the results of a well verified quantum experiment. We analyze how some current theoretical approaches interpret these results. We then provide an alternative theoretical framework that is consistent with the observations and in many ways simpler than usual attempts to account for retrocausality, involving a non-local conscious Observer.

Inattentive listening undermines self-verification in personal storytelling.

PubMed

Pasupathi, Monisha; Rich, Ben

2005-08-01

Two studies explore the narrative construction of self-perceptions in conversational storytelling among pairs of same-sex friends. Specifically, the studies examined how listener behavior can support or undermine attempts to self-verify in personal storytelling. In two studies (n=100 dyads), speakers told attentive, distracted, or disagreeable (Study 1 only) friends about a recent experience. Distracted, but not disagreeable, friends tended to undermine participants' attempts to verify their self-perception of being interested in an activity (Study 1) or their self-perception that an event was typical for them (Study 2). These results support the notion that friends can be an important source of influence on self-perceptions and, perhaps surprisingly, suggest that responsiveness from friends, rather than agreement per se, may be crucial for supporting self-verification processes.

Fear, Pain, Denial, and Spiritual Experiences in Dying Processes

PubMed Central

Reichmuth, O.; Bueche, D.; Traichel, B.; Mao, M. Schuett; Cerny, T.; Strasser, F.

2017-01-01

Purpose: Approaching death seems to be associated with physiological/spiritual changes. Trajectories including the physical–psychological–social–spiritual dimension have indicated a terminal drop. Existential suffering or deathbed visions describe complex phenomena. However, interrelationships between different constituent factors (e.g., fear and pain, spiritual experiences and altered consciousness) are largely unknown. We lack deeper understanding of patients’ inner processes to which care should respond. In this study, we hypothesized that fear/pain/denial would happen simultaneously and be associated with a transformation of perception from ego-based (pre-transition) to ego-distant perception/consciousness (post-transition) and that spiritual (transcendental) experiences would primarily occur in periods of calmness and post-transition. Parameters for observing transformation of perception (pre-transition, transition itself, and post-transition) were patients’ altered awareness of time/space/body and patients’ altered social connectedness. Method: Two interdisciplinary teams observed 80 dying patients with cancer in palliative units at 2 Swiss cantonal hospitals. We applied participant observation based on semistructured observation protocols, supplemented by the list of analgesic and psychotropic medication. Descriptive statistical analysis and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) were combined. International interdisciplinary experts supported the analysis. Results: Most patients showed at least fear and pain once. Many seemed to have spiritual experiences and to undergo a transformation of perception only partly depending on medication. Line graphs representatively illustrate associations between fear/pain/denial/spiritual experiences and a transformation of perception. No trajectory displayed uninterrupted distress. Many patients seemed to die in peace. Previous near-death or spiritual/mystical experiences may facilitate the dying process. Conclusion: Approaching death seems not only characterized by periods of distress but even more by states beyond fear/pain/denial. PMID:28823175

An east Asian perspective of mind-body.

PubMed

Nagatomo, S; Leisman, G

1996-08-01

This paper addresses a need to re-examine the mind-body dualism established since Descartes. Descartes' dualism has been regarded by modern philosophers as an extremely insufficient solution to the problem of mind and body, from which is derived a long opposition in modern epistomology between idealism and empiricism. This dualism, bifurcating the region of spirit and matter, and the dichotomous models of thinking based on this dualism, have long dominated the world of modern philosophy and science. The paper examines states of conscious experience from an East Asian perspective allowing analysis on achieved supernormal consciousness rather than a focus on "normal" or "subnormal." The nature of the "transformation" of human consciousness will be studied both philosophically, as a transformation from "provisional" dualism to non-dualism, and neurophysiologically. The theoretical structure of the transformation will, in part, be examined through the model provided by a Japanese medieval Zen master, Takuan Sôhô. Then, to verify Takuan's theoretical explanation, toposcopic analysis of electroencephalographs will be presented of the performance of individuals practicing the martial arts technique of tôate.

Computation Through Neuronal Oscillations

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hepp, K.

Some of us believe that natural sciences are governed by simple and predictive general principles. This hope has not yet been fulfilled in physics for unifying gravitation and quantum mechanics. Epigenetics has shaken the monopoly of the genetic code to determine inheritance (Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell. Garland, New York, 2008). It is therefore not surprising that quantum mechanics does not explain consciousness or more generally the coherence of the brain in perception, action and cognition. In an other context, others (Tegmark, Phys Rev E 61:4194-4206, 2000) and we (Koch and Hepp, Nature 440:611-612, 2006; Koch and Hepp, Visions of Discovery: New Light on Physics, Cosmology, and Consciousness. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2011) have strongly argued against the absurdity of such a claim, because consciousness is a higher brain function and not a molecular binding mechanism. Decoherence in the warm and wet brain is by many orders of magnitude too strong. Moreover, there are no efficient algorithms for neural quantum computations. However, the controversy over classical and quantum consciousness will probably never be resolved (see e.g. Hepp, J Math Phys 53:095222, 2012; Hameroff and Penrose, Phys Life Rev 11:39-78, 2013).

Consciousness in waking and dreaming: the roles of neuronal oscillation and neuromodulation in determining similarities and differences.

PubMed

Kahn, D; Pace-Schott, E F; Hobson, J A

1997-05-01

State-dependent aspects of consciousness are explored with particular attention to waking and dreaming. First, those phenomenological differences between waking and dreaming that have been established through subjective reports are reviewed. These differences are robustly expressed in most aspects of consciousness including perception, attention, memory, emotion, orientation, and thought. Next, the roles of high frequency neuronal oscillation and neuromodulation are explored in waking and rapid eye movement sleep, the stage of sleep with which the most intense dreaming is associated. The high frequency neuronal oscillations serve similar functions in the wake and rapid eye movement states sleep but neuromodulation is very different in the two states. The collective high frequency oscillatory activity gives coherence to spatially separate neurons but, because of the different neuromodulation, the binding of sensory input in the wake state is very different from the binding of internally perceived input during rapid eye movement sleep. An explanatory model is presented which states that neuromodulation, as well as input source and brain activation level differentiate states of the brain, while the self-organized collective neuronal oscillations unify consciousness via long range correlations.

Confidence in word detection predicts word identification: implications for an unconscious perception paradigm.

PubMed

Haase, S J; Fisk, G

2001-01-01

The present experiments extend the scope of the independent observation model based on signal detection theory (Macmillan & Creelman, 1991) to complex (word) stimulus sets. In the first experiment, the model predicts the relationship between uncertain detection and subsequent correct identification, thereby providing an alternative interpretation to a phenomenon often described as unconscious perception. Our second experiment used an exclusion task (Jacoby, Toth, & Yonelinas, 1993), which, according to theories of unconscious perception, should show qualitative differences in performance based on stimulus detection accuracy and provide a relative measure of conscious versus unconscious influences (Merikle, Joordens, & Stoltz, 1995). Exclusion performance was also explained by the model, suggesting that undetected words did not unconsciously influence identification responses.

Consciousness and stereoscopic environmental imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Mason, Steve

2014-02-01

The question of human consciousness has intrigued philosophers and scientists for centuries: its nature, how we perceive our environment, how we think, our very awareness of thought and self. It has been suggested that stereoscopic vision is "a paradigm of how the mind works" 1 In depth perception, laws of perspective are known, reasoned, committed to memory from an early age; stereopsis, on the other hand, is a 3D experience governed by strict laws but actively joined within the brain―one sees it without explanation. How do we, in fact, process two different images into one 3D module within the mind and does an awareness of this process give us insight into the workings of our own consciousness? To translate this idea to imaging I employed ChromaDepth™ 3D glasses that rely on light being refracted in a different direction for each eye―colors of differing wavelengths appearing at varying distances from the viewer resulting in a 3D space. This involves neither calculation nor manufacture of two images or views. Environmental spatial imaging was developed―a 3D image was generated that literally surrounds the viewer. The image was printed and adhered to a semi-circular mount; the viewer then entered the interior to experience colored shapes suspended in a 3D space with an apparent loss of surface, or picture plane, upon which the image is rendered. By focusing our awareness through perception-based imaging we are able to gain a deeper understanding of how the brain works, how we see.

How the intentions of the draftsman shape perception of a drawing.

PubMed

Pignocchi, Alessandro

2010-12-01

The interaction between the recovery of the artist's intentions and the perception of an artwork is a classic topic for philosophy and history of art. It also frequently, albeit sometimes implicitly, comes up in everyday thought and conversation about art and artworks. Since recent work in cognitive science can help us understand how we perceive and understand the intentions of others, this discipline could fruitfully participate in a multidisciplinary investigation of the role of intention recovery in art perception. The method I propose is to look for cases where recovery of the artist's intentions interacts with perception of a work of art, and this cannot be explain by a simple top-down influence of conscious propositional knowledge on perception. I will focus on drawing and show that recovery of the draftsman's intentional actions is handled by a psychological process shaped by the motor system of the observer. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The paraphysical principles of natural philosophy

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Beichler, James Edward

The word `paraphysics' has never been precisely defined. To establish paraphysics as a true science, the word is first defined and its scope and limits identified. The natural phenomena which are studied in paraphysics, psi phenomena, are distinguished by their common physical properties. The historical roots of paraphysics are also discussed. Paraphysics can be defined, represented by a specific body of natural phenomena and it has a historical basis. Therefore, paraphysics is a distinguishable science. It only needs a theoretical foundation. Rather than using a quantum approach, a new theory of physical reality can be based upon a field theoretical point of view. This approach dispels philosophical questions regarding the continuity/discrete debate and the wave/particle paradox. Starting from a basic Einstein-Kaluza geometrical structure and assuming a real fifth dimension, a comprehensive and complete theory emerges. The four forces of nature are unified as are the quantum and relativity. Life, mind, consciousness and psi emerge as natural consequences of the physics. The scientific concept of consciousness, ambiguous at best, has become an increasingly important factor in modern physics. No one has ever defined consciousness in an acceptable manner let alone develop a workable theory of consciousness while no viable physical theories of life and mind are even being considered even though they are prerequisites of consciousness. In the five-dimensional model, life, mind and consciousness are explained as increasingly complex `entanglements' or patterns of density variation within the single unified field. Psi is intimately connected to consciousness, giving the science of paranormal phenomena a theoretical basis in the physics of hyperspace. Psi results from different modes of consciousness interacting non-locally via the fifth dimension. Several distinct areas of future research are suggested which will lead to falsification of the theory. A new theory of the atomic nucleus is clearly indicated as is a simple theory of the predominant spiral shape of galaxies. A quantifiable theory of life is also suggested. And finally, this model strongly implies a direct correspondence between emotional states and psi phenomena which should render the existence of psi verifiable.

Implicit social cognition: From measures to mechanisms

PubMed Central

Nosek, Brian A.; Hawkins, Carlee Beth; Frazier, Rebecca S.

2011-01-01

Most of human cognition occurs outside of conscious awareness or conscious control. Some of these implicit processes influence social perception, judgment and action. The last fifteen years of research in implicit social cognition can be characterized as the Age of Measurement because of a proliferation of measurement methods and research evidence demonstrating their practical value for predicting human behavior. Implicit measures assess constructs that are distinct, but related, to self-report assessments, and predict variation in behavior that is not accounted for by those explicit measures. The present state of knowledge provides a foundation for the next age of implicit social cognition – clarification of the mechanisms underlying implicit measurement and how the measured constructs influence behavior. PMID:21376657

Crowding out Latinos: Mexican Americans in the Public Consciousness.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Portales, Marco

Despite efforts to improve perceptions about Mexican Americans and other Spanish-speaking people in the United States, Chicanos and other Latinos are not yet seen as typical American citizens. Latinos continue to receive poor educations, and the media continue to represent them in ways unaffected by the emergence of Chicano literature. This book…

National Identity from a Social Psychological Perspective: Two Brazilian Case Studies.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Morse, Stanley J.

Four aspects of national identity are investigated that seem relevant to an understanding of the complex sociopsychological ties which bind individuals to the nation-state. The four aspects of national identity are self-identity, consciousness of national identity, perception of nation-state, and citizenship role within nation-state. Two parallel…

Unconscious Inhibition and Facilitation at the Objective Detection Threshold: Replicable and Qualitatively Different Unconscious Perceptual Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Snodgrass, Michael; Shevrin, Howard

2006-01-01

Although the veridicality of unconscious perception is increasingly accepted, core issues remain unresolved [Jack, A., & Shallice, T. (2001). Introspective physicalism as an approach to the science of consciousness. "Cognition, 79," 161-196], and sharp disagreement persists regarding fundamental methodological and theoretical issues. The most…

U.S. Higher Education Classroom Experiences of Undergraduate Chinese International Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Valdez, Gabriela

2015-01-01

The purpose of this study was to explore undergraduate Chinese international students' perceptions about their classroom experiences in the United States institutions of higher education. Double consciousness, introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, was used as the theoretical framework for this study. After analyzing the 15 interviews to Chinese…

Race and Raceness: A Theoretical Perspective of the Black American Experience.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wade, Jacqueline E.

1987-01-01

Gives a theoretical perspective of the multidimensional nature of Black-race/White-race consciousness. American perceptions of race are expressed in White race centeredness. Blacks face the dilemma of adhering to two sets of values: a positive valuation of their race and a necessity of passing in White society. (PS)

Dissociating Perception from Action during Conscious and Unconscious Conflict Adaptation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Atas, Anne; Desender, Kobe; Gevers, Wim; Cleeremans, Axel

2016-01-01

The detection of a conflict between relevant and irrelevant information on a given trial typically results in a smaller conflict effect on the next trial. This sequential effect has been interpreted as an expression of cognitive control implemented to resolve conflict. In this context, 2 different but related issues have received increasing…

Sex Roles and Career Decision-Making Process in Young Women.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sola, Janet L.

During the heightened self-consciousness of adolescence, reevaluation and modifications in self-perceptions and sex-role orientations generally take place. Therefore, a developmental perspective is needed to investigate the adoption of sex-typed, cross sex-typed, or non sex-typed attitudes and behaviors. Young women (N=226) responded to a…

A Nigerian Case-Study of Perceptions of Science.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bajah, Samuel Tunde

1985-01-01

Case study and survey evidence is presented which shows that many Nigerians view science mainly as a body of knowledge imported by the white man. The concept of "African science" is explained and related to an emerging consciousness which, it is hoped, will influence the nature and quality of science instruction in Nigeria. (JDH)

Images of Childhood and the Implied Reader in Young Children's Information Books

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Larkin-Lieffers, Patricia A.

2010-01-01

Images of childhood are ideas and expectations of childhood and children, and are reflections of individual perception and cultural ideologies. In writing children's books, authors draw on their conscious and unconscious thoughts of childhood to create an implied reader. In this paper I investigate images of childhood through examination of the…

Developing critical consciousness or justifying the system? A qualitative analysis of attributions for poverty and wealth among low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women

PubMed Central

Godfrey, Erin B.; Wolf, Sharon

2015-01-01

Objectives Economic inequality is a growing concern in the United States and globally. The current study uses qualitative techniques to (1) explore the attributions low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women make for poverty and wealth in the U.S., and (2) clarify important links between attributions, critical consciousness development and system justification theory. Methods In-depth interview transcripts from 19 low-income immigrant Dominican and Mexican and native African-American mothers in a large Northeastern city were analyzed using open coding techniques. Interview topics included perceptions of current economic inequality and mobility and experiences of daily economic hardships. Results Almost all respondents attributed economic inequality to individual factors (character flaws, lack of hard work). Structural explanations for poverty and wealth were expressed by less than half the sample and almost always paired with individual explanations. Moreover, individual attributions included system-justifying beliefs such as the belief in meritocracy and equality of opportunity and structural attributions represented varying levels of critical consciousness. Conclusions Our analysis sheds new light on how and why individuals simultaneously hold individual and structural attributions and highlights key links between system justification and critical consciousness. It shows that critical consciousness and system justification do not represent opposite stances along a single underlying continuum, but are distinct belief systems and motivations. It also suggests that the motive to justify the system is a key psychological process impeding the development of critical consciousness. Implications for scholarship and intervention are discussed. PMID:25915116

The Dual Role of Media Internalization in Adolescent Sexual Behavior.

PubMed

Rousseau, Ann; Beyens, Ine; Eggermont, Steven; Vandenbosch, Laura

2017-08-01

Sexualizing media content is prevalent in various media types. Sexualizing media messages and portrayals emphasize unattainable body and appearance ideals as the primary components of sexual desirability. The internalization of these ideals is positively related to self-objectification and sexual body consciousness. In turn, self-objectification and sexual body consciousness affect adolescents' sexual behavior, albeit in opposing directions. While objectifying self-perceptions are linked to higher levels of sexual behavior, body consciousness during physical intimacy is linked to lower levels of sexual behavior. Based on this knowledge, the present three-wave panel study of 824 Belgian, predominant heterosexual adolescents (M age  = 15.33; SD = 1.45) proposes a dual-pathway model that investigates two different pathways through which the internalization of media ideals may impact adolescents' sexual behavior. An inhibitory pathway links media internalization to lower levels of sexual behavior through sexual body consciousness, and a supportive pathway links media internalization to higher levels of sexual behavior through self-objectification. Structural equation analyses supported the proposed dual-pathway, showing that the impact of media internalization on adolescents' sexual behavior proceeds through an inhibitory pathway and a supportive pathway. Regarding the supportive pathway, media internalization (W1) positively predicted sexual behavior (W3), through valuing appearance over competence (W2). Regarding the inhibitory pathway, media internalization (W1) positively predicted body surveillance, which, in turn, positively predicted sexual body consciousness (all W2). Sexual body consciousness (W2) is negatively related to sexual behavior (W3). From a sexual developmental perspective, these findings emphasize the importance of guiding adolescents in interpreting and processing sexualizing media messages.

Developing critical consciousness or justifying the system? A qualitative analysis of attributions for poverty and wealth among low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women.

PubMed

Godfrey, Erin B; Wolf, Sharon

2016-01-01

Economic inequality is a growing concern in the United States and globally. The current study uses qualitative techniques to (a) explore the attributions low-income racial/ethnic minority and immigrant women make for poverty and wealth in the U.S., and (b) clarify important links between attributions, critical consciousness development, and system justification theory. In-depth interview transcripts from 19 low-income immigrant Dominican and Mexican and native African American mothers in a large Northeastern city were analyzed using open coding techniques. Interview topics included perceptions of current economic inequality and mobility and experiences of daily economic hardships. Almost all respondents attributed economic inequality to individual factors (character flaws, lack of hard work). Structural explanations for poverty and wealth were expressed by fewer than half the sample and almost always paired with individual explanations. Moreover, individual attributions included system-justifying beliefs such as the belief in meritocracy and equality of opportunity and structural attributions represented varying levels of critical consciousness. Our analysis sheds new light on how and why individuals simultaneously hold individual and structural attributions and highlights key links between system justification and critical consciousness. It shows that critical consciousness and system justification do not represent opposite stances along a single underlying continuum, but are distinct belief systems and motivations. It also suggests that the motive to justify the system is a key psychological process impeding the development of critical consciousness. Implications for scholarship and intervention are discussed. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

The Evolution of Consciousness in the Novel in English

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gojkovic, Zorica

This dissertation examines how the novel in English reflects the evolution of human consciousness. Characters in novels express a level of consciousness through their world view, which reflects the level of consciousness of the author and his/her period. Over time the world view evolves from a perception of physical reality as ultimate reality, to physical reality as illusion, in contrast to primary reality, which is spirit, or energy, or God, or the holistic frequency realm. Great mystics and sages all over the world, and throughout history, have had this understanding about the nature of reality. What is new is that different investigative currents are coming together and sharing this new vision of reality. The underlying unity, or enfolded order, is a broader realm where fragmentation is united by a deeper truth. This oneness is analogized to a hologram, where each part is in the whole and the whole in each part. The process of the evolution of consciousness in the novel is examined in three parts. In part one, Chapter One, connections are established between some of the pertinent developments in quantum physics, mysticism and Erich Neumann's theory of the evolution of consciousness. This information sets the stage for the exploration of the evolutionary process in the novel. Part two, chapters two to seven, explore various themes that demonstrate the evolutionary process in the novel. Novels that most effectively demonstrate the evolution are used. Part three, Chapter Eight, summarizes the evolutionary process and demonstrates the way in which wholeness is achieved from the initial separateness. Part three also explores some implications for the novel in light of this analysis.

Intact unconscious processing of eye contact in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Seymour, Kiley; Rhodes, Gillian; Stein, Timo; Langdon, Robyn

2016-03-01

The perception of eye gaze is crucial for social interaction, providing essential information about another person's goals, intentions, and focus of attention. People with schizophrenia suffer a wide range of social cognitive deficits, including abnormalities in eye gaze perception. For instance, patients have shown an increased bias to misjudge averted gaze as being directed toward them. In this study we probed early unconscious mechanisms of gaze processing in schizophrenia using a technique known as continuous flash suppression. Previous research using this technique to render faces with direct and averted gaze initially invisible reveals that direct eye contact gains privileged access to conscious awareness in healthy adults. We found that patients, as with healthy control subjects, showed the same effect: faces with direct eye gaze became visible significantly faster than faces with averted gaze. This suggests that early unconscious processing of eye gaze is intact in schizophrenia and implies that any misjudgments of gaze direction must manifest at a later conscious stage of gaze processing where deficits and/or biases in attributing mental states to gaze and/or beliefs about being watched may play a role.

ERP signatures of conscious and unconscious word and letter perception in an inattentional blindness paradigm.

PubMed

Schelonka, Kathryn; Graulty, Christian; Canseco-Gonzalez, Enriqueta; Pitts, Michael A

2017-09-01

A three-phase inattentional blindness paradigm was combined with ERPs. While participants performed a distracter task, line segments in the background formed words or consonant-strings. Nearly half of the participants failed to notice these word-forms and were deemed inattentionally blind. All participants noticed the word-forms in phase 2 of the experiment while they performed the same distracter task. In the final phase, participants performed a task on the word-forms. In all phases, including during inattentional blindness, word-forms elicited distinct ERPs during early latencies (∼200-280ms) suggesting unconscious orthographic processing. A subsequent ERP (∼320-380ms) similar to the visual awareness negativity appeared only when subjects were aware of the word-forms, regardless of the task. Finally, word-forms elicited a P3b (∼400-550ms) only when these stimuli were task-relevant. These results are consistent with previous inattentional blindness studies and help distinguish brain activity associated with pre- and post-perceptual processing from correlates of conscious perception. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Neural Correlates of Auditory Perceptual Awareness and Release from Informational Masking Recorded Directly from Human Cortex: A Case Study.

PubMed

Dykstra, Andrew R; Halgren, Eric; Gutschalk, Alexander; Eskandar, Emad N; Cash, Sydney S

2016-01-01

In complex acoustic environments, even salient supra-threshold sounds sometimes go unperceived, a phenomenon known as informational masking. The neural basis of informational masking (and its release) has not been well-characterized, particularly outside auditory cortex. We combined electrocorticography in a neurosurgical patient undergoing invasive epilepsy monitoring with trial-by-trial perceptual reports of isochronous target-tone streams embedded in random multi-tone maskers. Awareness of such masker-embedded target streams was associated with a focal negativity between 100 and 200 ms and high-gamma activity (HGA) between 50 and 250 ms (both in auditory cortex on the posterolateral superior temporal gyrus) as well as a broad P3b-like potential (between ~300 and 600 ms) with generators in ventrolateral frontal and lateral temporal cortex. Unperceived target tones elicited drastically reduced versions of such responses, if at all. While it remains unclear whether these responses reflect conscious perception, itself, as opposed to pre- or post-perceptual processing, the results suggest that conscious perception of target sounds in complex listening environments may engage diverse neural mechanisms in distributed brain areas.

Natural hazard risk perception of Italian population: case studies along national territory.

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gravina, Teresita; Tupputi Schinosa, Francesca De Luca; Zuddas, Isabella; Preto, Mattia; Marengo, Angelo; Esposito, Alessandro; Figliozzi, Emanuele; Rapinatore, Matteo

2015-04-01

Risk perception is judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of risks, in last few years risk perception studies focused on provide cognitive elements to communication experts responsible in order to design citizenship information and awareness appropriate strategies. Several authors in order to determine natural hazards risk (Seismic, landslides, cyclones, flood, Volcanic) perception used questionnaires as tool for providing reliable quantitative data and permitting comparison the results with those of similar surveys. In Italy, risk perception studies based on surveys, were also carried out in order to investigate on national importance Natural risk, in particular on Somma-Vesuvio and Phlegrean Fields volcanic Risks, but lacked risk perception studies on local situation distributed on whole national territory. National importance natural hazard were frequently reported by national mass media and there were debate about emergencies civil protection plans, otherwise could be difficult to obtain information on bonded and regional nature natural hazard which were diffuses along National territory. In fact, Italian peninsula was a younger geological area subjected to endogenous phenomena (volcanoes, earthquake) and exogenous phenomena which determine land evolution and natural hazard (landslide, coastal erosion, hydrogeological instability, sinkhole) for population. For this reason we decided to investigate on natural risks perception in different Italian place were natural hazard were taken place but not reported from mass media, as were only local relevant or historical event. We carried out surveys in different Italian place interested by different types of natural Hazard (landslide, coastal erosion, hydrogeological instability, sinkhole, volcanic phenomena and earthquake) and compared results, in order to understand population perception level, awareness and civil protection exercises preparation. Our findings support that risks communication have to be based on citizen knowledge and conscious in natural hazards. In fact, informed citizen could participate actively in decision in urban development planning and accept positively legislation and regulation introduced to avoid natural risks. The study has gone some way towards enhancing understanding in citizens conscious in natural risks and allow us to say that communication on natural risks could not be based only in transferring emergency behavior to citizens but also allow people to improve their knowledge in landscape evolution in order to assume aware environmental behavior.

How the venetian blind percept emerges from the laminar cortical dynamics of 3D vision

PubMed Central

Cao, Yongqiang; Grossberg, Stephen

2014-01-01

The 3D LAMINART model of 3D vision and figure-ground perception is used to explain and simulate a key example of the Venetian blind effect and to show how it is related to other well-known perceptual phenomena such as Panum's limiting case. The model proposes how lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and hierarchically organized laminar circuits in cortical areas V1, V2, and V4 interact to control processes of 3D boundary formation and surface filling-in that simulate many properties of 3D vision percepts, notably consciously seen surface percepts, which are predicted to arise when filled-in surface representations are integrated into surface-shroud resonances between visual and parietal cortex. Interactions between layers 4, 3B, and 2/3 in V1 and V2 carry out stereopsis and 3D boundary formation. Both binocular and monocular information combine to form 3D boundary and surface representations. Surface contour surface-to-boundary feedback from V2 thin stripes to V2 pale stripes combines computationally complementary boundary and surface formation properties, leading to a single consistent percept, while also eliminating redundant 3D boundaries, and triggering figure-ground perception. False binocular boundary matches are eliminated by Gestalt grouping properties during boundary formation. In particular, a disparity filter, which helps to solve the Correspondence Problem by eliminating false matches, is predicted to be realized as part of the boundary grouping process in layer 2/3 of cortical area V2. The model has been used to simulate the consciously seen 3D surface percepts in 18 psychophysical experiments. These percepts include the Venetian blind effect, Panum's limiting case, contrast variations of dichoptic masking and the correspondence problem, the effect of interocular contrast differences on stereoacuity, stereopsis with polarity-reversed stereograms, da Vinci stereopsis, and perceptual closure. These model mechanisms have also simulated properties of 3D neon color spreading, binocular rivalry, 3D Necker cube, and many examples of 3D figure-ground separation. PMID:25309467

How the venetian blind percept emerges from the laminar cortical dynamics of 3D vision.

PubMed

Cao, Yongqiang; Grossberg, Stephen

2014-01-01

The 3D LAMINART model of 3D vision and figure-ground perception is used to explain and simulate a key example of the Venetian blind effect and to show how it is related to other well-known perceptual phenomena such as Panum's limiting case. The model proposes how lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and hierarchically organized laminar circuits in cortical areas V1, V2, and V4 interact to control processes of 3D boundary formation and surface filling-in that simulate many properties of 3D vision percepts, notably consciously seen surface percepts, which are predicted to arise when filled-in surface representations are integrated into surface-shroud resonances between visual and parietal cortex. Interactions between layers 4, 3B, and 2/3 in V1 and V2 carry out stereopsis and 3D boundary formation. Both binocular and monocular information combine to form 3D boundary and surface representations. Surface contour surface-to-boundary feedback from V2 thin stripes to V2 pale stripes combines computationally complementary boundary and surface formation properties, leading to a single consistent percept, while also eliminating redundant 3D boundaries, and triggering figure-ground perception. False binocular boundary matches are eliminated by Gestalt grouping properties during boundary formation. In particular, a disparity filter, which helps to solve the Correspondence Problem by eliminating false matches, is predicted to be realized as part of the boundary grouping process in layer 2/3 of cortical area V2. The model has been used to simulate the consciously seen 3D surface percepts in 18 psychophysical experiments. These percepts include the Venetian blind effect, Panum's limiting case, contrast variations of dichoptic masking and the correspondence problem, the effect of interocular contrast differences on stereoacuity, stereopsis with polarity-reversed stereograms, da Vinci stereopsis, and perceptual closure. These model mechanisms have also simulated properties of 3D neon color spreading, binocular rivalry, 3D Necker cube, and many examples of 3D figure-ground separation.

Multisensory integration in complete unawareness: evidence from audiovisual congruency priming.

PubMed

Faivre, Nathan; Mudrik, Liad; Schwartz, Naama; Koch, Christof

2014-11-01

Multisensory integration is thought to require conscious perception. Although previous studies have shown that an invisible stimulus could be integrated with an audible one, none have demonstrated integration of two subliminal stimuli of different modalities. Here, pairs of identical or different audiovisual target letters (the sound /b/ with the written letter "b" or "m," respectively) were preceded by pairs of masked identical or different audiovisual prime digits (the sound /6/ with the written digit "6" or "8," respectively). In three experiments, awareness of the audiovisual digit primes was manipulated, such that participants were either unaware of the visual digit, the auditory digit, or both. Priming of the semantic relations between the auditory and visual digits was found in all experiments. Moreover, a further experiment showed that unconscious multisensory integration was not obtained when participants did not undergo prior conscious training of the task. This suggests that following conscious learning, unconscious processing suffices for multisensory integration. © The Author(s) 2014.

Seeing without Seeing? Degraded Conscious Vision in a Blindsight Patient.

PubMed

Overgaard, Morten; Fehl, Katrin; Mouridsen, Kim; Bergholt, Bo; Cleeremans, Axel

2008-08-21

Blindsight patients, whose primary visual cortex is lesioned, exhibit preserved ability to discriminate visual stimuli presented in their "blind" field, yet report no visual awareness hereof. Blindsight is generally studied in experimental investigations of single patients, as very few patients have been given this "diagnosis". In our single case study of patient GR, we ask whether blindsight is best described as unconscious vision, or rather as conscious, yet severely degraded vision. In experiment 1 and 2, we successfully replicate the typical findings of previous studies on blindsight. The third experiment, however, suggests that GR's ability to discriminate amongst visual stimuli does not reflect unconscious vision, but rather degraded, yet conscious vision. As our finding results from using a method for obtaining subjective reports that has not previously used in blindsight studies (but validated in studies of healthy subjects and other patients with brain injury), our results call for a reconsideration of blindsight, and, arguably also of many previous studies of unconscious perception in healthy subjects.

The threshold for conscious report: Signal loss and response bias in visual and frontal cortex.

PubMed

van Vugt, Bram; Dagnino, Bruno; Vartak, Devavrat; Safaai, Houman; Panzeri, Stefano; Dehaene, Stanislas; Roelfsema, Pieter R

2018-05-04

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. Copyright © 2018 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.

An integrative model of auditory phantom perception: tinnitus as a unified percept of interacting separable subnetworks.

PubMed

De Ridder, Dirk; Vanneste, Sven; Weisz, Nathan; Londero, Alain; Schlee, Winnie; Elgoyhen, Ana Belen; Langguth, Berthold

2014-07-01

Tinnitus is a considered to be an auditory phantom phenomenon, a persistent conscious percept of a salient memory trace, externally attributed, in the absence of a sound source. It is perceived as a phenomenological unified coherent percept, binding multiple separable clinical characteristics, such as its loudness, the sidedness, the type (pure tone, noise), the associated distress and so on. A theoretical pathophysiological framework capable of explaining all these aspects in one model is highly needed. The model must incorporate both the deafferentation based neurophysiological models and the dysfunctional noise canceling model, and propose a 'tinnitus core' subnetwork. The tinnitus core can be defined as the minimal set of brain areas that needs to be jointly activated (=subnetwork) for tinnitus to be consciously perceived, devoid of its affective components. The brain areas involved in the other separable characteristics of tinnitus can be retrieved by studies on spontaneous resting state magnetic and electrical activity in people with tinnitus, evaluated for the specific aspect investigated and controlled for other factors. By combining these functional imaging studies with neuromodulation techniques some of the correlations are turned into causal relationships. Thereof, a heuristic pathophysiological framework is constructed, integrating the tinnitus perceptual core with the other tinnitus related aspects. This phenomenological unified percept of tinnitus can be considered an emergent property of multiple, parallel, dynamically changing and partially overlapping subnetworks, each with a specific spontaneous oscillatory pattern and functional connectivity signature. Communication between these different subnetworks is proposed to occur at hubs, brain areas that are involved in multiple subnetworks simultaneously. These hubs can take part in each separable subnetwork at different frequencies. Communication between the subnetworks is proposed to occur at discrete oscillatory frequencies. As such, the brain uses multiple nonspecific networks in parallel, each with their own oscillatory signature, that adapt to the context to construct a unified percept possibly by synchronized activation integrated at hubs at discrete oscillatory frequencies. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Learning New Sensorimotor Contingencies: Effects of Long-Term Use of Sensory Augmentation on the Brain and Conscious Perception.

PubMed

König, Sabine U; Schumann, Frank; Keyser, Johannes; Goeke, Caspar; Krause, Carina; Wache, Susan; Lytochkin, Aleksey; Ebert, Manuel; Brunsch, Vincent; Wahn, Basil; Kaspar, Kai; Nagel, Saskia K; Meilinger, Tobias; Bülthoff, Heinrich; Wolbers, Thomas; Büchel, Christian; König, Peter

2016-01-01

Theories of embodied cognition propose that perception is shaped by sensory stimuli and by the actions of the organism. Following sensorimotor contingency theory, the mastery of lawful relations between own behavior and resulting changes in sensory signals, called sensorimotor contingencies, is constitutive of conscious perception. Sensorimotor contingency theory predicts that, after training, knowledge relating to new sensorimotor contingencies develops, leading to changes in the activation of sensorimotor systems, and concomitant changes in perception. In the present study, we spell out this hypothesis in detail and investigate whether it is possible to learn new sensorimotor contingencies by sensory augmentation. Specifically, we designed an fMRI compatible sensory augmentation device, the feelSpace belt, which gives orientation information about the direction of magnetic north via vibrotactile stimulation on the waist of participants. In a longitudinal study, participants trained with this belt for seven weeks in natural environment. Our EEG results indicate that training with the belt leads to changes in sleep architecture early in the training phase, compatible with the consolidation of procedural learning as well as increased sensorimotor processing and motor programming. The fMRI results suggest that training entails activity in sensory as well as higher motor centers and brain areas known to be involved in navigation. These neural changes are accompanied with changes in how space and the belt signal are perceived, as well as with increased trust in navigational ability. Thus, our data on physiological processes and subjective experiences are compatible with the hypothesis that new sensorimotor contingencies can be acquired using sensory augmentation.

Learning New Sensorimotor Contingencies: Effects of Long-Term Use of Sensory Augmentation on the Brain and Conscious Perception

PubMed Central

Schumann, Frank; Keyser, Johannes; Goeke, Caspar; Krause, Carina; Wache, Susan; Lytochkin, Aleksey; Ebert, Manuel; Brunsch, Vincent; Wahn, Basil; Kaspar, Kai; Nagel, Saskia K.; Meilinger, Tobias; Bülthoff, Heinrich; Wolbers, Thomas; Büchel, Christian; König, Peter

2016-01-01

Theories of embodied cognition propose that perception is shaped by sensory stimuli and by the actions of the organism. Following sensorimotor contingency theory, the mastery of lawful relations between own behavior and resulting changes in sensory signals, called sensorimotor contingencies, is constitutive of conscious perception. Sensorimotor contingency theory predicts that, after training, knowledge relating to new sensorimotor contingencies develops, leading to changes in the activation of sensorimotor systems, and concomitant changes in perception. In the present study, we spell out this hypothesis in detail and investigate whether it is possible to learn new sensorimotor contingencies by sensory augmentation. Specifically, we designed an fMRI compatible sensory augmentation device, the feelSpace belt, which gives orientation information about the direction of magnetic north via vibrotactile stimulation on the waist of participants. In a longitudinal study, participants trained with this belt for seven weeks in natural environment. Our EEG results indicate that training with the belt leads to changes in sleep architecture early in the training phase, compatible with the consolidation of procedural learning as well as increased sensorimotor processing and motor programming. The fMRI results suggest that training entails activity in sensory as well as higher motor centers and brain areas known to be involved in navigation. These neural changes are accompanied with changes in how space and the belt signal are perceived, as well as with increased trust in navigational ability. Thus, our data on physiological processes and subjective experiences are compatible with the hypothesis that new sensorimotor contingencies can be acquired using sensory augmentation. PMID:27959914

Differentiating aversive conditioning in bistable perception: Avoidance of a percept vs. salience of a stimulus.

PubMed

Wilbertz, Gregor; Sterzer, Philipp

2018-05-01

Alternating conscious visual perception of bistable stimuli is influenced by several factors. In order to understand the effect of negative valence, we tested the effect of two types of aversive conditioning on dominance durations in binocular rivalry. Participants received either aversive classical conditioning of the stimuli shown alone between rivalry blocks, or aversive percept conditioning of one of the two possible perceptual choices during rivalry. Both groups showed successful aversive conditioning according to skin conductance responses and affective valence ratings. However, while classical conditioning led to an immediate but short-lived increase in dominance durations of the conditioned stimulus, percept conditioning yielded no significant immediate effect but tended to decrease durations of the conditioned percept during extinction. These results show dissociable effects of value learning on perceptual inference in situations of perceptual conflict, depending on whether learning relates to the decision between conflicting perceptual choices or the sensory stimuli per se. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Moments in Time

PubMed Central

Wittmann, Marc

2011-01-01

It has been suggested that perception and action can be understood as evolving in temporal epochs or sequential processing units. Successive events are fused into units forming a unitary experience or “psychological present.” Studies have identified several temporal integration levels on different time scales which are fundamental for our understanding of behavior and subjective experience. In recent literature concerning the philosophy and neuroscience of consciousness these separate temporal processing levels are not always precisely distinguished. Therefore, empirical evidence from psychophysics and neuropsychology on these distinct temporal processing levels is presented and discussed within philosophical conceptualizations of time experience. On an elementary level, one can identify a functional moment, a basic temporal building block of perception in the range of milliseconds that defines simultaneity and succession. Below a certain threshold temporal order is not perceived, individual events are processed as co-temporal. On a second level, an experienced moment, which is based on temporal integration of up to a few seconds, has been reported in many qualitatively different experiments in perception and action. It has been suggested that this segmental processing mechanism creates temporal windows that provide a logistical basis for conscious representation and the experience of nowness. On a third level of integration, continuity of experience is enabled by working memory in the range of multiple seconds allowing the maintenance of cognitive operations and emotional feelings, leading to mental presence, a temporal window of an individual’s experienced presence. PMID:22022310

Understanding face perception by means of human electrophysiology.

PubMed

Rossion, Bruno

2014-06-01

Electrophysiological recordings on the human scalp provide a wealth of information about the temporal dynamics and nature of face perception at a global level of brain organization. The time window between 100 and 200 ms witnesses the transition between low-level and high-level vision, an N170 component correlating with conscious interpretation of a visual stimulus as a face. This face representation is rapidly refined as information accumulates during this time window, allowing the individualization of faces. To improve the sensitivity and objectivity of face perception measures, it is increasingly important to go beyond transient visual stimulation by recording electrophysiological responses at periodic frequency rates. This approach has recently provided face perception thresholds and the first objective signature of integration of facial parts in the human brain. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Environmental Assessment of Packaging: The Consumer Point of View

PubMed

Van Dam YK

1996-09-01

When marketing environmentally responsible packaged products, the producer is confronted with consumer beliefs concerning the environmental friendliness of packaging materials. When making environmentally conscious packaging decisions, these consumer beliefs should be taken into account alongside the technical guidelines. Dutch consumer perceptions of the environmental friendliness of packaged products are reported and compared with the results of a life-cycle analysis assessment. It is shown that consumers judge environmental friendliness mainly from material and returnability. Furthermore, the consumer perception of the environmental friendliness of packaging material is based on the postconsumption waste, whereas the environmental effects of production are ignored. From the consumer beliefs concerning environmental friendliness implications are deduced for packaging policy and for environmental policy.KEY WORDS: Consumer behavior; Environment; Food; Packaging; Perception; Waste

Unconscious Modulation of the Conscious Experience of Voluntary Control

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Linser, Katrin; Goschke, Thomas

2007-01-01

How does the brain generate our experience of being in control over our actions and their effects? Here, we argue that the perception of events as self-caused emerges from a comparison between anticipated and actual action-effects: if the representation of an event that follows an action is activated before the action, the event is experienced as…

Intuition in the Context of Object Perception: Intuitive Gestalt Judgments Rest on the Unconscious Activation of Semantic Representations

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bolte, Annette; Goschke, Thomas

2008-01-01

Intuition denotes the ability to judge stimulus properties on the basis of information that is activated in memory, but not consciously retrieved. In three experiments we show that participants discriminated better than chance fragmented line drawings depicting meaningful objects (coherent fragments) from fragments consisting of randomly displaced…

Creating the Third Self: Pragmatic Transfer in Third Language Acquisition.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Fouser, Robert J.

1995-01-01

A prospective study investigating pragmatic transfer in the learning of Japanese as a third language (L3) is described. The study will test the hypothesis that the learner's perception of linguistic and cultural distance between the first/second languages (L1/L2) and L3 will determine conscious and unconscious decisions about which linguistic and…

On the Origins, Stages and Prospects of the Kazakh Philosophy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sydykov, Yerlan B.; Nysanbaev, Abdumalik N.; Tuleshov, Valikhan T.

2016-01-01

Perception of a single chain of the Kazakh history as the history of their ethnic consciousness and self-awareness, and not as a history of the events or stories of artefacts presents the most important political task, which could be solved only through the metaphysical, philosophical synthesis of views from the primitive to modern times. The…

Moving toward Socially and Environmentally Responsible Management Education--A Case Study of Mumbai

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Goyal, Ela; Gupta, Mahendra

2014-01-01

Educational institutions have a vital role to play shaping the future of our environment. Education provides opportunities for students to become environmentally conscious citizens besides being educated. In this study, an attempt has been made to study the perception of management students and teachers in the city of Mumbai, India, to determine…

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Teaching-Learning Process.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

McCaulley, Mary H.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) was developed specifically to make possible the implementation of Carl Jung's theory of type and is concerned mainly with conscious elements of the personality. It assumes that to function well, an individual must have a well-developed system for perception and a well-developed system for making decisions or…

The Attention Window: A Narrative Review of Limitations and Opportunities Influencing the Focus of Attention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hüttermann, Stefanie; Memmert, Daniel

2017-01-01

Purpose: Visual attention is essential in many areas ranging from everyday life situations to the workplace. Different circumstances such as driving in traffic or participating in sports require immediate adaptation to constantly changing situations and frequently the conscious perception of 2 objects or scenes at the same time. Method: The…

Preservice Teachers' Perception Levels Concerning Consumer Environmental Consciousness

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Dikmenli, Yurdal

2017-01-01

People who strive to prevent harm to the environment while utilizing it and to maintain a livable environment is related to educational and cultural values. If we want the next generation to live in an environment as undisturbed as we live in now, environmentally friendly products should be consumed and waste should be prevented. Thus, raising an…

Afro-American Patterns of Cognition: A Review of Research.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Shade, Barbara J.

Specific and unique information processing patterns have been developed by Black Americans as a result of coping with and adapting to a color-conscious society. A review of the literature shows that the major variation in the processing of information which seems to be uniquely Black American occurs in their patterns of perception. Specifically,…

Hardy's stargazers and the astronomy of other minds.

PubMed

Henchman, A

2008-01-01

This essay argues that Thomas Hardy compares the act of observing another person to the scientific practice of observing the stars in order to reveal structural obstacles to accessing other minds. He draws on astronomy and optics to underscore the discrepancy between the full perception one has of one's own consciousness and the lack of such sensory evidence for the consciousness of others. His scenes of stargazing show such obstacles being temporarily overcome; the stargazer turns away from the thick sensory detail of earthly life and uses minimal visual information as a jumping-off point for the imagination. These visual journeys into space are analogous to those Hardy's readers experience as he wrests them out of their bodies into imaginary landscapes and unfamiliar minds.

Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology

PubMed Central

Nir, Yuval; Tononi, Giulio

2009-01-01

Dreams are a most remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person. They show that our brain, disconnected from the environment, can generate by itself an entire world of conscious experiences. Content analysis and developmental studies have furthered our understanding of dream phenomenology. In parallel, brain lesion studies, functional imaging, and neurophysiology have advanced our knowledge of the neural basis of dreaming. It is now possible to start integrating these two strands of research in order to address some fundamental questions that dreams pose for cognitive neuroscience: how conscious experiences in sleep relate to underlying brain activity; why the dreamer is largely disconnected from the environment; and whether dreaming is more closely related to mental imagery or to perception. PMID:20079677

Preserved feedforward but impaired top-down processes in the vegetative state.

PubMed

Boly, Melanie; Garrido, Marta Isabel; Gosseries, Olivia; Bruno, Marie-Aurélie; Boveroux, Pierre; Schnakers, Caroline; Massimini, Marcello; Litvak, Vladimir; Laureys, Steven; Friston, Karl

2011-05-13

Frontoparietal cortex is involved in the explicit processing (awareness) of stimuli. Frontoparietal activation has also been found in studies of subliminal stimulus processing. We hypothesized that an impairment of top-down processes, involved in recurrent neuronal message-passing and the generation of long-latency electrophysiological responses, might provide a more reliable correlate of consciousness in severely brain-damaged patients, than frontoparietal responses. We measured effective connectivity during a mismatch negativity paradigm and found that the only significant difference between patients in a vegetative state and controls was an impairment of backward connectivity from frontal to temporal cortices. This result emphasizes the importance of top-down projections in recurrent processing that involve high-order associative cortices for conscious perception.

Working Memory and Consciousness: The Current State of Play

PubMed Central

Persuh, Marjan; LaRock, Eric; Berger, Jacob

2018-01-01

Working memory (WM), an important posit in cognitive science, allows one to temporarily store and manipulate information in the service of ongoing tasks. WM has been traditionally classified as an explicit memory system—that is, as operating on and maintaining only consciously perceived information. Recently, however, several studies have questioned this assumption, purporting to provide evidence for unconscious WM. In this article, we focus on visual working memory (VWM) and critically examine these studies as well as studies of unconscious perception that seem to provide indirect evidence for unconscious WM. Our analysis indicates that current evidence does not support an unconscious WM store, though we offer independent reasons to think that WM may operate on unconsciously perceived information. PMID:29551967

The mere exposure effect is modulated by selective attention but not visual awareness.

PubMed

Huang, Yu-Feng; Hsieh, Po-Jang

2013-10-18

Repeated exposures to an object will lead to an enhancement of evaluation toward that object. Although this mere exposure effect may occur when the objects are presented subliminally, the role of conscious perception per se on evaluation has never been examined. Here we use a binocular rivalry paradigm to investigate whether a variance in conscious perceptual duration of faces has an effect on their subsequent evaluation, and how selective attention and memory interact with this effect. Our results show that face evaluation is positively biased by selective attention but not affected by visual awareness. Furthermore, this effect is not due to participants recalling which face had been attended to. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Dreaming and the brain: from phenomenology to neurophysiology.

PubMed

Nir, Yuval; Tononi, Giulio

2010-02-01

Dreams are a remarkable experiment in psychology and neuroscience, conducted every night in every sleeping person. They show that the human brain, disconnected from the environment, can generate an entire world of conscious experiences by itself. Content analysis and developmental studies have promoted understanding of dream phenomenology. In parallel, brain lesion studies, functional imaging and neurophysiology have advanced current knowledge of the neural basis of dreaming. It is now possible to start integrating these two strands of research to address fundamental questions that dreams pose for cognitive neuroscience: how conscious experiences in sleep relate to underlying brain activity; why the dreamer is largely disconnected from the environment; and whether dreaming is more closely related to mental imagery or to perception. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Do early neural correlates of visual consciousness show the oblique effect? A binocular rivalry and event-related potential study.

PubMed

Jack, Bradley N; Roeber, Urte; O'Shea, Robert P

2017-01-01

When dissimilar images are presented one to each eye, we do not see both images; rather, we see one at a time, alternating unpredictably. This is called binocular rivalry, and it has recently been used to study brain processes that correlate with visual consciousness, because perception changes without any change in the sensory input. Such studies have used various types of images, but the most popular have been gratings: sets of bright and dark lines of orthogonal orientations presented one to each eye. We studied whether using cardinal rival gratings (vertical, 0°, and horizontal, 90°) versus oblique rival gratings (left-oblique, -45°, and right-oblique, 45°) influences early neural correlates of visual consciousness, because of the oblique effect: the tendency for visual performance to be greater for cardinal gratings than for oblique gratings. Participants viewed rival gratings and pressed keys indicating which of the two gratings they perceived, was dominant. Next, we changed one of the gratings to match the grating shown to the other eye, yielding binocular fusion. Participants perceived the rivalry-to-fusion change to the dominant grating and not to the other, suppressed grating. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), we found neural correlates of visual consciousness at the P1 for both sets of gratings, as well as at the P1-N1 for oblique gratings, and we found a neural correlate of the oblique effect at the N1, but only for perceived changes. These results show that the P1 is the earliest neural activity associated with visual consciousness and that visual consciousness might be necessary to elicit the oblique effect.

“Seeing” and “feeling” architecture: how bodily self-consciousness alters architectonic experience and affects the perception of interiors

PubMed Central

Pasqualini, Isabella; Llobera, Joan; Blanke, Olaf

2013-01-01

Over the centuries architectural theory evolved several notions of embodiment, proposing in the nineteenth and twentieth century that architectonic experience is related to physiological responses of the observer. Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of embodiment (or bodily self-consciousness) enable empirical studies of architectonic embodiment. Here, we investigated how architecture modulates bodily self-consciousness by adapting a video-based virtual reality (VR) setup previously used to investigate visuo-tactile mechanisms of bodily self-consciousness. While standing in two different interiors, participants were filmed from behind and watched their own virtual body online on a head-mounted display (HMD). Visuo-tactile strokes were applied in synchronous or asynchronous mode to the participants and their virtual body. Two interiors were simulated in the laboratory by placing the sidewalls either far or near from the participants, generating a large and narrow room. We tested if bodily self-consciousness was differently modulated when participants were exposed to both rooms and whether these changes depend on visuo-tactile stimulation. We measured illusory touch, self-identification, and performed length estimations. Our data show that synchronous stroking of the physical and the virtual body induces illusory touch and self-identification with the virtual body, independent of room-size. Moreover, in the narrow room we observed weak feelings of illusory touch with the sidewalls and of approaching walls. These subjective changes were complemented by a stroking-dependent modulation of length estimation only in the narrow room with participants judging the room-size more accurately during conditions of illusory self-identification. We discuss our findings and previous notions of architectonic embodiment in the context of the cognitive neuroscience of bodily self-consciousness and propose an empirical framework grounded in architecture, cognitive neuroscience, and VR. PMID:23805112

"Seeing" and "feeling" architecture: how bodily self-consciousness alters architectonic experience and affects the perception of interiors.

PubMed

Pasqualini, Isabella; Llobera, Joan; Blanke, Olaf

2013-01-01

Over the centuries architectural theory evolved several notions of embodiment, proposing in the nineteenth and twentieth century that architectonic experience is related to physiological responses of the observer. Recent advances in the cognitive neuroscience of embodiment (or bodily self-consciousness) enable empirical studies of architectonic embodiment. Here, we investigated how architecture modulates bodily self-consciousness by adapting a video-based virtual reality (VR) setup previously used to investigate visuo-tactile mechanisms of bodily self-consciousness. While standing in two different interiors, participants were filmed from behind and watched their own virtual body online on a head-mounted display (HMD). Visuo-tactile strokes were applied in synchronous or asynchronous mode to the participants and their virtual body. Two interiors were simulated in the laboratory by placing the sidewalls either far or near from the participants, generating a large and narrow room. We tested if bodily self-consciousness was differently modulated when participants were exposed to both rooms and whether these changes depend on visuo-tactile stimulation. We measured illusory touch, self-identification, and performed length estimations. Our data show that synchronous stroking of the physical and the virtual body induces illusory touch and self-identification with the virtual body, independent of room-size. Moreover, in the narrow room we observed weak feelings of illusory touch with the sidewalls and of approaching walls. These subjective changes were complemented by a stroking-dependent modulation of length estimation only in the narrow room with participants judging the room-size more accurately during conditions of illusory self-identification. We discuss our findings and previous notions of architectonic embodiment in the context of the cognitive neuroscience of bodily self-consciousness and propose an empirical framework grounded in architecture, cognitive neuroscience, and VR.

Development of Specific Aspects of Spirituality during a 6-Month Intensive Yoga Practice

PubMed Central

Büssing, Arndt; Hedtstück, Anemone; Khalsa, Sat Bir S.; Ostermann, Thomas; Heusser, Peter

2012-01-01

The majority of research on yoga focuses on its psychophysiological and therapeutic benefits, while the spiritual aspects are rarely addressed. Changes of specific aspects of spirituality were thus investigated among 160 individuals (91% women, mean age 40.9 ± 8.3 years; 57% Christians) starting a 2-year yoga teacher training. We used standardized questionnaires to measure aspects of spirituality (ASP), mindfulness (FMI—Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory), life satisfaction (BMLSS—Brief Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale), and positive mood (lightheartedness/relief). At the start of the course, scores of the respective ASP subscales for search for insight/wisdom, transcendence conviction, and conscious interactions/compassion were high, while those for religious orientation were low. Within the 6 month observation period, both conscious interactions/compassion (effect size, Cohen's d = .33), Religious orientation (d = .21), Lightheartedness/Relief (d = .75) and mindfulness (d = .53) increased significantly. Particularly non-religious/non-spiritual individuals showed moderate effects for an increase of conscious interactions/compassion. The results from this study suggest that an intensive yoga practice (1) may significantly increase specific aspects of practitioners' spirituality, mindfulness, and mood, (2) that these changes are dependent in part on their original spiritual/religious self-perception, and (3) that there are strong correlations amongst these constructs (i.e., conscious interactions/compassion, and mindfulness). PMID:22852023

Use of auditory evoked potentials for intra-operative awareness in anesthesia: a consciousness-based conceptual model.

PubMed

Dong, Xuebao; Suo, Puxia; Yuan, Xin; Yao, Xuefeng

2015-01-01

Auditory evoked potentials (AEPs) have been used as a measure of the depth of anesthesia during the intra-operative process. AEPs are classically divided, on the basis of their latency, into first, fast, middle, slow, and late components. The use of auditory evoked potential has been advocated for the assessment of Intra-operative awareness (IOA), but has not been considered seriously enough to universalize it. It is because we have not explored enough the impact of auditory perception and auditory processing on the IOA phenomena as well as on the subsequent psychological impact of IOA on the patient. More importantly, we have seldom tried to look at the phenomena of IOP from the perspective of consciousness itself. This perspective is especially important because many of IOA phenomena exist in the subconscious domain than they do in the conscious domain of explicit recall. Two important forms of these subconscious manifestations of IOA are the implicit recall phenomena and post-operative dreams related to the operation. Here, we present an integrated auditory consciousness-based model of IOA. We start with a brief description of auditory awareness and the factors affecting it. Further, we proceed to the evaluation of conscious and subconscious information processing by auditory modality and how they interact during and after intra-operative period. Further, we show that both conscious and subconscious auditory processing affect the IOA experience and both have serious psychological implications on the patient subsequently. These effects could be prevented by using auditory evoked potential during monitoring of anesthesia, especially the mid-latency auditory evoked potentials (MLAERs). To conclude our model with present hypothesis, we propose that the use of auditory evoked potential should be universal with general anesthesia use in order to prevent the occurrences of distressing outcomes resulting from both conscious and subconscious auditory processing during anesthesia.

The joint moderating effect of health consciousness and healthy lifestyle on consumers' willingness to use functional foods in Taiwan.

PubMed

Chen, Mei-Fang

2011-08-01

Functional foods marketed as promoting health or reducing the risk of disease open a promising avenue for consumers to pursue a healthier life. Despite the stable growth in functional foods in Taiwan, at present little is known about whether or not consumers with varying degrees of health consciousness and different healthy lifestyles will have dissimilar attitudes toward functional foods and will vary in their willingness to use them. Regression analysis of this empirical study verifies that consumers' attitudes toward functional foods do have an impact on their willingness to use such foods. Moreover, moderated regression analysis (MRA) reveals that the joint moderator of health consciousness and healthy lifestyle indeed exerts an impact on consumers' willingness to consume functional foods. Finally, one-way ANOVA tests show that there are some differences between the consumers of the "Healthy Life Attentive" group and those of the "Healthy Life Inattentive" one both in attitudes toward and in willingness to consume functional foods. The empirical results and findings from this study would be valuable for the marketers in the functional food industry to formulate marketing communication strategies and facilitate this industry's development. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Exploring Language Teachers' Perceptions of Cyclical Presentation of Materials in an EFL Context: A Grounded Theory

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ostovar-Namaghi, Seyyed Ali; Gholami, Maryam

2018-01-01

Numerous studies have verified the effect of cyclical presentation of materials on learners' language proficiency and achievement. However, there is a dearth of research exploring language teachers' perceptions of cyclical approach. Since teachers' perceptions may catalyze or nullify the effect of this approach, this study aims at exploring…

Interaction between contours and eye movements in the perception of afterimages: A test of the signal ambiguity theory.

PubMed

Powell, Georgie; Sumner, Petroc; Harrison, James J; Bompas, Aline

2016-05-01

An intriguing property of afterimages is that conscious experience can be strong, weak, or absent following identical stimulus adaptation. Previously we suggested that postadaptation retinal signals are inherently ambiguous, and therefore the perception they evoke is strongly influenced by cues that increase or decrease the likelihood that they represent real objects (the signal ambiguity theory). Here we provide a more definitive test of this theory using two cues previously found to influence afterimage perception in opposite ways and plausibly at separate loci of action. However, by manipulating both cues simultaneously, we found that their effects interacted, consistent with the idea that they affect the same process of object interpretation rather than being independent influences. These findings bring contextual influences on afterimages into more general theories of cue combination, and we suggest that afterimage perception should be considered alongside other areas of vision science where cues are found to interact in their influence on perception.

Ambiguous Figures – What Happens in the Brain When Perception Changes But Not the Stimulus

PubMed Central

Kornmeier, Jürgen; Bach, Michael

2011-01-01

During observation of ambiguous figures our perception reverses spontaneously although the visual information stays unchanged. Research on this phenomenon so far suffered from the difficulty to determine the instant of the endogenous reversals with sufficient temporal precision. A novel experimental paradigm with discontinuous stimulus presentation improved on previous temporal estimates of the reversal event by a factor of three. It revealed that disambiguation of ambiguous visual information takes roughly 50 ms or two loops of recurrent neural activity. Further, the decision about the perceptual outcome has taken place at least 340 ms before the observer is able to indicate the consciously perceived reversal manually. We provide a short review about physiological studies on multistable perception with a focus on electrophysiological data. We further present a new perspective on multistable perception that can easily integrate previous apparently contradicting explanatory approaches. Finally we propose possible extensions toward other research fields where ambiguous figure perception may be useful as an investigative tool. PMID:22461773

Spectral fingerprints of large-scale cortical dynamics during ambiguous motion perception.

PubMed

Helfrich, Randolph F; Knepper, Hannah; Nolte, Guido; Sengelmann, Malte; König, Peter; Schneider, Till R; Engel, Andreas K

2016-11-01

Ambiguous stimuli have been widely used to study the neuronal correlates of consciousness. Recently, it has been suggested that conscious perception might arise from the dynamic interplay of functionally specialized but widely distributed cortical areas. While previous research mainly focused on phase coupling as a correlate of cortical communication, more recent findings indicated that additional coupling modes might coexist and possibly subserve distinct cortical functions. Here, we studied two coupling modes, namely phase and envelope coupling, which might differ in their origins, putative functions and dynamics. Therefore, we recorded 128-channel EEG while participants performed a bistable motion task and utilized state-of-the-art source-space connectivity analysis techniques to study the functional relevance of different coupling modes for cortical communication. Our results indicate that gamma-band phase coupling in extrastriate visual cortex might mediate the integration of visual tokens into a moving stimulus during ambiguous visual stimulation. Furthermore, our results suggest that long-range fronto-occipital gamma-band envelope coupling sustains the horizontal percept during ambiguous motion perception. Additionally, our results support the idea that local parieto-occipital alpha-band phase coupling controls the inter-hemispheric information transfer. These findings provide correlative evidence for the notion that synchronized oscillatory brain activity reflects the processing of sensory input as well as the information integration across several spatiotemporal scales. The results indicate that distinct coupling modes are involved in different cortical computations and that the rich spatiotemporal correlation structure of the brain might constitute the functional architecture for cortical processing and specific multi-site communication. Hum Brain Mapp 37:4099-4111, 2016. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Use and perception of nitrous oxide sedation by French dentists in private practice: a national survey.

PubMed

Vilanova-Saingery, C; Bailleul-Forestier, I; Vaysse, F; Vergnes, J-N; Marty, M

2017-12-01

The aim of this national survey was to record the use of nitrous oxide and the perceptions of French dental practitioners to this form of sedation. The use of nitrous oxide sedation (NOS) has been authorised in private dental practice in France since December 2009 but, to date, no study implementing both quantitative and qualitative methods has explored such use. The data were collected using a Google Forms questionnaire. A mixed methodology was used for data analysis: a quantitative approach to explore the use of conscious sedation and a qualitative thematic approach (using Nvivo software) to determine the practitioner's perception of it. Responses were collected from 225 practitioners (19% of the target population of 1185). Most of the responders were trained in NOS use in private dental clinics. Seventy-three percent of those who trained privately actually used NOS, compared to 53% of those trained at university (p-value = 0.0052). Above all, NOS was used for children requiring restorative dentistry. The average price of the sedation was 50 Euros and it lasted, on average, for 37 min. The qualitative and thematic analysis revealed the financial and technical difficulties of implementing NOS in private practice. However, it also showed the benefits and pleasure associated with NOS use. This statistical survey of French dental practitioners offers an insight of the current state of the use of conscious sedation with nitrous oxide in private general dental practice in France. It also includes the first report of dental practitioners' perceptions of NOS use and may lead to a better understanding of the reasons why sedation is sometimes not used in private practice.

Some Words Hurt More Than Others: Semantic Activation of Pain Concepts in Memory and Subsequent Experiences of Pain.

PubMed

Swannell, Ellen R; Brown, Christopher A; Jones, Anthony K P; Brown, Richard J

2016-03-01

Theory suggests that as activation of pain concepts in memory increases, so too does subsequent pain perception. Previously, researchers have found that activating pain concepts in memory increases pain perception of subsequent painful stimuli, relative to neutral information. However, they have not attempted to quantify the nature of the association between information studied and ensuing pain perception. We subliminally presented words that had either a low or high degree of association to the word 'pain,' although this was only partially successful and some words were consciously perceived. Participants then received randomized laser heat stimuli, delivered at 1 of 3 intensity levels (low, moderate, high), and we measured the effect of this on behavioral and electrophysiological measures of pain. Participants (N = 27) rated moderate- and high-intensity laser stimuli as more painful after viewing high relative to low associates of pain; these effects remained present when we controlled for measures of mood, anxiety, and physical symptom reporting. Similar effects were observed physiologically, with higher stimulus negativity preceding after high relative to low associates and greater amplitudes for the N2 component of the laser-evoked potential after presentation of high associates in the moderate and high laser intensity conditions. These data support activation-based models of the effects of memory on pain perception. Consistent with current theories of memory and pain, we found that high, relative to low activation of pain concepts in memory increased psychological and physiological responses to laser-induced pain. The effect remained regardless of whether participants showed conscious awareness of activation. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2016 American Pain Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Metacognition in Student Academic Writing: A Longitudinal Study of Metacognitive Awareness and Its Relation to Task Perception, Self-Regulation, and Evaluation of Performance

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Negretti, Raffaella

2012-01-01

This article proposes a novel approach to the investigation of student academic writing. It applies theories of metacognition and self-regulated learning to understand how beginning academic writers develop the ability to participate in the communicative practices of academic written communication and develop rhetorical consciousness. The study…

Supporting the Development of Undergraduates' Experimental Design Skills and Investigating their Perceptions of Project Work

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

MacKenzie, Jane; Ruxton, Graeme

2006-01-01

Project work represents a significant component of most Bioscience degrees. Conscious that students are not necessarily given adequate preparation for their final year project, we have investigated two core elements in the 3rd year of a 4-year Honours programme. One element, an investigative project on aspects of insect biology, has run for…

Improving Your American English Pronunciation: Intonation. Creativity: New Ideas in Language Teaching, No. 20.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gomes de Matos, F.; Short, A. Green

If the non-native teacher of English as a foreign language hopes to approach a high standard of oral competence in the language, he must cultivate some conscious perception and control of intonation. He can achieve this objective in various ways. Situations in which natural speech occurs would be ideal but few teachers have the opportunity for…

Self-perceived effects of sexual trauma among women who smoke crack.

PubMed

Young, Amy M; Boyd, Carol; Hubbell, Amy

2002-10-01

This descriptive study examined how Black women who smoke crack cocaine spoke about their experiences of sexual trauma, drug use, and the implications of these experiences for their lives. The authors also explored whether the women's perceptions of the effects of sexual abuse were related to objective indicators of mental health and drug use. The most commonly reported effects of sexual trauma were feeling dirty or ashamed or blaming self, having negative feelings toward the perpetrator, experiencing a general dislike of men or sex, and reporting a conscious reluctance to cope with the incident. In addition, conscious or unconscious denial of the effects of sexual trauma was associated with use of drugs to cope with intrapersonal and interpersonal feelings, inwardly directed responses to the trauma (e.g., self-blaming, feeling ashamed) were positively related to depression, and outwardly directed responses to the trauma (e.g., anger at the perpetrator) were positively related to self-esteem. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the self-medication model of substance use, treatment implications for women who have been sexually abused, and the role of self-perception in the relationship between sexual trauma and long-term outcomes.

Ictal alterations of consciousness during ecstatic seizures.

PubMed

Picard, Fabienne; Kurth, Florian

2014-01-01

Patients with ecstatic epileptic seizures report an altered consciousness, which they describe as a sense of heightened perception of themselves – they “feel very present” – and an increased vividness of sensory perceptions. Recently, the anterior insula has been proposed as the region where these seizures originate, based on the results of ictal nuclear imaging in three patients, the first induction of ecstatic auras by electrical stimulation, and the functional characteristics of the anterior insula in neuroimaging literature. Specifically, the anterior insula is thought to play a key role in integrating information from within the body, the external world, as well as the emotional states. In addition, the anterior insula is thought to convert this integrated information into successive global emotional moments, thus enabling both the construct of a sentient self as well as a mechanism for predictive coding. As part of the salience network, this region is also involved in switching from mind wandering toward attentional and executive processing. In this review, we will summarize previous patient reports and recap how insular functioning may be involved in the phenomenon of ecstatic seizures. Furthermore, we will relate these hypotheses to the results from research on meditation and effects of drug abuse.

Two memories for geographical slant: separation and interdependence of action and awareness

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Creem, S. H.; Proffitt, D. R.; Kaiser, M. K. (Principal Investigator)

1998-01-01

The present study extended previous findings of geographical slant perception, in which verbal judgments of the incline of hills were greatly overestimated but motoric (haptic) adjustments were much more accurate. In judging slant from memory following a brief or extended time delay, subjects' verbal judgments were greater than those given when viewing hills. Motoric estimates differed depending on the length of the delay and place of response. With a short delay, motoric adjustments made in the proximity of the hill did not differ from those evoked during perception. When given a longer delay or when taken away from the hill, subjects' motoric responses increased along with the increase in verbal reports. These results suggest two different memorial influences on action. With a short delay at the hill, memory for visual guidance is separate from the explicit memory informing the conscious response. With short or long delays away from the hill, short-term visual guidance memory no longer persists, and both motor and verbal responses are driven by an explicit representation. These results support recent research involving visual guidance from memory, where actions become influenced by conscious awareness, and provide evidence for communication between the "what" and "how" visual processing systems.

The physics of mental acts: coherence and creativity

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tito Arecchi, F.

2009-06-01

Coherence is a long range order absent at thermal equilibrium, where a system is the superposition of many uncorrelated components. To build non-trivial correlations, the system must enter a nonlinear dynamical regime. The nonlinearity leads to a multiplicity of equilibrium states, the number of which increases exponentially with the number of partners; we call complexity such a situation. Complete exploration of complexity would require a very large amount of time. On the contrary, in cognitive tasks, one reaches a decision within a few hundred milliseconds. Neuron synchronization lasting around 301 msec is the indicator of a conscious perception (Gestalt); however, the loss of information in the chaotic spike train of a single neuron takes a few msec, thus a conscious perception implies a control of chaos, whereby the information stored in a brain area survives for a time sufficient to elicit an action. Control of chaos is achieved by the interaction of a bottom-up stimulus with a top-down control (induced by the semantic memory). We call creativity this optimal control of neuronal chaos; it goes beyond the Bayesian inference, which is the way a computer operates, thus it represent a non-algorithmic step.

Subliminal smells can guide social preferences.

PubMed

Li, Wen; Moallem, Isabel; Paller, Ken A; Gottfried, Jay A

2007-12-01

It is widely accepted that unconscious processes can modulate judgments and behavior, but do such influences affect one's daily interactions with other people? Given that olfactory information has relatively direct access to cortical and subcortical emotional circuits, we tested whether the affective content of subliminal odors alters social preferences. Participants rated the likeability of neutral faces after smelling pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant odors delivered below detection thresholds. Odor affect significantly shifted likeability ratings only for those participants lacking conscious awareness of the smells, as verified by chance-level trial-by-trial performance on an odor-detection task. Across participants, the magnitude of this priming effect decreased as sensitivity for odor detection increased. In contrast, heart rate responses tracked odor valence independently of odor awareness. These results indicate that social preferences are subject to influences from odors that escape awareness, whereas the availability of conscious odor information may disrupt such effects.

Exploring co-parent experiences of sexuality in the first 3 months after birth.

PubMed

van Anders, Sari M; Hipp, Lauren E; Kane Low, Lisa

2013-08-01

Research on postpartum sexuality has focused primarily on mothers, though new findings suggest that relational perceptions may have a strong influence over sexual desire and behavior. Little investigation exists regarding sexuality in partners of postpartum women. Additionally, recent findings point to the importance of a partner's sexuality for postpartum women's perceptions of their own sexuality in this time. The goal of this research was to explore women's partners' sexuality in the early postpartum phase taking into account psychosocial context. Partners (N = 114; 95 men, 18 women, 1 unspecified) of postpartum women completed a retrospective online questionnaire about their sexuality during the 3 months following their youngest child's birth. Primary measures included sexual desire (Sexual Desire Inventory), latency to sexual behavior, and enjoyment and initiation of sexual behavior. Other psychosocial variables were investigated: partners' perceptions of the birth mother's sexual desire, perceptions of the birth experience (Questionnaire Measuring Attitudes About Labor and Delivery), postpartum stress (Perceived Stress Scale), body image self-consciousness (Body Image Self-Consciousness Scale), social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support), fatigue, and experiences surrounding breastfeeding. Partners reported most frequent engagement in intercourse in the postpartum period, earliest engagement in masturbation, and highest enjoyment of receiving oral sex compared with other sexual activities. Partners' sexual desire was not correlated with the psychosocial variables measured in the study. Findings for partners' sexuality were similar by gender, except for perceptions of social support and likelihood to engage in intercourse. This study provided a novel perspective on the study of postpartum sexuality by investigating physical and psychosocial influences on the experiences of partners of parous women. Given parallels between sexuality reported by partners in this study and by birth mothers in past studies, this study provided evidence that sexuality in the postpartum period may be experienced similarly, highlighting the social and relational nature of the postpartum. © 2013 International Society for Sexual Medicine.

[The negative side of emotions: addiction to drugs of abuse].

PubMed

Contreras, M; Ceric, F; Torrealba, F

According to the model of emotions, feelings have their origin in the conscious perception of body changes produced in response to an emotional stimulus. These changes are perceived thanks to the fact that they are represented in the brain by the interoceptive system. During abstinence, addicts experience intense feelings of ill-being that drive them to consume drugs. The purpose of this review is to discuss the role played by the interoceptive system, and more especially the insular cortex, in the perception of the negative feelings that characterise abstinence. The continuous processing of interoceptive signals in the insular cortex is what accounts for the conscious appreciation of the body changes that accompany an emotional state. Temporary inactivation of the insular cortex suppresses the search for drugs in addicted rats. Neuroimaging studies reveal an increase in the neuronal activity in the insular cortex and in other areas of the brain while addicts are experiencing the craving to consume drugs. Likewise, nicotine addicts who suffer a brain injury that affects the insular cortex give up smoking easily because they lose the desire to do it. The temporary suppression of neuronal activity in the insular cortex in human addicts by means of non-invasive techniques could be a new therapy to treat the craving to consume drugs. The insular cortex is essential in the perception of the emotional states and in orienting behaviour to match the needs of the body. New therapies that have the insular cortex as their target could be developed to mitigate craving.

Skating down a steeper slope: Fear influences the perception of geographical slant

PubMed Central

Stefanucci, Jeanine K.; Proffitt, Dennis R.; Clore, Gerald L.; Parekh, Nazish

2008-01-01

Conscious awareness of hill slant is overestimated, but visually guided actions directed at hills are relatively accurate. Also, steep hills are consciously estimated to be steeper from the top as opposed to the bottom, possibly because they are dangerous to walk down. In the present study, participants stood at the top of a hill on either a skateboard or a wooden box of the same height. They gave three estimates of the slant of the hill: a verbal report, a visually matched estimate, and a visually guided action. Fear of descending the hill was also assessed. Those participants that were scared (by standing on the skateboard) consciously judged the hill to be steeper relative to participants who were unafraid. However, the visually guided action measure was accurate across conditions. These results suggest that our explicit awareness of slant is influenced by the fear associated with a potentially dangerous action. “[The phobic] reported that as he drove towards bridges, they appeared to be sloping at a dangerous angle.” (Rachman and Cuk 1992 p. 583). PMID:18414594

Neural representation of consciously imperceptible speech sound differences.

PubMed

Allen, J; Kraus, N; Bradlow, A

2000-10-01

The concept of subliminal perception has been a subject of interest and controversy for decades. Of interest in the present investigation was whether a neurophysiologic index of stimulus change could be elicited to speech sound contrasts that were consciously indiscriminable. The stimuli were chosen on the basis of each individual subject's discrimination threshold. The speech stimuli (which varied along an F3 onset frequency continuum from /da/ to /ga/) were synthesized so that the acoustical properties of the stimuli could be tightly controlled. Subthreshold and suprathreshold stimuli were chosen on the basis of behavioral ability demonstrated during psychophysical testing. A significant neural representation of stimulus change, reflected by the mismatch negativity response, was obtained in all but 1 subject in response to subthreshold stimuli. Grand average responses differed significantly from responses obtained in a control condition consisting of physiologic responses elicited by physically identical stimuli. Furthermore, responses to suprathreshold stimuli (close to threshold) did not differ significantly from subthreshold responses with respect to latency, amplitude, or area. These results suggest that neural representation of consciously imperceptible stimulus differences occurs and that this representation occurs at a preattentive level.

Cardio-visual full body illusion alters bodily self-consciousness and tactile processing in somatosensory cortex.

PubMed

Heydrich, Lukas; Aspell, Jane Elizabeth; Marillier, Guillaume; Lavanchy, Tom; Herbelin, Bruno; Blanke, Olaf

2018-06-18

Prominent theories highlight the importance of bodily perception for self-consciousness, but it is currently not known whether this is based on interoceptive or exteroceptive signals or on integrated signals from these anatomically distinct systems, nor where in the brain such integration might occur. To investigate this, we measured brain activity during the recently described 'cardio-visual full body illusion' which combines interoceptive and exteroceptive signals, by providing participants with visual exteroceptive information about their heartbeat in the form of a periodically illuminated silhouette outlining a video image of the participant's body and flashing in synchrony with their heartbeat. We found, as also reported previously, that synchronous cardio-visual signals increased self-identification with the virtual body. Here we further investigated whether experimental changes in self-consciousness during this illusion are accompanied by activity changes in somatosensory cortex by recording somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs). We show that a late somatosensory evoked potential component (P45) reflects the illusory self-identification with a virtual body. These data demonstrate that interoceptive and exteroceptive signals can be combined to modulate activity in parietal somatosensory cortex.

Open and closed cortico-subcortical loops: A neuro-computational account of access to consciousness in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm.

PubMed

Ebner, Christian; Schroll, Henning; Winther, Gesche; Niedeggen, Michael; Hamker, Fred H

2015-09-01

How the brain decides which information to process 'consciously' has been debated over for decades without a simple explanation at hand. While most experiments manipulate the perceptual energy of presented stimuli, the distractor-induced blindness task is a prototypical paradigm to investigate gating of information into consciousness without or with only minor visual manipulation. In this paradigm, subjects are asked to report intervals of coherent dot motion in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream, whenever these are preceded by a particular color stimulus in a different RSVP stream. If distractors (i.e., intervals of coherent dot motion prior to the color stimulus) are shown, subjects' abilities to perceive and report intervals of target dot motion decrease, particularly with short delays between intervals of target color and target motion. We propose a biologically plausible neuro-computational model of how the brain controls access to consciousness to explain how distractor-induced blindness originates from information processing in the cortex and basal ganglia. The model suggests that conscious perception requires reverberation of activity in cortico-subcortical loops and that basal-ganglia pathways can either allow or inhibit this reverberation. In the distractor-induced blindness paradigm, inadequate distractor-induced response tendencies are suppressed by the inhibitory 'hyperdirect' pathway of the basal ganglia. If a target follows such a distractor closely, temporal aftereffects of distractor suppression prevent target identification. The model reproduces experimental data on how delays between target color and target motion affect the probability of target detection. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Conscious brain-to-brain communication in humans using non-invasive technologies.

PubMed

Grau, Carles; Ginhoux, Romuald; Riera, Alejandro; Nguyen, Thanh Lam; Chauvat, Hubert; Berg, Michel; Amengual, Julià L; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro; Ruffini, Giulio

2014-01-01

Human sensory and motor systems provide the natural means for the exchange of information between individuals, and, hence, the basis for human civilization. The recent development of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has provided an important element for the creation of brain-to-brain communication systems, and precise brain stimulation techniques are now available for the realization of non-invasive computer-brain interfaces (CBI). These technologies, BCI and CBI, can be combined to realize the vision of non-invasive, computer-mediated brain-to-brain (B2B) communication between subjects (hyperinteraction). Here we demonstrate the conscious transmission of information between human brains through the intact scalp and without intervention of motor or peripheral sensory systems. Pseudo-random binary streams encoding words were transmitted between the minds of emitter and receiver subjects separated by great distances, representing the realization of the first human brain-to-brain interface. In a series of experiments, we established internet-mediated B2B communication by combining a BCI based on voluntary motor imagery-controlled electroencephalographic (EEG) changes with a CBI inducing the conscious perception of phosphenes (light flashes) through neuronavigated, robotized transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), with special care taken to block sensory (tactile, visual or auditory) cues. Our results provide a critical proof-of-principle demonstration for the development of conscious B2B communication technologies. More fully developed, related implementations will open new research venues in cognitive, social and clinical neuroscience and the scientific study of consciousness. We envision that hyperinteraction technologies will eventually have a profound impact on the social structure of our civilization and raise important ethical issues.

Conscious Brain-to-Brain Communication in Humans Using Non-Invasive Technologies

PubMed Central

Grau, Carles; Ginhoux, Romuald; Riera, Alejandro; Nguyen, Thanh Lam; Chauvat, Hubert; Berg, Michel; Amengual, Julià L.; Pascual-Leone, Alvaro; Ruffini, Giulio

2014-01-01

Human sensory and motor systems provide the natural means for the exchange of information between individuals, and, hence, the basis for human civilization. The recent development of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) has provided an important element for the creation of brain-to-brain communication systems, and precise brain stimulation techniques are now available for the realization of non-invasive computer-brain interfaces (CBI). These technologies, BCI and CBI, can be combined to realize the vision of non-invasive, computer-mediated brain-to-brain (B2B) communication between subjects (hyperinteraction). Here we demonstrate the conscious transmission of information between human brains through the intact scalp and without intervention of motor or peripheral sensory systems. Pseudo-random binary streams encoding words were transmitted between the minds of emitter and receiver subjects separated by great distances, representing the realization of the first human brain-to-brain interface. In a series of experiments, we established internet-mediated B2B communication by combining a BCI based on voluntary motor imagery-controlled electroencephalographic (EEG) changes with a CBI inducing the conscious perception of phosphenes (light flashes) through neuronavigated, robotized transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), with special care taken to block sensory (tactile, visual or auditory) cues. Our results provide a critical proof-of-principle demonstration for the development of conscious B2B communication technologies. More fully developed, related implementations will open new research venues in cognitive, social and clinical neuroscience and the scientific study of consciousness. We envision that hyperinteraction technologies will eventually have a profound impact on the social structure of our civilization and raise important ethical issues. PMID:25137064

Consumer perception of beneficial effects of probiotics for human health.

PubMed

Rijkers, G T; Bimmel, D; Grevers, D; den Haan, N; Hristova, Y

2013-03-01

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the knowledge, perception and buying behaviour of probiotics. 72 participants in Middelburg, the Netherlands, filled out a detailed questionnaire regarding probiotics and their customer and consumer behaviour. It can be concluded from this study that the concept of probiotics is generally poorly understood. Health-conscious consumers seem to be the group most aware of the correct meaning of the term probiotics. Almost 50% of the participants did not believe that probiotics had any health effect. Independent organisations and/or government agencies appeared to be the preferred source of information on the functionality of probiotics.

The size-weight illusion induced through human echolocation.

PubMed

Buckingham, Gavin; Milne, Jennifer L; Byrne, Caitlin M; Goodale, Melvyn A

2015-02-01

Certain blind individuals have learned to interpret the echoes of self-generated sounds to perceive the structure of objects in their environment. The current work examined how far the influence of this unique form of sensory substitution extends by testing whether echolocation-induced representations of object size could influence weight perception. A small group of echolocation experts made tongue clicks or finger snaps toward cubes of varying sizes and weights before lifting them. These echolocators experienced a robust size-weight illusion. This experiment provides the first demonstration of a sensory substitution technique whereby the substituted sense influences the conscious perception through an intact sense. © The Author(s) 2014.

Student Perceptions of Classroom Achievement Goal Structure: Is It Appropriate to Aggregate?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lam, Arena C.; Ruzek, Erik A.; Schenke, Katerina; Conley, AnneMarie M.; Karabenick, Stuart A.

2015-01-01

Student reports are a common approach to characterizing how students experience their classrooms. We used a recently developed method--multilevel confirmatory factor analysis--to determine whether commonly employed measures of achievement goal structure constructs (mastery and performance) typically verified at the student level can be verified at…

A “Misfit” Theory of Spontaneous Conscious Odor Perception (MITSCOP): reflections on the role and function of odor memory in everyday life

PubMed Central

Köster, Egon P.; Møller, Per; Mojet, Jozina

2014-01-01

Our senses have developed as an answer to the world we live in (Gibson, 1966) and so have the forms of memory that accompany them. All senses serve different purposes and do so in different ways. In vision, where orientation and object recognition are important, memory is strongly linked to identification. In olfaction, the guardian of vital functions such as breathing and food ingestion, perhaps the most important (and least noticed and researched) role of odor memory is to help us not to notice the well-known odors or flavors in our everyday surroundings, but to react immediately to the unexpected ones. At the same time it provides us with a feeling of safety when our expectancies are met. All this happens without any smelling intention or conscious knowledge of our expectations. Identification by odor naming is not involved in this and people are notoriously bad at it. Odors are usually best identified via the episodic memory of the situation in which they once occurred. Spontaneous conscious odor perception normally only occurs in situations where attention is demanded, either because the inhaled air or the food smell is particularly good or particularly bad and people search for its source or because people want to actively enjoy the healthiness and pleasantness of their surroundings or food. Odor memory is concerned with novelty detection rather than with recollection of odors. In this paper, these points are illustrated with experimental results and their consequences for doing ecologically valid odor memory research are drawn. Furthermore, suggestions for ecologically valid research on everyday odor memory and some illustrative examples are given. PMID:24575059

Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Literature Review

DTIC Science & Technology

2011-03-01

state similar to hypnosis , and this state enables them to relinquish their general reality orientation and have their conscious, critical faculties...terrorist beliefs and perceptions or appreciate the adversary’s construction of reality . He also argues that research should focus on how governments...modern’ style of Islam and its objectives. In many cases this newly aspired form of Islam is communicated virtually and is shaped through the

Defense Acquisition Research Journal: Strengthening Cost Consciousness, Professionalism, and Technical Excellence

DTIC Science & Technology

2016-04-01

Editor Michael Shoemaker Copy Editor/Circulation Manager Debbie Gonzalez Multimedia Assistant Noelia Gamboa Editing, Design , and Layout The C3 Group ...Schatz Publishing Group CONTENTS | Featured Research A Publication of the Defense Acquisition University April 2016 Vol. 23 No. 2 ISSUE 77 p. 122 The...1998). Examining the relationship between listening effectiveness and leadership emergence: Perceptions, behaviors, and recall. Small Group Research

Good vibrations: "sirens," soundscapes, and physiology.

PubMed

Plock, Vike Martina

2008-01-01

This article establishes Joyce's ongoing interest in psychoacoustics and illustrates how much he drew, in the writing of the "Sirens" episode, on nineteenth-century sound experiments that were developed by the German physician Hermann von Helmholtz. It argues that Joyce consciously referenced nineteenth-century sound theories to explore the link between the emotional and sensory experience of music and the physical and physiological components of sound perception.

Subliminal encoding and flexible retrieval of objects in scenes.

PubMed

Wuethrich, Sergej; Hannula, Deborah E; Mast, Fred W; Henke, Katharina

2018-04-27

Our episodic memory stores what happened when and where in life. Episodic memory requires the rapid formation and flexible retrieval of where things are located in space. Consciousness of the encoding scene is considered crucial for episodic memory formation. Here, we question the necessity of consciousness and hypothesize that humans can form unconscious episodic memories. Participants were presented with subliminal scenes, i.e., scenes invisible to the conscious mind. The scenes displayed objects at certain locations for participants to form unconscious object-in-space memories. Later, the same scenes were presented supraliminally, i.e., visibly, for retrieval testing. Scenes were presented absent the objects and rotated by 90°-270° in perspective to assess the representational flexibility of unconsciously formed memories. During the test phase, participants performed a forced-choice task that required them to place an object in one of two highlighted scene locations and their eye movements were recorded. Evaluation of the eye tracking data revealed that participants remembered object locations unconsciously, irrespective of changes in viewing perspective. This effect of gaze was related to correct placements of objects in scenes, and an intuitive decision style was necessary for unconscious memories to influence intentional behavior to a significant degree. We conclude that conscious perception is not mandatory for spatial episodic memory formation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Exploring the Relationship between Beginning Science Teachers' Practices, Institutional Constraints, and Adult Development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wilcox, Jesse Lee

This year-long study explored how ten teachers--five first year, five second year--acclimated to their new school environment after leaving a master's level university science teacher preparation program known for being highly effective. Furthermore, this study sought to explore if a relationship existed between teachers' understanding and implementation of research-based science teaching practices, the barriers to enacting these practices--known as institutional constraints, and the constructive-developmental theory which explores meaning-making systems known as orders of consciousness. As a naturalistic inquiry mixed methods study, data were collected using both qualitative (e.g., semi-structured interviews, field notes) as well as quantitative methods (e.g., observation protocols, subject/object protocol). These data sources were used to construct participant summaries and a cross-case analysis. The findings from provide evidence that teachers' orders of consciousness might help to explain why understanding research-based science teaching practices are maintained by some new teachers and not others. Additionally, this study found the orders of consciousness of teachers relates to the perceptions of institutional constraints as well as how a teacher chooses to navigate those constraints. Finally, the extent to which teachers implement research-based science teaching practices is related to orders of consciousness. While many studies have focused on what meaning teachers make, this study highlights the importance of considering how teachers make meaning.

Will the Conscious-Subconscious Pacing Quagmire Help Elucidate the Mechanisms of Self-Paced Exercise? New Opportunities in Dual Process Theory and Process Tracing Methods.

PubMed

Micklewright, Dominic; Kegerreis, Sue; Raglin, John; Hettinga, Florentina

2017-07-01

The extent to which athletic pacing decisions are made consciously or subconsciously is a prevailing issue. In this article we discuss why the one-dimensional conscious-subconscious debate that has reigned in the pacing literature has suppressed our understanding of the multidimensional processes that occur in pacing decisions. How do we make our decisions in real-life competitive situations? What information do we use and how do we respond to opponents? These are questions that need to be explored and better understood, using smartly designed experiments. The paper provides clarity about key conscious, preconscious, subconscious and unconscious concepts, terms that have previously been used in conflicting and confusing ways. The potential of dual process theory in articulating multidimensional aspects of intuitive and deliberative decision-making processes is discussed in the context of athletic pacing along with associated process-tracing research methods. In attempting to refine pacing models and improve training strategies and psychological skills for athletes, the dual-process framework could be used to gain a clearer understanding of (1) the situational conditions for which either intuitive or deliberative decisions are optimal; (2) how intuitive and deliberative decisions are biased by things such as perception, emotion and experience; and (3) the underlying cognitive mechanisms such as memory, attention allocation, problem solving and hypothetical thought.

COMT Val(108/158)Met polymorphism effects on emotional brain function and negativity bias.

PubMed

Williams, Leanne M; Gatt, Justine M; Grieve, Stuart M; Dobson-Stone, Carol; Paul, Robert H; Gordon, Evian; Schofield, Peter R

2010-11-15

Biases toward processing negative versus positive information vary as a function of level of awareness, and are modulated by monoamines. Excessive biases are associated with individual differences in mood and emotional stability, and emotional disorder. Here, we examined the impact of the catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) Val(108/158)Met polymorphism, involved in dopamine and norepinephrine catabolism, on both emotional brain function and self-reported negativity bias. COMT genotyping and self-reported level of negativity bias were completed for 46 healthy participants taking part in the Brain Resource International Database. Functional MRI was undertaken during perception of facial expressions of fear and happiness presented under unmasked (consciously identified) and masked (to prevent conscious detection) conditions. Structural MR images were also acquired. A greater number of COMT Met alleles predicted increased activation in brainstem, amygdala, basal ganglia and medial prefrontal regions for conscious fear, but decreased activation for conscious happiness. This pattern was also apparent for brainstem activation for the masked condition. Effects were most apparent for females. These differences could not be explained by gray matter variations. The Met-related profile of activation, particularly prefrontally, predicted greater negativity bias associated with risk for emotional disorder. The findings suggest that the COMT Met allele modulates neural substrates of negative versus positive emotion processing. This effect may contribute to negativity biases, which confer susceptibility for emotional disorders. Copyright 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Propofol and Sevoflurane Differentially Modulate Cortical Depolarization following Electric Stimulation of the Ventrobasal Thalamus.

PubMed

Kratzer, Stephan; Mattusch, Corinna; Garcia, Paul S; Schmid, Sebastian; Kochs, Eberhard; Rammes, Gerhard; Schneider, Gerhard; Kreuzer, Matthias; Haseneder, Rainer

2017-01-01

The neuronal mechanisms how anesthetics lead to loss of consciousness are unclear. Thalamocortical interactions are crucially involved in conscious perception; hence the thalamocortical network might be a promising target for anesthetic modulation of neuronal information pertaining to arousal and waking behavior. General anesthetics affect the neurophysiology of the thalamus and the cortex but the exact mechanisms of how anesthetics interfere with processing thalamocortical information remain to be elucidated. Here we investigated the effect of the anesthetic agents sevoflurane and propofol on thalamocortical network activity in vitro . We used voltage-sensitive dye imaging techniques to analyze the cortical depolarization in response to stimulation of the thalamic ventrobasal nucleus in brain slices from mice. Exposure to sevoflurane globally decreased cortical depolarization in a dose-dependent manner. Sevoflurane reduced the intensity and extent of cortical depolarization and delayed thalamocortical signal propagation. In contrast, propofol neither affected area nor amplitude of cortical depolarization. However, propofol exposure resulted in regional changes in spatial distribution of maximum fluorescence intensity in deep regions of the cortex. In summary, our experiments revealed substance-specific effects on the thalamocortical network. Functional changes of the neuronal network are known to be pivotally involved in the anesthetic-induced loss of consciousness. Our findings provide further evidence that the mechanisms of anesthetic-mediated loss of consciousness are drug- and pathway-specific.

Hazard perception, risk perception, and the need for decontamination by residents exposed to soil pollution: the role of sustainability and the limits of expert knowledge.

PubMed

Vandermoere, Frédéric

2008-04-01

This case study examines the hazard and risk perception and the need for decontamination according to people exposed to soil pollution. Using an ecological-symbolic approach (ESA), a multidisciplinary model is developed that draws upon psychological and sociological perspectives on risk perception and includes ecological variables by using data from experts' risk assessments. The results show that hazard perception is best predicted by objective knowledge, subjective knowledge, estimated knowledge of experts, and the assessed risks. However, experts' risk assessments induce an increase in hazard perception only when residents know the urgency of decontamination. Risk perception is best predicted by trust in the risk management. Additionally, need for decontamination relates to hazard perception, risk perception, estimated knowledge of experts, and thoughts about sustainability. In contrast to the knowledge deficit model, objective and subjective knowledge did not significantly relate to risk perception and need for decontamination. The results suggest that residents can make a distinction between hazards in terms of the seriousness of contamination on the one hand, and human health risks on the other hand. Moreover, next to the importance of social determinants of environmental risk perception, this study shows that the output of experts' risk assessments-or the objective risks-can create a hazard awareness rather than an alarming risk consciousness, despite residents' distrust of scientific knowledge.

I think of my family, therefore I am: perceptions of daily occupations of some Albanians in Switzerland.

PubMed

Heigl, Franziska; Kinébanian, Astrid; Josephsson, Staffan

2011-03-01

The purpose of this qualitative study was to increase the understanding of the relationship between culture and occupation by exploring the perceptions of current daily occupations of some immigrants living in Switzerland. Semi-structured interviews with eight healthy Muslim Albanian men doing blue-collar work were analysed in a comparative manner followed by an interpretation. Three themes were identified: "Everything I do I do for my family"; "Where do I belong?"; and "Doing something for myself". These themes reflect the occupational perceptions of the participants. The findings are discussed in relation to the ongoing discourses on individualism and collectivism. To offer occupational therapy appropriately to a multicultural clientele the findings indicate the necessity to be conscious of the differences between one's own and the client's attitudes regarding individualism and collectivism.

The experience of reading.

PubMed

Moore, Alan Tonnies; Schwitzgebel, Eric

2018-05-03

What do people consciously experience when they read? There has been almost no rigorous research on this question, and opinions diverge radically among both philosophers and psychologists. We describe three studies of the phenomenology of reading and its relationship to memory of textual detail and general cognitive abilities. We find three main results. First, there is substantial variability in reports about reading experience, both within and between participants. Second, reported reading experience varies with passage type: passages with dialogue prompted increased reports of inner speech, while passages with vivid visual detail prompted increased reports of visual imagery. Third, reports of visual imagery experiences, inner speech experiences, and experiences of conscious visual perception of the words on the page were at best weakly related to general cognitive abilities and memory of visual and auditory details. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The "emotion misattribution" procedure: processing beyond good and bad under masked and unmasked presentation conditions.

PubMed

Rohr, Michaela; Degner, Juliane; Wentura, Dirk

2015-01-01

In general, it is assumed that misattribution in the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) is restricted to crude affect due to its unbound nature, especially under limited presentation conditions. In two experiments, we investigated whether emotion-specific misattributions occur using a four-category misattribution procedure. Experiment 1 yielded emotion-specific misattribution effects under clearly visible presentation conditions demonstrating that the procedure is principally susceptible for emotion-specific effects. In Experiment 2, we employed masked presentation conditions impeding conscious prime perception. A specific pattern of emotion-specific misattributions effects emerged indicating some emotion-specific processing at initial stages of processing. However, not each emotion was misattributed equally. We discuss the implications of these results for the non-conscious processing of emotional information, for the supposed mechanisms of the AMP and its implicit nature.

Volitional Control of Movement: The Physiology of Free Will

PubMed Central

Hallett, Mark

2007-01-01

This review deals with the physiology of the initiation of a voluntary movement and the appreciation of whether it is voluntary or not. I argue that free will is not a driving force for movement, but a conscious awareness concerning the nature of the movement. Movement initiation and the perception of willing the movement can be separately manipulated. Movement is generated subconsciously, and the conscious sense of volition comes later, but the exact time of this event is difficult to assess because of the potentially illusory nature of introspection. Neurological disorders of volition are also reviewed. The evidence suggests that movement is initiated in frontal lobe, particularly the mesial areas, and the sense of volition arises as the result of a corollary discharge likely involving multiple areas with reciprocal connections including those in the parietal lobe and insular cortex. PMID:17466580

Bodily maps of emotions.

PubMed

Nummenmaa, Lauri; Glerean, Enrico; Hari, Riitta; Hietanen, Jari K

2014-01-14

Emotions are often felt in the body, and somatosensory feedback has been proposed to trigger conscious emotional experiences. Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique topographical self-report method. In five experiments, participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus. Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments. These maps were concordant across West European and East Asian samples. Statistical classifiers distinguished emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of topographies across emotions. We propose that emotions are represented in the somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps. Perception of these emotion-triggered bodily changes may play a key role in generating consciously felt emotions.

Prefrontal cortex modulates posterior alpha oscillations during top-down guided visual perception

PubMed Central

Helfrich, Randolph F.; Huang, Melody; Wilson, Guy; Knight, Robert T.

2017-01-01

Conscious visual perception is proposed to arise from the selective synchronization of functionally specialized but widely distributed cortical areas. It has been suggested that different frequency bands index distinct canonical computations. Here, we probed visual perception on a fine-grained temporal scale to study the oscillatory dynamics supporting prefrontal-dependent sensory processing. We tested whether a predictive context that was embedded in a rapid visual stream modulated the perception of a subsequent near-threshold target. The rapid stream was presented either rhythmically at 10 Hz, to entrain parietooccipital alpha oscillations, or arrhythmically. We identified a 2- to 4-Hz delta signature that modulated posterior alpha activity and behavior during predictive trials. Importantly, delta-mediated top-down control diminished the behavioral effects of bottom-up alpha entrainment. Simultaneous source-reconstructed EEG and cross-frequency directionality analyses revealed that this delta activity originated from prefrontal areas and modulated posterior alpha power. Taken together, this study presents converging behavioral and electrophysiological evidence for frontal delta-mediated top-down control of posterior alpha activity, selectively facilitating visual perception. PMID:28808023

Dental students' perceptions of and attitudes about poverty: a Canadian participatory case study.

PubMed

Reis, Clarice M R; Rodriguez, Charo; Macaulay, Ann C; Bedos, Christophe

2014-12-01

This qualitative case study was conducted in a Canadian dental school using a participatory approach and was based on Paulo Freire's theoretical concept of conscientização, a form of critical consciousness that involves awareness of social reality and fosters action towards social justice. The aim of the study was to understand dental students' perceptions of and attitudes about poverty and dental care provided to people living in poverty. It also examined how these perceptions shape students' plans for their professional careers, as well as their opinions on educational strategies to prepare them to work with poor patients. The sources of data generation were semistructured interviews, participant observations, and document analysis. A deductive-inductive thematic strategy was used to analyze the data. Out of a class of thirty-five senior dental students, the authors interviewed a convenience sample of twelve: five male and seven female. The findings suggest that the students had incipient conscientização about poverty-related themes. They perceived poverty as a distant issue and as the responsibility of the government or of the poor individuals themselves. The students did not have plans to work with patients living in poverty in the future and struggled to envision ways to address these patients' needs other than volunteer work. This research supports the need for academic dental institutions to adopt strategies to increase students' critical consciousness about oral health inequities. Reducing oral health inequities is a matter of social justice, and dental care providers are key actors in this endeavor.

Alterations of consciousness and mystical-type experiences after acute LSD in humans.

PubMed

Liechti, Matthias E; Dolder, Patrick C; Schmid, Yasmin

2017-05-01

Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) is used recreationally and in clinical research. Acute mystical-type experiences that are acutely induced by hallucinogens are thought to contribute to their potential therapeutic effects. However, no data have been reported on LSD-induced mystical experiences and their relationship to alterations of consciousness. Additionally, LSD dose- and concentration-response functions with regard to alterations of consciousness are lacking. We conducted two placebo-controlled, double-blind, cross-over studies using oral administration of 100 and 200 μg LSD in 24 and 16 subjects, respectively. Acute effects of LSD were assessed using the 5 Dimensions of Altered States of Consciousness (5D-ASC) scale after both doses and the Mystical Experience Questionnaire (MEQ) after 200 μg. On the MEQ, 200 μg LSD induced mystical experiences that were comparable to those in patients who underwent LSD-assisted psychotherapy but were fewer than those reported for psilocybin in healthy subjects or patients. On the 5D-ASC scale, LSD produced higher ratings of blissful state, insightfulness, and changed meaning of percepts after 200 μg compared with 100 μg. Plasma levels of LSD were not positively correlated with its effects, with the exception of ego dissolution at 100 μg. Mystical-type experiences were infrequent after LSD, possibly because of the set and setting used in the present study. LSD may produce greater or different alterations of consciousness at 200 μg (i.e., a dose that is currently used in psychotherapy in Switzerland) compared with 100 μg (i.e., a dose used in imaging studies). Ego dissolution may reflect plasma levels of LSD, whereas more robustly induced effects of LSD may not result in such associations.

Differences in the effects of crowding on size perception and grip scaling in densely cluttered 3-D scenes.

PubMed

Chen, Juan; Sperandio, Irene; Goodale, Melvyn Alan

2015-01-01

Objects rarely appear in isolation in natural scenes. Although many studies have investigated how nearby objects influence perception in cluttered scenes (i.e., crowding), none has studied how nearby objects influence visually guided action. In Experiment 1, we found that participants could scale their grasp to the size of a crowded target even when they could not perceive its size, demonstrating for the first time that neurologically intact participants can use visual information that is not available to conscious report to scale their grasp to real objects in real scenes. In Experiments 2 and 3, we found that changing the eccentricity of the display and the orientation of the flankers had no effect on grasping but strongly affected perception. The differential effects of eccentricity and flanker orientation on perception and grasping show that the known differences in retinotopy between the ventral and dorsal streams are reflected in the way in which people deal with targets in cluttered scenes. © The Author(s) 2014.

Is fear perception special? Evidence at the level of decision-making and subjective confidence.

PubMed

Koizumi, Ai; Mobbs, Dean; Lau, Hakwan

2016-11-01

Fearful faces are believed to be prioritized in visual perception. However, it is unclear whether the processing of low-level facial features alone can facilitate such prioritization or whether higher-level mechanisms also contribute. We examined potential biases for fearful face perception at the levels of perceptual decision-making and perceptual confidence. We controlled for lower-level visual processing capacity by titrating luminance contrasts of backward masks, and the emotional intensity of fearful, angry and happy faces. Under these conditions, participants showed liberal biases in perceiving a fearful face, in both detection and discrimination tasks. This effect was stronger among individuals with reduced density in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, a region linked to perceptual decision-making. Moreover, participants reported higher confidence when they accurately perceived a fearful face, suggesting that fearful faces may have privileged access to consciousness. Together, the results suggest that mechanisms in the prefrontal cortex contribute to making fearful face perception special. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press.

The feeling of fluent perception: a single experience from multiple asynchronous sources.

PubMed

Wurtz, Pascal; Reber, Rolf; Zimmermann, Thomas D

2008-03-01

Zeki and co-workers recently proposed that perception can best be described as locally distributed, asynchronous processes that each create a kind of microconsciousness, which condense into an experienced percept. The present article is aimed at extending this theory to metacognitive feelings. We present evidence that perceptual fluency-the subjective feeling of ease during perceptual processing-is based on speed of processing at different stages of the perceptual process. Specifically, detection of briefly presented stimuli was influenced by figure-ground contrast, but not by symmetry (Experiment 1) or the font (Experiment 2) of the stimuli. Conversely, discrimination of these stimuli was influenced by whether they were symmetric (Experiment 1) and by the font they were presented in (Experiment 2), but not by figure-ground contrast. Both tasks however were related with the subjective experience of fluency (Experiments 1 and 2). We conclude that subjective fluency is the conscious phenomenal correlate of different processing stages in visual perception.

The suffocating embrace of landscape and the picturesque conditioning of ecology

Treesearch

A.M. Ellison

2013-01-01

What are natural landscapes? Are they “out there,” separate from people, or are they creations of our own perception? An exploration of artistic visions of landscape on the one hand and the development of ecology as a self-conscious science on the other suggests that for nearly 150 years ecology has been conditioned by romantic, picturesque portrayals of landscape....

Place-Consciousness and Bronfenbrenner's "Ecological Systems Model": A Discussion of Recurring Issues That Undermine the Teaching of Indigenous Histories in New Zealand and Australian Schools

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Manning, Richard F.

2017-01-01

This article draws upon a "tale from the feld" (Van Maanen, 1988) to encourage New Zealand and Australian teachers of history and social studies to appraise how their own perceptions of place and teaching about Indigenous peoples' histories impact upon their students' learning. Moreover, it explains why Uri Bronfenbrenner's (1979)…

Mathematics, experience and laboratories: Herbart's and Brentano's role in the rise of scientific psychology.

PubMed

Huemer, Wolfgang; Landerer, Christoph

2010-01-01

In this article we present and compare two early attempts to establish psychology as an independent scientific discipline that had considerable influence in central Europe: the theories of Johann Friedrich Herbart (1776-1841) and Franz Brentano (1838-1917). While both of them emphasize that psychology ought to be conceived as an empirical science, their conceptions show revealing differences. Herbart starts with metaphysical principles and aims at mathematizing psychology, whereas Brentano rejects all metaphysics and bases his method on a conception of inner perception (as opposed to inner observation) as a secondary consciousness, by means of which one gets to be aware of all of one's own conscious phenomena. Brentano's focus on inner perception brings him to deny the claim that there could be unconscious mental phenomena - a view that stands in sharp contrast to Herbart's emphasis on unconscious, "repressed" presentations as a core element of his mechanics of mind. Herbart, on the other hand, denies any role for psychological experiments, while Brentano encouraged laboratory work, thus paving the road for the more experimental work of his students like Stumpf and Meinong. By briefly tracing the fate of the schools of Herbart and Brentano, respectively, we aim to illustrate their impact on the development of psychological research, mainly in central Europe.

Perceptual latency priming by masked and unmasked stimuli: evidence for an attentional interpretation.

PubMed

Scharlau, Ingrid; Neumann, Odmar

2003-08-01

Four experiments investigated the influence of a metacontrast-masked prime on temporal order judgments. The main results were (1) that a masked prime reduced the latency of the mask's conscious perception (perceptual latency priming), (2) that this effect was independent of whether the prime suffered strong or weak masking, (3) that it was unaffected by the degree of visual similarity between the prime and the mask, and that (4) there was no difference between congruent and incongruent primes. Finding (1) suggests that location cueing affects not only response times but also the latency of conscious perception. (2) The finding that priming was unaffected by the prime's detectability argues against a response bias interpretation of this effect. (3) Since visual similarity had no effect on the prime's efficiency, it is unlikely that sensory priming was involved. (4) The lack of a divergence between the effects of congruent and incongruent primes implies a functional difference between the judgments in the temporal order judgment task and speeded responses that have demonstrated differential effects of congruent and incongruent primes (e.g., Klotz & Neumann, 1999). These results can best be interpreted by assuming that the prime affects perceptual latency by initiating a shift of attention, as suggested by the Asynchronous Updating Model (AUM; Neumann 1978, 1982).

Oculomotor inhibition covaries with conscious detection

PubMed Central

Rolfs, Martin

2016-01-01

Saccadic eye movements occur frequently even during attempted fixation, but they halt momentarily when a new stimulus appears. Here, we demonstrate that this rapid, involuntary “oculomotor freezing” reflex is yoked to fluctuations in explicit visual perception. Human observers reported the presence or absence of a brief visual stimulus while we recorded microsaccades, small spontaneous eye movements. We found that microsaccades were reflexively inhibited if and only if the observer reported seeing the stimulus, even when none was present. By applying a novel Bayesian classification technique to patterns of microsaccades on individual trials, we were able to decode the reported state of perception more accurately than the state of the stimulus (present vs. absent). Moreover, explicit perceptual sensitivity and the oculomotor reflex were both susceptible to orientation-specific adaptation. The adaptation effects suggest that the freezing reflex is mediated by signals processed in the visual cortex before reaching oculomotor control centers rather than relying on a direct subcortical route, as some previous research has suggested. We conclude that the reflexive inhibition of microsaccades immediately and inadvertently reveals when the observer becomes aware of a change in the environment. By providing an objective measure of conscious perceptual detection that does not require explicit reports, this finding opens doors to clinical applications and further investigations of perceptual awareness. PMID:27385794

Is the self a higher-order or fundamental function of the brain? The "basis model of self-specificity" and its encoding by the brain's spontaneous activity.

PubMed

Northoff, Georg

2016-01-01

What is the self? This is a question that has long been discussed in (Western) philosophy where the self is traditionally conceived a higher-order function at the apex or pinnacle of all functions. This tradition has been transferred to recent neuroscience where the self is often considered to be a higher-order cognitive function reflected in memory and other high-level judgements. However, other lines of research demonstrate a close and intimate relationship between self-specificity and more basic functions like perceptions, emotions and reward. This paper focuses on the relationship between self-specificity and other basic functions relating to emotions, reward and perception. I propose the basis model that conceives self-specificity as a fundamental feature of the brain's spontaneous activity. This is supported by recent findings showing rest-self overlap in midline regions as well as findings demonstrating that the resting state can predict subsequent degrees of self-specificity. I conclude that such self-specificity in the brain's spontaneous activity may be central in linking the self to either internal or external stimuli. This may also provide the basis for coding the self as subject in relation to internal (i.e., self-consciousness) or external (i.e., phenomenal consciousness) mental events.

Slow and fast visual motion channels have independent binocular-rivalry stages.

PubMed Central

van de Grind, W. A.; van Hof, P.; van der Smagt, M. J.; Verstraten, F. A.

2001-01-01

We have previously reported a transparent motion after-effect indicating that the human visual system comprises separate slow and fast motion channels. Here, we report that the presentation of a fast motion in one eye and a slow motion in the other eye does not result in binocular rivalry but in a clear percept of transparent motion. We call this new visual phenomenon 'dichoptic motion transparency' (DMT). So far only the DMT phenomenon and the two motion after-effects (the 'classical' motion after-effect, seen after motion adaptation on a static test pattern, and the dynamic motion after-effect, seen on a dynamic-noise test pattern) appear to isolate the channels completely. The speed ranges of the slow and fast channels overlap strongly and are observer dependent. A model is presented that links after-effect durations of an observer to the probability of rivalry or DMT as a function of dichoptic velocity combinations. Model results support the assumption of two highly independent channels showing only within-channel rivalry, and no rivalry or after-effect interactions between the channels. The finding of two independent motion vision channels, each with a separate rivalry stage and a private line to conscious perception, might be helpful in visualizing or analysing pathways to consciousness. PMID:11270442

My heart is in my hands: the interoceptive nature of the spontaneous sensations felt on the hands.

PubMed

Michael, George A; Naveteur, Janick; Dupuy, Marie-Agnès; Jacquot, Laurence

2015-05-01

Somatic sensations may arise in the total absence of external stimuli, i.e., spontaneous sensations (SPSs). Because the background of body sensations has been mentioned as a possible contributor to interoceptive functions, such as the perception of the self and the conscious awareness of one's own body, a possible link between SPSs and interoception has been advocated. Yet, no study has provided direct evidence on such a relationship. The aim of the present study was to establish a link between SPSs and interoception. On the basis of the literature, the accuracy of heartbeat perception was taken as an index of general interoception across different bodily modalities. It was found that individuals with good heartbeat perception experienced more numerous and more intense SPSs. Furthermore, taken along with other individual characteristics, heartbeat perception accuracy predicted the perceived intensity of SPSs, their spatial extent, their variety, as well as confidence in their spatial characteristics. However, we also provide evidence that good vs. poor heartbeat perception is not just a matter of degree. We conclude that interoception definitely contributes to the perception of SPSs. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Unconscious decisional learning improves unconscious information processing.

PubMed

Vlassova, Alexandra; Pearson, Joel

2018-07-01

The idea that unconscious input can result in long-term learning or task improvement has been debated for decades, yet there is still little evidence to suggest that learning outside of awareness can produce meaningful changes to decision-making. Here we trained participants using noisy motion stimuli, which require the gradual accumulation of information until a decision can be reached. These stimuli were suppressed from conscious awareness by simultaneously presenting a dynamic dichoptic mask. We show that a short period of training on either a partially or fully suppressed motion stimulus resulted in improved accuracy when tested on a partially suppressed motion stimulus traveling in the orthogonal direction. We found this improvement occurred even when performance on the training task was at chance. Performance gains generalized across motion directions, suggesting that the improvement was the result of changes to the decisional mechanisms rather than perceptual. Interestingly, unconscious learning had a stronger effect on unconscious, compared to conscious decisional accumulation. We further show that a conscious coherent percept is necessary to reap the benefits of unconscious learning. Together, these data suggest that unconscious decisional processing can be improved via training. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness.

PubMed

O'Regan, J K; Noë, A

2001-10-01

Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual "filling in," visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

Human consciousness and its relationship to social neuroscience: A novel hypothesis

PubMed Central

Graziano, Michael S. A.; Kastner, Sabine

2011-01-01

A common modern view of consciousness is that it is an emergent property of the brain, perhaps caused by neuronal complexity, and perhaps with no adaptive value. Exactly what emerges, how it emerges, and from what specific neuronal process, is in debate. One possible explanation of consciousness, proposed here, is that it is a construct of the social perceptual machinery. Humans have specialized neuronal machinery that allows us to be socially intelligent. The primary role for this machinery is to construct models of other people’s minds thereby gaining some ability to predict the behavior of other individuals. In the present hypothesis, awareness is a perceptual reconstruction of attentional state; and the machinery that computes information about other people’s awareness is the same machinery that computes information about our own awareness. The present article brings together a variety of lines of evidence including experiments on the neural basis of social perception, on hemispatial neglect, on the out-of-body experience, on mirror neurons, and on the mechanisms of decision-making, to explore the possibility that awareness is a construct of the social machinery in the brain. PMID:22121395

Self-esteem as mediator and moderator of the relationship between stigma perception and social alienation of Chinese adults with disability.

PubMed

Zhang, Lin; Li, Wentao; Liu, Binbin; Xie, Wenlan

2014-01-01

Several studies show the relationship between self-esteem and stigma perception and also between self-esteem and social alienation, but none sufficiently analyze the relationship between stigma perception and social alienation of people with disability. The primary aim of this paper is to investigate the mediator and moderator effects of self-esteem on the relationship between stigma perception and social alienation of people with disability. The participants were 129 adults with disability (80 males and 49 females) from eight communities in China. Data was collected by using the stigma perception scale, self-esteem scale, social avoidance scale, social anxiety subscale of the self-consciousness scale, and loneliness scale. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale (1 = "strongly disagree" to 5 = "strongly agree"). Stigma perception was positively correlated with social avoidance (p < 0.001), social anxiety (p < 0.001), and loneliness (p < 0.001). Self-esteem was inversely correlated with social avoidance (p < 0.001), social anxiety (p < 0.001), loneliness (p < 0.001), and stigma perception (p < 0.001). Self-esteem partially mediated the relationship between stigma perception and social avoidance, social anxiety and loneliness. Moreover, self-esteem moderated the relationship between stigma perception and social avoidance, but not on social anxiety and loneliness. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Collective input/output under memory constraints

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Lu, Yin; Chen, Yong; Zhuang, Yu

2014-12-18

Compared with current high-performance computing (HPC) systems, exascale systems are expected to have much less memory per node, which can significantly reduce necessary collective input/output (I/O) performance. In this study, we introduce a memory-conscious collective I/O strategy that takes into account memory capacity and bandwidth constraints. The new strategy restricts aggregation data traffic within disjointed subgroups, coordinates I/O accesses in intranode and internode layers, and determines I/O aggregators at run time considering memory consumption among processes. We have prototyped the design and evaluated it with commonly used benchmarks to verify its potential. The evaluation results demonstrate that this strategy holdsmore » promise in mitigating the memory pressure, alleviating the contention for memory bandwidth, and improving the I/O performance for projected extreme-scale systems. Given the importance of supporting increasingly data-intensive workloads and projected memory constraints on increasingly larger scale HPC systems, this new memory-conscious collective I/O can have a significant positive impact on scientific discovery productivity.« less

Genital Appearance Dissatisfaction: Implications for Women's Genital Image Self-Consciousness, Sexual Esteem, Sexual Satisfaction, and Sexual Risk.

PubMed

Schick, Vanessa R; Calabrese, Sarah K; Rima, Brandi N; Zucker, Alyssa N

2010-09-01

Findings regarding the link between body image and sexuality have been equivocal, possibly because of the insensitivity of many of body image measures to potential variability across sensory aspects of the body (e.g., appearance versus odor), individual body parts (e.g., genitalia versus thighs), and social settings (e.g., public versus intimate). The current study refined existing methods of evaluating women's body image in the context of sexuality by focusing upon two highly specified dimensions: satisfaction with the visual appearance of the genitalia and self-consciousness about the genitalia during a sexual encounter. Genital appearance dissatisfaction, genital image self-consciousness, and multiple facets of sexuality were examined with a sample of 217 undergraduate women using an online survey. Path analysis revealed that greater dissatisfaction with genital appearance was associated with higher genital image self-consciousness during physical intimacy, which, in turn, was associated with lower sexual esteem, sexual satisfaction, and motivation to avoid risky sexual behavior. These findings underscore the detrimental impact of negative genital perceptions on young women's sexual wellbeing, which is of particular concern given their vulnerability at this stage of sexual development as well as the high rates of sexually transmitted infections within this age group. Interventions that enhance satisfaction with the natural appearance of their genitalia could facilitate the development of a healthy sexual self-concept and provide long-term benefits in terms of sexual safety and satisfaction.

Sexual Perfectionism in Women: Not as Simple as Adaptive or Maladaptive.

PubMed

Kluck, Annette S; Zhuzha, Kseniya; Hughes, Kelly

2016-11-01

According to research and theory, the construct of perfectionism may apply to specific life domains, including being a perfect sexual partner. We extended the research on sexual perfectionism (SP) by examining the relationships between its various dimensions (i.e., self-directed, partner-directed, socially prescribed, partner-prescribed) and communication about sex, sexual functioning, and appearance self-consciousness during sex. Women (N = 208) of ages 19-50 were recruited online to respond to the Multidimensional Sexual Perfectionism Questionnaire and measures of communication about sex, sexual functioning, and physical appearance self-consciousness during sex. Dimensions of SP demonstrated a mixed pattern of relationships with measures of adaptive functioning. Partner-prescribed SP was related to greater appearance self-consciousness during sex, indicating an unfavorable role of this dimension of SP. An indirect effect of socially prescribed and partner-prescribed SP on sexual functioning through poor dyadic communication about sex and greater appearance self-consciousness was also found. Self-directed SP was less clearly problematic and uniquely related to better dyadic communication, whereas partner-directed SP was uniquely related to fewer concerns about the body appearance during sex. In conclusion, with respect to personal functioning, higher standards directed towards sexual partners may be less problematic but perceptions that romantic partners expect one to be a perfect sexual partner may have deleterious effects. Overall, SP may relate to sexual experiences of women beyond the college-age group with some aspects of SP being more problematic than others.

Nociception, pain, consciousness, and society: A plea for constrained use of pain-related terminologies.

PubMed

Apkarian, A Vania

2018-06-08

This focus article addresses the issue of the proper use of terminology in pain research. A review and some revisions on the definitions of pain and nociception, in relation to consciousness is presented. From a behavioral viewpoint, it is argued that pain is a conscious assessment of the failure of the organism to protect the body from injury (actual or potential); while continuously-ongoing sub/pre-conscious nociceptive processes protect the body from injuries. Thus, pain perception/behavior requires a subjective ability to evaluate the environment and form coordinated responses. Yet, too often our literature conflates the two concepts, resulting in a confusion that impacts on society. The issue is especially topical as the US Senate has been voting a bill called: Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. The title of the bill itself does not make sense, if we adhere to the strict definitions commonly accepted in our field. Thus, this article concludes with a plea to properly constrain the narrative with which we describe our research, and minimize potential abuse of the science of pain for political interests. Perspective The focus article goes over the classic definitions of pain and nociception; incorporates novel concepts recently advances as to their functional differentiation; and is a plea for our research and clinical society to adhere to the proper use of these terms to minimize misinterpretation by society at large. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

"[G]azing into the synaptic chasm": the Brain in Beckett's Writing.

PubMed

Kim, Rina

2016-06-01

This paper argues that Samuel Beckett's interest in functions of the brain is not only evidenced in his notebooks, taken from a number of psychology and psycho-physiognomy texts in the early 1930s, but is also explored and expanded in his fiction and drama. This paper investigates Beckett's fascination with the limits of "cerebral consciousness" and the brain's failure to consciously perceive certain bodily modifications especially when processing emotion. Like Antonio Damasio's definition of emotion as essentially the bodily modifications that include chemical changes, Beckett often exploits the idea of emotion as sorely a bodily phenomenon by creating characters who are unable to consciously perceive and process their emotion. For example, when talking about his own weeping, the narrator of The Unnamable attributes the tears to the malfunctioning of the brain, "liquefied brain", denying, displacing or making physical the feeling of sadness. By examining the ways in which Beckett emphasizes a somatic dimension of emotion and its relation to the brain function and perception in his writing, this paper reveals how he explores the idea of the self and extends the idea to what he calls the "impenetrable self" that cannot be consciously recognized. I argue that if, for Joseph LeDoux, the "notion of synapses as points of communication between cells is […] essential to our efforts to understand who we are in terms of brain mechanisms", for Beckett to expose such unconscious biological mechanisms and "gaps" becomes his own artistic challenge.

Dopaminergic stimulation enhances confidence and accuracy in seeing rapidly presented words.

PubMed

Lou, Hans C; Skewes, Joshua C; Thomsen, Kristine Rømer; Overgaard, Morten; Lau, Hakwan C; Mouridsen, Kim; Roepstorff, Andreas

2011-02-23

Liberal acceptance, overconfidence, and increased activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine have been proposed to account for abnormal sensory experiences, for instance, hallucinations in schizophrenia. In normal subjects, increased sensory experience in Yoga Nidra meditation is linked to striatal dopamine release. We therefore hypothesize that the neurotransmitter dopamine may function as a regulator of subjective confidence of visual perception in the normal brain. Although much is known about the effect of stimulation by neurotransmitters on cognitive functions, their effect on subjective confidence of perception has never been recorded experimentally before. In a controlled study of 24 normal, healthy female university students with the dopamine agonist pergolide given orally, we show that dopaminergic activation increases confidence in seeing rapidly presented words. It also improves performance in a forced-choice word recognition task. These results demonstrate neurotransmitter regulation of subjective conscious experience of perception and provide evidence for a crucial role of dopamine.

Illusory movement perception improves motor control for prosthetic hands

PubMed Central

Marasco, Paul D.; Hebert, Jacqueline S.; Sensinger, Jon W.; Shell, Courtney E.; Schofield, Jonathon S.; Thumser, Zachary C.; Nataraj, Raviraj; Beckler, Dylan T.; Dawson, Michael R.; Blustein, Dan H.; Gill, Satinder; Mensh, Brett D.; Granja-Vazquez, Rafael; Newcomb, Madeline D.; Carey, Jason P.; Orzell, Beth M.

2018-01-01

To effortlessly complete an intentional movement, the brain needs feedback from the body regarding the movement’s progress. This largely non-conscious kinesthetic sense helps the brain to learn relationships between motor commands and outcomes to correct movement errors. Prosthetic systems for restoring function have predominantly focused on controlling motorized joint movement. Without the kinesthetic sense, however, these devices do not become intuitively controllable. Here we report a method for endowing human amputees with a kinesthetic perception of dexterous robotic hands. Vibrating the muscles used for prosthetic control via a neural-machine interface produced the illusory perception of complex grip movements. Within minutes, three amputees integrated this kinesthetic feedback and improved movement control. Combining intent, kinesthesia, and vision instilled participants with a sense of agency over the robotic movements. This feedback approach for closed-loop control opens a pathway to seamless integration of minds and machines. PMID:29540617

Color-binding errors during rivalrous suppression of form.

PubMed

Hong, Sang Wook; Shevell, Steven K

2009-09-01

How does a physical stimulus determine a conscious percept? Binocular rivalry provides useful insights into this question because constant physical stimulation during rivalry causes different visual experiences. For example, presentation of vertical stripes to one eye and horizontal stripes to the other eye results in a percept that alternates between horizontal and vertical stripes. Presentation of a different color to each eye (color rivalry) produces alternating percepts of the two colors or, in some cases, a color mixture. The experiments reported here reveal a novel and instructive resolution of rivalry for stimuli that differ in both form and color: perceptual alternation between the rivalrous forms (e.g., horizontal or vertical stripes), with both eyes' colors seen simultaneously in separate parts of the currently perceived form. Thus, the colors presented to the two eyes (a) maintain their distinct neural representations despite resolution of form rivalry and (b) can bind separately to distinct parts of the perceived form.

USA: Economics, Politics, Ideology, Number 6, June 1978.

DTIC Science & Technology

1978-07-26

perceptible damages on the national economy. Nonetheless, the military-industrial complex, guided by self -seeking goals, is constantly demanding an...public is due, in our opinion, not so much to a conscious desire to revive the cold war as to the fact that "anti-detente" propaganda falls on fertile...The conclusions derived from this set of axioms were self -evident: Fruitful cooperation 25 with the Soviet Union is possible and necessary; the

Aspects of perceptual development and rehabilitation.

PubMed

Kanevsky, D; Yabrov, A

1988-09-01

It is hypothesized that two anatomically distinct structures--sensory and cognitive--are jointly responsible for perception. In normal individuals the sensory structure is developed at birth, whereas the cognitive one develops after birth under the influence of information received through the sensory structure. Only information that is consciously perceived and comprehended is essential for development of cognitive structure. Consequently, creation of an optimal substream of this cognizable information is an important objective for the therapist or teacher.

Explaining seeing? Disentangling qualia from perceptual organization.

PubMed

Ibáñez, Agustin; Bekinschtein, Tristan

2010-09-01

Abstract Visual perception and integration seem to play an essential role in our conscious phenomenology. Relatively local neural processing of reentrant nature may explain several visual integration processes (feature binding or figure-ground segregation, object recognition, inference, competition), even without attention or cognitive control. Based on the above statements, should the neural signatures of visual integration (via reentrant process) be non-reportable phenomenological qualia? We argue that qualia are not required to understand this perceptual organization.

Unraveling the Complexity of Critical Consciousness, Political Efficacy, and Political Action Among Marginalized Adolescents.

PubMed

Diemer, Matthew A; Rapa, Luke J

2016-01-01

This research examines the complex patterns by which distinct dimensions of critical consciousness may lead marginalized adolescents toward distinct forms of political action. Structural equation modeling was applied to nationally representative data from the Civic Education Study (2,811 ninth graders; Mage  = 14.6), first establishing the measurement invariance of constructs across samples of poor or working class African American and Latino/a adolescents. Perceptions of societal inequality and aspirational beliefs that society ought to be more equal differentially predicted expected voting, conventional political action, and social action-while controlling for civic achievement and with nuances between ethnic and racial groups. Contrary to hypotheses and extant scholarship, political efficacy did not mediate or moderate relations between critical reflection and disparate forms of political action. © 2015 The Authors. Child Development © 2015 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Gender Differences in Emotion Explain Women's Lower Immoral Intentions and Harsher Moral Condemnation.

PubMed

Ward, Sarah J; King, Laura A

2018-05-01

Why do men view morally questionable behaviors as more permissible than women do? Five studies investigated emotional factors as explanations for gender differences in moral decision-making. In Study 1 ( N = 324), gender differences in perceptions of moral wrongness were explained by guilt and shame proneness. Studies 2a and 2b (combined N = 562) demonstrated that instructions to adopt an unemotional perspective (vs. standard instructions) led women to have higher immoral intentions, no longer lower than men's, as they were in the control group. Studies 3 and 4 ( N = 834) showed that men expected immoral actions to result in higher positive and lower self-conscious moral emotions than women do. Study 4 ( N = 424) showed that these emotional expectancies account for gender differences in immoral intentions. Study 5 ( N = 450) showed that women-but not men-experience heightened self-conscious moral emotions and regret when recalling past transgressions done for personal gain.

Unconscious affective reactions to masked happy versus angry faces influence consumption behavior and judgments of value.

PubMed

Winkielman, Piotr; Berridge, Kent C; Wilbarger, Julia L

2005-01-01

The authors explored three properties of basic, unconsciously triggered affective reactions: They can influence consequential behavior, they work without eliciting conscious feelings, and they interact with motivation. The authors investigated these properties by testing the influence of subliminally presented happy versus angry faces on pouring and consumption of beverage (Study 1), perception of beverage value (Study 2), and reports of conscious feelings (both studies). Consistent with incentive motivation theory, the impact of affective primes on beverage value and consumption was strongest for thirsty participants. Subliminal smiles caused thirsty participants to pour and consume more beverage (Study 1) and increased their willingness to pay and their wanting more beverage (Study 2). Subliminal frowns had the opposite effect. No feeling changes were observed, even in thirsty participants. The results suggest that basic affective reactions can be unconscious and interact with incentive motivation to influence assessment of value and behavior toward valenced objects.

Bodily maps of emotions

PubMed Central

Nummenmaa, Lauri; Glerean, Enrico; Hari, Riitta; Hietanen, Jari K.

2014-01-01

Emotions are often felt in the body, and somatosensory feedback has been proposed to trigger conscious emotional experiences. Here we reveal maps of bodily sensations associated with different emotions using a unique topographical self-report method. In five experiments, participants (n = 701) were shown two silhouettes of bodies alongside emotional words, stories, movies, or facial expressions. They were asked to color the bodily regions whose activity they felt increasing or decreasing while viewing each stimulus. Different emotions were consistently associated with statistically separable bodily sensation maps across experiments. These maps were concordant across West European and East Asian samples. Statistical classifiers distinguished emotion-specific activation maps accurately, confirming independence of topographies across emotions. We propose that emotions are represented in the somatosensory system as culturally universal categorical somatotopic maps. Perception of these emotion-triggered bodily changes may play a key role in generating consciously felt emotions. PMID:24379370

Analysis of the Perception of Students about Biometric Identification

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Guillén-Gámez, Francisco D.; García-Magariño, Iván; Romero, Sonia J.

2015-01-01

Currently, there is a demand within distance education of control mechanisms for verifying the identity of students when conducting activities within virtual classrooms. Biometric authentication is one of the tools to meet this demand and prevent fraud. In this line of research, the present work is aimed at analyzing the perceptions of a group of…

A computational investigation of feedforward and feedback processing in metacontrast backward masking

PubMed Central

Silverstein, David N.

2015-01-01

In human perception studies, visual backward masking has been used to understand the temporal dynamics of subliminal vs. conscious perception. When a brief target stimulus is followed by a masking stimulus after a short interval of <100 ms, performance on the target is impaired when the target and mask are in close spatial proximity. While the psychophysical properties of backward masking have been studied extensively, there is still debate on the underlying cortical dynamics. One prevailing theory suggests that the impairment of target performance due to the mask is the result of lateral inhibition between the target and mask in feedforward processing. Another prevailing theory suggests that this impairment is due to the interruption of feedback processing of the target by the mask. This computational study demonstrates that both aspects of these theories may be correct. Using a biophysical model of V1 and V2, visual processing was modeled as interacting neocortical attractors, which must propagate up the visual stream. If an activating target attractor in V1 is quiesced enough with lateral inhibition from a mask, or not reinforced by recurrent feedback, it is more likely to burn out before becoming fully active and progressing through V2 and beyond. Results are presented which simulate metacontrast backward masking with an increasing stimulus interval and with the presence and absence of feedback activity. This showed that recurrent feedback diminishes backward masking effects and can make conscious perception more likely. One model configuration presented a metacontrast noise mask in the same hypercolumns as the target, and produced type-A masking. A second model configuration presented a target line with two parallel adjacent masking lines, and produced type-B masking. Future work should examine how the model extends to more complex spatial mask configurations. PMID:25759672

Emotion-elicited gamma synchrony in patients with first-episode schizophrenia: a neural correlate of social cognition outcomes

PubMed Central

Williams, Leanne M.; Whitford, Thomas J.; Nagy, Marie; Flynn, Gary; Harris, Anthony W.F.; Silverstein, Steven M.; Gordon, Evian

2009-01-01

Background Schizophrenia may be understood as a disorder of neural synchrony. There is also increasing evidence that emotional and social cognitive impairments are central to this disorder. In patients with first-episode schizophrenia, we examined whether emotion perception is associated with disruptions to high-frequency (40 Hz) gamma synchrony and whether these disruptions predict self-regulatory adaptive compensations reflected in social cognitive behaviours. Methods We obtained electroencephalography recordings from 28 patients with first-episode schizophrenia and matched healthy controls during perception of facial emotion under both conscious and nonconscious conditions. We extracted gamma-band synchrony from the electroencephalogram. We also used behavioural measures of emotion identification, emotional intelligence, negativity bias and social function, along with ratings of first-episode schizophrenia symptoms. We analyzed group differences and predicted social cognition to assess the potential contribution of medication. Results Within 200 ms poststimulus, patients with first-episode schizophrenia showed alterations in gamma synchrony during both conscious and nonconscious emotion perception. Stimulus-locked synchrony was reduced in patients, particularly over the temporal cortex, whereas complementary enhancements in absolute gamma synchrony (independent of stimuli) were more distributed over temporal and left parieto-occipital regions. This pattern of altered synchrony predicted poor performance on each measure of social cognition among these patients. Medication dosage did not correlate significantly with either gamma synchrony or behavioural measures in this group. Limitations Limitations to our study include the lack of comparison between medicated and unmedicated patients or between types of medication. Conclusion These findings suggest that disruptions in integrative processing of motivationally important stimuli show promise as a potential biological marker of social cognitive impairments, present from the first episode of schizophrenia, and their outcomes. PMID:19568482

Color Improves Speed of Processing But Not Perception in a Motion Illusion

PubMed Central

Perry, Carolyn J.; Fallah, Mazyar

2012-01-01

When two superimposed surfaces of dots move in different directions, the perceived directions are shifted away from each other. This perceptual illusion has been termed direction repulsion and is thought to be due to mutual inhibition between the representations of the two directions. It has further been shown that a speed difference between the two surfaces attenuates direction repulsion. As speed and direction are both necessary components of representing motion, the reduction in direction repulsion can be attributed to the additional motion information strengthening the representations of the two directions and thus reducing the mutual inhibition. We tested whether bottom-up attention and top-down task demands, in the form of color differences between the two surfaces, would also enhance motion processing, reducing direction repulsion. We found that the addition of color differences did not improve direction discrimination and reduce direction repulsion. However, we did find that adding a color difference improved performance on the task. We hypothesized that the performance differences were due to the limited presentation time of the stimuli. We tested this in a follow-up experiment where we varied the time of presentation to determine the duration needed to successfully perform the task with and without the color difference. As we expected, color segmentation reduced the amount of time needed to process and encode both directions of motion. Thus we find a dissociation between the effects of attention on the speed of processing and conscious perception of direction. We propose four potential mechanisms wherein color speeds figure-ground segmentation of an object, attentional switching between objects, direction discrimination and/or the accumulation of motion information for decision-making, without affecting conscious perception of the direction. Potential neural bases are also explored. PMID:22479255

Weight information labels on media models reduce body dissatisfaction in adolescent girls.

PubMed

Veldhuis, Jolanda; Konijn, Elly A; Seidell, Jacob C

2012-06-01

To examine how weight information labels on variously sized media models affect (pre)adolescent girls' body perceptions and how they compare themselves with media models. We used a three (body shape: extremely thin vs. thin vs. normal weight) × three (information label: 6-kg underweight vs. 3-kg underweight vs. normal weight) experimental design in three age-groups (9-10 years, 12-13 years, and 15-16 years; n = 184). The girls completed questionnaires after exposure to media models. Weight information labels affected girls' body dissatisfaction, social comparison with media figures, and objectified body consciousness. Respondents exposed to an extremely thin body shape labeled to be of "normal weight" were most dissatisfied with their own bodies and showed highest levels of objectified body consciousness and comparison with media figures. An extremely thin body shape combined with a corresponding label (i.e., 6-kg underweight), however, induced less body dissatisfaction and less comparison with the media model. Age differences were also found to affect body perceptions: adolescent girls showed more negative body perceptions than preadolescents. Weight information labels may counteract the generally media-induced thin-body ideal. That is, when the weight labels appropriately informed the respondents about the actual thinness of the media model's body shape, girls were less affected. Weight information labels also instigated a normalization effect when a "normal-weight" label was attached to underweight-sized media models. Presenting underweight as a normal body shape, clearly increased body dissatisfaction in girls. Results also suggest age between preadolescence and adolescence as a critical criterion in responding to media models' body shape. Copyright © 2012 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Color improves speed of processing but not perception in a motion illusion.

PubMed

Perry, Carolyn J; Fallah, Mazyar

2012-01-01

When two superimposed surfaces of dots move in different directions, the perceived directions are shifted away from each other. This perceptual illusion has been termed direction repulsion and is thought to be due to mutual inhibition between the representations of the two directions. It has further been shown that a speed difference between the two surfaces attenuates direction repulsion. As speed and direction are both necessary components of representing motion, the reduction in direction repulsion can be attributed to the additional motion information strengthening the representations of the two directions and thus reducing the mutual inhibition. We tested whether bottom-up attention and top-down task demands, in the form of color differences between the two surfaces, would also enhance motion processing, reducing direction repulsion. We found that the addition of color differences did not improve direction discrimination and reduce direction repulsion. However, we did find that adding a color difference improved performance on the task. We hypothesized that the performance differences were due to the limited presentation time of the stimuli. We tested this in a follow-up experiment where we varied the time of presentation to determine the duration needed to successfully perform the task with and without the color difference. As we expected, color segmentation reduced the amount of time needed to process and encode both directions of motion. Thus we find a dissociation between the effects of attention on the speed of processing and conscious perception of direction. We propose four potential mechanisms wherein color speeds figure-ground segmentation of an object, attentional switching between objects, direction discrimination and/or the accumulation of motion information for decision-making, without affecting conscious perception of the direction. Potential neural bases are also explored.

Reduced sensitivity for visual textures affects judgments of shape-from-shading and step-climbing behaviour in older adults.

PubMed

Schofield, Andrew J; Curzon-Jones, Benjamin; Hollands, Mark A

2017-02-01

Falls on stairs are a major hazard for older adults. Visual decline in normal ageing can affect step-climbing ability, altering gait and reducing toe clearance. Here we show that a loss of fine-grained visual information associated with age can affect the perception of surface undulations in patterned surfaces. We go on to show that such cues affect the limb trajectories of young adults, but due to their lack of sensitivity, not that of older adults. Interestingly neither the perceived height of a step nor conscious awareness is altered by our visual manipulation, but stepping behaviour is, suggesting that the influence of shape perception on stepping behaviour is via the unconscious, action-centred, dorsal visual pathway.

Ventral and Dorsal Pathways Relate Differently to Visual Awareness of Body Postures under Continuous Flash Suppression

PubMed Central

Goebel, Rainer

2018-01-01

Abstract Visual perception includes ventral and dorsal stream processes. However, it is still unclear whether the former is predominantly related to conscious and the latter to nonconscious visual perception as argued in the literature. In this study upright and inverted body postures were rendered either visible or invisible under continuous flash suppression (CFS), while brain activity of human participants was measured with functional MRI (fMRI). Activity in the ventral body-sensitive areas was higher during visible conditions. In comparison, activity in the posterior part of the bilateral intraparietal sulcus (IPS) showed a significant interaction of stimulus orientation and visibility. Our results provide evidence that dorsal stream areas are less associated with visual awareness. PMID:29445766

Health literacy and self-rated health in adults primary care patients.

PubMed

Marques, Suzana Raquel Lopes; Escarce, Andrezza Gonzalez; Lemos, Stela Maris Aguiar

2018-01-01

Purpose To verify the association between health literacy, social determinants and self-rated health in adult's primary health care patients. Methods this is an Observational cross-sectional study in which a total of 380 patients of the Unified Health System in the context of primary health care were interviewed. The sample was probabilistic, stratified by gender, age, and Basic Health Unit. Health literacy was evaluated by an instrument of analysis of the perception of adults about the understanding of health orientations and possible difficulties in this process (Health Literacy Scale). Descriptive and association analyses were performed (Pearson's chi-square test, p≤0.05). Results It was verified that the majority of the interviewees belongs to classes C1 and C2 and attended high school (complete or incomplete). Regarding self-rated health, to be considered healthy and with good health were the predominant perceptions. In the Health Literacy Scale, it was verified that most patients reported never presenting difficulties in the situations of this instrument, except understanding written orientations. It was observed the association with a statistical significance of the better perception of health literacy with higher educational level and economic classification, as well as with self-rated of good health. Conclusion There was a statistical association between health literacy, social determinants, and self-rated health in the analyzed adults. It is noteworthy the contribution of the Health Literacy Scale for emphasizing the perception of difficulties in everyday health situations. It is necessary to develop dialogic relationships that build more robust communication processes between professionals and healthcare patients to favor health literacy skills.

Feeling Normal? Long-Term Follow-up of Patients with a Cleft Lip-Palate after Rhinoplasty with the Derriford Appearance Scale (DAS-59).

PubMed

Albers, Andreas E; Reichelt, Andreas C; Nolst-Trenité, Gilbert J; Menger, Dirk Jan

2016-04-01

The stigma of nasal deformity due to a congenital cleft lip-palate has an undeniable influence on the affected patient's life. It is therefore of interest to investigate if efforts to reduce esthetic and functional impairments by rhinoplasty (single or multiple) can result in an increased satisfaction with appearance and a self-perception similar to the noncleft population. Retrospective scoring before and after rhinoplasty using the validated Derriford Appearance Scale (DAS-59) and subsequent statistical evaluation and comparison to datasets available in the literature for further classification was used. Of the 61 patients who underwent at least one rhinoplasty, 26 responded to all questions. The mean age of responders was approximately 30 years of age and the male:female ratio was 1:1.2. The scale showed a significant overall improvement after surgery. The full scale and all subscale scores of the DAS-59 were significantly reduced after surgery demonstrating an improvement in the respective categories. Most importantly, if postoperative results were compared with a population concerned and unconcerned about appearance, no difference "facial self-consciousness" of appearance was apparent. Also postoperative subscores for "general self-consciousness" (GSC) and "social self-consciousness" of appearance (SSC) showed no difference from those obtained from the population concerned about appearance. The postoperative subscore for "sexual and bodily self-consciousness" of appearance (SBSC) indicated improvement beyond the level found in the concerned control population. Due to only a low improvement in the difference compared with the subscore representing a "negative self-concept," a statistically significant difference to the concerned population remained, possibly indicating that therapy beyond surgery is needed for improvement. After rhinoplasty, the investigated group of cleft lip-palate patients with nasal deformities showed an improvement in their self-conceived appearance as measured by the DAS-59. Their assessment of self-appearance was comparable to that of a group of noncleft persons with concern about their appearance. Taken together, rhinoplasties, primary and revision, add to the psychosocial well-being and an improved self-perception enhancing quality of life and enabling a more normal life. Further research is needed to clarify how the low reduction found in the "negative self-concept" may be addressed successfully. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Sensitivity to perception level differentiates two subnetworks within the mirror neuron system.

PubMed

Simon, Shiri; Mukamel, Roy

2017-05-01

Mirror neurons are a subset of brain cells that discharge during action execution and passive observation of similar actions. An open question concerns the functional role of their ability to match observed and executed actions. Since understanding of goals requires conscious perception of actions, we expect that mirror neurons potentially involved in action goal coding, will be modulated by changes in action perception level. Here, we manipulated perception level of action videos depicting short hand movements and measured the corresponding fMRI BOLD responses in mirror regions. Our results show that activity levels within a network of regions, including the sensorimotor cortex, primary motor cortex, dorsal premotor cortex and posterior superior temporal sulcus, are sensitive to changes in action perception level, whereas activity levels in the inferior frontal gyrus, ventral premotor cortex, supplementary motor area and superior parietal lobule are invariant to such changes. In addition, this parcellation to two sub-networks manifest as smaller functional distances within each group of regions during task and resting state. Our results point to functional differences between regions within the mirror neurons system which may have implications with respect to their possible role in action understanding. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Evidence for an All-Or-None Perceptual Response: Single-Trial Analyses of Magnetoencephalography Signals Indicate an Abrupt Transition Between Visual Perception and Its Absence

PubMed Central

Sekar, Krithiga; Findley, William M.; Llinás, Rodolfo R.

2014-01-01

Whether consciousness is an all-or-none or graded phenomenon is an area of inquiry that has received considerable interest in neuroscience and is as of yet, still debated. In this magnetoencephalography (MEG) study we used a single stimulus paradigm with sub-threshold, threshold and supra-threshold duration inputs to assess whether stimulus perception is continuous with or abruptly differentiated from unconscious stimulus processing in the brain. By grouping epochs according to stimulus identification accuracy and exposure duration, we were able to investigate whether a high-amplitude perception-related cortical event was (1) only evoked for conditions where perception was most probable (2) had invariant amplitude once evoked and (3) was largely absent for conditions where perception was least probable (criteria satisfying an all-on-none hypothesis). We found that averaged evoked responses showed a gradual increase in amplitude with increasing perceptual strength. However, single trial analyses demonstrated that stimulus perception was correlated with an all-or-none response, the temporal precision of which increased systematically as perception transitioned from ambiguous to robust states. Due to poor signal-to-noise resolution of single trial data, whether perception-related responses, whenever present, were invariant in amplitude could not be unambiguously demonstrated. However, our findings strongly suggest that visual perception of simple stimuli is associated with an all-or-none cortical evoked response the temporal precision of which varies as a function of perceptual strength. PMID:22020091

Decreased Pain Perception by Unconscious Emotional Pictures

PubMed Central

Peláez, Irene; Martínez-Iñigo, David; Barjola, Paloma; Cardoso, Susana; Mercado, Francisco

2016-01-01

Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful) and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures) were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain. PMID:27818642

Decreased Pain Perception by Unconscious Emotional Pictures.

PubMed

Peláez, Irene; Martínez-Iñigo, David; Barjola, Paloma; Cardoso, Susana; Mercado, Francisco

2016-01-01

Pain perception arises from a complex interaction between a nociceptive stimulus and different emotional and cognitive factors, which appear to be mediated by both automatic and controlled systems. Previous evidence has shown that whereas conscious processing of unpleasant stimuli enhances pain perception, emotional influences on pain under unaware conditions are much less known. The aim of the present study was to investigate the modulation of pain perception by unconscious emotional pictures through an emotional masking paradigm. Two kinds of both somatosensory (painful and non-painful) and emotional stimulation (negative and neutral pictures) were employed. Fifty pain-free participants were asked to rate the perception of pain they were feeling in response to laser-induced somatosensory stimuli as faster as they can. Data from pain intensity and reaction times were measured. Statistical analyses revealed a significant effect for the interaction between pain and emotional stimulation, but surprisingly this relationship was opposite to expected. In particular, lower pain intensity scores and longer reaction times were found in response to negative images being strengthened this effect for painful stimulation. Present findings suggest a clear pain perception modulation by unconscious emotional contexts. Attentional capture mechanisms triggered by unaware negative stimulation could explain this phenomenon leading to a withdrawal of processing resources from pain.

Adaptive optics without altering visual perception.

PubMed

Koenig, D E; Hart, N W; Hofer, H J

2014-04-01

Adaptive optics combined with visual psychophysics creates the potential to study the relationship between visual function and the retina at the cellular scale. This potential is hampered, however, by visual interference from the wavefront-sensing beacon used during correction. For example, we have previously shown that even a dim, visible beacon can alter stimulus perception (Hofer et al., 2012). Here we describe a simple strategy employing a longer wavelength (980nm) beacon that, in conjunction with appropriate restriction on timing and placement, allowed us to perform psychophysics when dark adapted without altering visual perception. The method was verified by comparing detection and color appearance of foveally presented small spot stimuli with and without the wavefront beacon present in 5 subjects. As an important caution, we found that significant perceptual interference can occur even with a subliminal beacon when additional measures are not taken to limit exposure. Consequently, the lack of perceptual interference should be verified for a given system, and not assumed based on invisibility of the beacon. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The developmental emergence of unconscious fear processing from eyes during infancy.

PubMed

Jessen, Sarah; Grossmann, Tobias

2016-02-01

From early in life, emotion detection plays an important role during social interactions. Recently, 7-month-old infants have been shown to process facial signs of fear in others without conscious perception and solely on the basis of their eyes. However, it is not known whether unconscious fear processing from eyes is present before 7months of age or only emerges at around 7months. To investigate this question, we measured 5-month-old infants' event-related potentials (ERPs) in response to subliminally presented fearful and non-fearful eyes and compared these with 7-month-old infants' ERP responses from a previous study. Our ERP results revealed that only 7-month-olds, but not 5-month-olds, distinguished between fearful and non-fearful eyes. Specifically, 7-month-olds' processing of fearful eyes was reflected in early visual processes over occipital cortex and later attentional processes over frontal cortex. This suggests that, in line with prior work on the conscious detection of fearful faces, the brain processes associated with the unconscious processing of fearful eyes develop between 5 and 7months of age. More generally, these findings support the notion that emotion perception and the underlying brain processes undergo critical change during the first year of life. Therefore, the current data provide further evidence for viewing infancy as a formative period in human socioemotional functioning. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Consciousness, biology and quantum hypotheses

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Baars, Bernard J.; Edelman, David B.

2012-09-01

Natural phenomena are reducible to quantum events in principle, but quantum mechanics does not always provide the best level of analysis. The many-body problem, chaotic avalanches, materials properties, biological organisms, and weather systems are better addressed at higher levels. Animals are highly organized, goal-directed, adaptive, selectionist, information-preserving, functionally redundant, multicellular, quasi-autonomous, highly mobile, reproducing, dissipative systems that conserve many fundamental features over remarkably long periods of time at the species level. Animal brains consist of massive, layered networks of specialized signaling cells with 10,000 communication points per cell, and interacting up to 1000 Hz. Neurons begin to divide and differentiate very early in gestation, and continue to develop until middle age. Waking brains operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium under delicate homeostatic control, making them extremely sensitive to a range of physical and chemical stimuli, highly adaptive, and able to produce a remarkable range of goal-relevant actions. Consciousness is “a difference that makes a difference” at the level of massive neuronal interactions in the most parallel-interactive anatomical structure of the mammalian brain, the cortico-thalamic (C-T) system. Other brain structures are not established to result in direct conscious experiences, at least in humans. However, indirect extra-cortical influences on the C-T system are pervasive. Learning, brain plasticity and major life adaptations may require conscious cognition. While brains evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and individual brains grow over months, years and decades, conscious events appear to have a duty cycle of ∼100 ms, fading after a few seconds. They can of course be refreshed by inner rehearsal, re-visualization, or attending to recurrent stimulus sources. These very distinctive brain events are needed when animals seek out and cope with new, unpredictable and highly valued life events, such as evading predators, gathering critical information, seeking mates and hunting prey. Attentional selection of conscious events can be observed behaviorally in animals showing coordinated receptor orienting, flexible responding, alertness, emotional reactions, seeking, motivation and curiosity, as well as behavioral surprise and cortical and autonomic arousal. Brain events corresponding to attentional selection are prominent and widespread. Attention generally results in conscious experiences, which may be needed to recruit widespread processing resources in the brain. Many neuronal processes never become conscious, such as the balance system of the inner ear. An air traveler may “see” the passenger cabin tilt downward as the plane tilts to descend for a landing. That visual experience occurs even at night, when the traveler has no external frame of spatial reference. The passenger's body tilt with respect to gravity is detected unconsciously via the hair cells of the vestibular canals, which act as liquid accelerometers. However, that sensory activity is not experienced directly. It only becomes conscious via vision and the body senses. The vestibular sense is therefore quite different from visual perception, which “reports” accurately to a conscious field of experience, so that we can point accurately to a bright star on a dark night. Vestibular input is also precise but unconscious. Conscious cognition is therefore a distinct kind of brain event. Many of its features are well established, and must be accounted for by any adequate theory. No non-biological examples are known. Penrose and Hameroff have proposed that consciousness may be viewed as a fundamental problem in quantum physics. Specifically, their ‘orchestrated objective reduction’ (Orch-OR) hypothesis posits that conscious states arise from quantum computations in the microtubules of neurons. However, a number of microtubule-associated proteins are found in both plant and animal cells (like neurons) and plants are not generally considered to be conscious. Current quantum-level proposals do not explain the prominent empirical features of consciousness. Notably, they do not distinguish between closely matched conscious and unconscious brain events, as cognitive-biological theories must. About half of the human brain does not support conscious contents directly, yet neurons in these “unconscious” brain regions contain large numbers of microtubules. QM phenomena are famously observer-dependent, but to the best of our knowledge it has not been shown that they require a conscious observer, as opposed to a particle detector. Conscious humans cannot detect quantum events “as such” without the aid of special instrumentation. Instead, we categorize the wavelengths of light into conscious sensory events that neglect their quantum mechanical properties. In science the burden of proof is on the proposer, and this burden has not yet been met by quantum-level proposals. While in the future we may discover quantum effects that bear distinctively on conscious cognition ‘as such,’ we do not have such evidence today.

Consciousness, biology and quantum hypotheses.

PubMed

Baars, Bernard J; Edelman, David B

2012-09-01

Natural phenomena are reducible to quantum events in principle, but quantum mechanics does not always provide the best level of analysis. The many-body problem, chaotic avalanches, materials properties, biological organisms, and weather systems are better addressed at higher levels. Animals are highly organized, goal-directed, adaptive, selectionist, information-preserving, functionally redundant, multicellular, quasi-autonomous, highly mobile, reproducing, dissipative systems that conserve many fundamental features over remarkably long periods of time at the species level. Animal brains consist of massive, layered networks of specialized signaling cells with 10,000 communication points per cell, and interacting up to 1000 Hz. Neurons begin to divide and differentiate very early in gestation, and continue to develop until middle age. Waking brains operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium under delicate homeostatic control, making them extremely sensitive to a range of physical and chemical stimuli, highly adaptive, and able to produce a remarkable range of goal-relevant actions. Consciousness is "a difference that makes a difference" at the level of massive neuronal interactions in the most parallel-interactive anatomical structure of the mammalian brain, the cortico-thalamic (C-T) system. Other brain structures are not established to result in direct conscious experiences, at least in humans. However, indirect extra-cortical influences on the C-T system are pervasive. Learning, brain plasticity and major life adaptations may require conscious cognition. While brains evolved over hundreds of millions of years, and individual brains grow over months, years and decades, conscious events appear to have a duty cycle of ∼100 ms, fading after a few seconds. They can of course be refreshed by inner rehearsal, re-visualization, or attending to recurrent stimulus sources. These very distinctive brain events are needed when animals seek out and cope with new, unpredictable and highly valued life events, such as evading predators, gathering critical information, seeking mates and hunting prey. Attentional selection of conscious events can be observed behaviorally in animals showing coordinated receptor orienting, flexible responding, alertness, emotional reactions, seeking, motivation and curiosity, as well as behavioral surprise and cortical and autonomic arousal. Brain events corresponding to attentional selection are prominent and widespread. Attention generally results in conscious experiences, which may be needed to recruit widespread processing resources in the brain. Many neuronal processes never become conscious, such as the balance system of the inner ear. An air traveler may "see" the passenger cabin tilt downward as the plane tilts to descend for a landing. That visual experience occurs even at night, when the traveler has no external frame of spatial reference. The passenger's body tilt with respect to gravity is detected unconsciously via the hair cells of the vestibular canals, which act as liquid accelerometers. However, that sensory activity is not experienced directly. It only becomes conscious via vision and the body senses. The vestibular sense is therefore quite different from visual perception, which "reports" accurately to a conscious field of experience, so that we can point accurately to a bright star on a dark night. Vestibular input is also precise but unconscious. Conscious cognition is therefore a distinct kind of brain event. Many of its features are well established, and must be accounted for by any adequate theory. No non-biological examples are known. Penrose and Hameroff have proposed that consciousness may be viewed as a fundamental problem in quantum physics. Specifically, their 'orchestrated objective reduction' (Orch-OR) hypothesis posits that conscious states arise from quantum computations in the microtubules of neurons. However, a number of microtubule-associated proteins are found in both plant and animal cells (like neurons) and plants are not generally considered to be conscious. Current quantum-level proposals do not explain the prominent empirical features of consciousness. Notably, they do not distinguish between closely matched conscious and unconscious brain events, as cognitive-biological theories must. About half of the human brain does not support conscious contents directly, yet neurons in these "unconscious" brain regions contain large numbers of microtubules. QM phenomena are famously observer-dependent, but to the best of our knowledge it has not been shown that they require a conscious observer, as opposed to a particle detector. Conscious humans cannot detect quantum events "as such" without the aid of special instrumentation. Instead, we categorize the wavelengths of light into conscious sensory events that neglect their quantum mechanical properties. In science the burden of proof is on the proposer, and this burden has not yet been met by quantum-level proposals. While in the future we may discover quantum effects that bear distinctively on conscious cognition 'as such,' we do not have such evidence today. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Factorial Validity of a Questionnaire to Evaluate University Students' Initial Perception of Learning Evaluation

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Doménech-Betoret, Fernando; Fortea-Bagán, Miguel Angel

2015-01-01

Introduction: Education research has clearly verified that a student's perception of the system to evaluate the subject matter will play a fundamental role in his/her implication (deep approach vs. surface approach) in the teaching/learning process of the subject matter. The present work aims to examine the factorial validity and reliability of a…

Students' Perception toward Personal Information and Privacy Disclosure in E-Learning

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yang, Fang; Wang, Shudong

2014-01-01

This research investigates East Asian students' perceptions towards e-learning privacy. The survey was first carried out in Japan (N1 = 255) and China (N2 = 307) in 2009. In 2012 the same survey was conducted again in these two countries but with different participants (N3 = 175, N4 = 63). To survey in different countries is to verify whether…

Improving health consciousness and life skills in young people through peer-leadership in Thailand.

PubMed

Teerachote, C; Kessomboon, P; Rattanasiri, A; Koju, R

2013-01-01

Peer leadership is widely recognized as an effective approach to health promotion and empowerment among people of similar ages, especially the youth. Such programs build peer leaders who in turn help empower the youths in their groups to improve their health and life skills related to health. Most previous studies have focused on the effectiveness of such activities in target groups but have neglected to effectively address and explore the transformations in peer leaders themselves. This descriptive study aimed to investigate the level of social change and health consciousness among student peer leaders in three Youth health promotion programs in Thailand: Friend's Corner, Smart Consumer and Volunteer Minded Young Dentists, and to compare them with the general students. The study was conducted using a self-administered questionnaire, which was developed based on Tyree's Social Change Model of leadership, Gould's concept and Dutta-Bergman's concept. The study population comprised of 11th grade students (N=660) from Kalasin Province in Thailand, 320 of whom were peer leaders. The findings revealed that the peer leaders scored higher than non peer leaders in all domains. Among the peer leaders, it was found that Volunteer Minded Young Dentists group had the highest scores in "controversy with civility", "social change agent" characteristics, "holistic health perceptions" and "responsibility for one's own health" regarding health consciousness. The results of this study confirmed that the peer leadership approach can help young people to develop life skills through social transformation and increase health consciousness for better status of health in the community.

Music in Research and Rehabilitation of Disorders of Consciousness: Psychological and Neurophysiological Foundations.

PubMed

Kotchoubey, Boris; Pavlov, Yuri G; Kleber, Boris

2015-01-01

According to a prevailing view, the visual system works by dissecting stimuli into primitives, whereas the auditory system processes simple and complex stimuli with their corresponding features in parallel. This makes musical stimulation particularly suitable for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC), because the processing pathways related to complex stimulus features can be preserved even when those related to simple features are no longer available. An additional factor speaking in favor of musical stimulation in DoC is the low efficiency of visual stimulation due to prevalent maladies of vision or gaze fixation in DoC patients. Hearing disorders, in contrast, are much less frequent in DoC, which allows us to use auditory stimulation at various levels of complexity. The current paper overviews empirical data concerning the four main domains of brain functioning in DoC patients that musical stimulation can address: perception (e.g., pitch, timbre, and harmony), cognition (e.g., musical syntax and meaning), emotions, and motor functions. Music can approach basic levels of patients' self-consciousness, which may even exist when all higher-level cognitions are lost, whereas music induced emotions and rhythmic stimulation can affect the dopaminergic reward-system and activity in the motor system respectively, thus serving as a starting point for rehabilitation.

Music in Research and Rehabilitation of Disorders of Consciousness: Psychological and Neurophysiological Foundations

PubMed Central

Kotchoubey, Boris; Pavlov, Yuri G.; Kleber, Boris

2015-01-01

According to a prevailing view, the visual system works by dissecting stimuli into primitives, whereas the auditory system processes simple and complex stimuli with their corresponding features in parallel. This makes musical stimulation particularly suitable for patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC), because the processing pathways related to complex stimulus features can be preserved even when those related to simple features are no longer available. An additional factor speaking in favor of musical stimulation in DoC is the low efficiency of visual stimulation due to prevalent maladies of vision or gaze fixation in DoC patients. Hearing disorders, in contrast, are much less frequent in DoC, which allows us to use auditory stimulation at various levels of complexity. The current paper overviews empirical data concerning the four main domains of brain functioning in DoC patients that musical stimulation can address: perception (e.g., pitch, timbre, and harmony), cognition (e.g., musical syntax and meaning), emotions, and motor functions. Music can approach basic levels of patients’ self-consciousness, which may even exist when all higher-level cognitions are lost, whereas music induced emotions and rhythmic stimulation can affect the dopaminergic reward-system and activity in the motor system respectively, thus serving as a starting point for rehabilitation. PMID:26640445

Latent Memory of Unattended Stimuli Reactivated by Practice: An fMRI Study on the Role of Consciousness and Attention in Learning

PubMed Central

Meuwese, Julia D. I.; Scholte, H. Steven; Lamme, Victor A. F.

2014-01-01

Although we can only report about what is in the focus of our attention, much more than that is actually processed. And even when attended, stimuli may not always be reportable, for instance when they are masked. A stimulus can thus be unreportable for different reasons: the absence of attention or the absence of a conscious percept. But to what extent does the brain learn from exposure to these unreportable stimuli? In this fMRI experiment subjects were exposed to textured figure-ground stimuli, of which reportability was manipulated either by masking (which only interferes with consciousness) or with an inattention paradigm (which only interferes with attention). One day later learning was assessed neurally and behaviorally. Positive neural learning effects were found for stimuli presented in the inattention paradigm; for attended yet masked stimuli negative adaptation effects were found. Interestingly, these inattentional learning effects only became apparent in a second session after a behavioral detection task had been administered during which performance feedback was provided. This suggests that the memory trace that is formed during inattention is latent until reactivated by behavioral practice. However, no behavioral learning effects were found, therefore we cannot conclude that perceptual learning has taken place for these unattended stimuli. PMID:24603676

Latent memory of unattended stimuli reactivated by practice: an FMRI study on the role of consciousness and attention in learning.

PubMed

Meuwese, Julia D I; Scholte, H Steven; Lamme, Victor A F

2014-01-01

Although we can only report about what is in the focus of our attention, much more than that is actually processed. And even when attended, stimuli may not always be reportable, for instance when they are masked. A stimulus can thus be unreportable for different reasons: the absence of attention or the absence of a conscious percept. But to what extent does the brain learn from exposure to these unreportable stimuli? In this fMRI experiment subjects were exposed to textured figure-ground stimuli, of which reportability was manipulated either by masking (which only interferes with consciousness) or with an inattention paradigm (which only interferes with attention). One day later learning was assessed neurally and behaviorally. Positive neural learning effects were found for stimuli presented in the inattention paradigm; for attended yet masked stimuli negative adaptation effects were found. Interestingly, these inattentional learning effects only became apparent in a second session after a behavioral detection task had been administered during which performance feedback was provided. This suggests that the memory trace that is formed during inattention is latent until reactivated by behavioral practice. However, no behavioral learning effects were found, therefore we cannot conclude that perceptual learning has taken place for these unattended stimuli.

Toward physics of the mind: Concepts, emotions, consciousness, and symbols

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Perlovsky, Leonid I.

2006-03-01

Mathematical approaches to modeling the mind since the 1950s are reviewed, including artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, and neural networks. I analyze difficulties faced by these algorithms and neural networks and relate them to the fundamental inconsistency of logic discovered by Gödel. Mathematical discussions are related to those in neurobiology, psychology, cognitive science, and philosophy. Higher cognitive functions are reviewed including concepts, emotions, instincts, understanding, imagination, intuition, consciousness. Then, I describe a mathematical formulation, unifying the mind mechanisms in a psychologically and neuro-biologically plausible system. A mechanism of the knowledge instinct drives our understanding of the world and serves as a foundation for higher cognitive functions. This mechanism relates aesthetic emotions and perception of beauty to “everyday” functioning of the mind. The article reviews mechanisms of human symbolic ability. I touch on future directions: joint evolution of the mind, language, consciousness, and cultures; mechanisms of differentiation and synthesis; a manifold of aesthetic emotions in music and differentiated instinct for knowledge. I concentrate on elucidating the first principles; review aspects of the theory that have been proven in laboratory research, relationships between the mind and brain; discuss unsolved problems, and outline a number of theoretical predictions, which will have to be tested in future mathematical simulations and neuro-biological research.

Attentional load modulates responses of human primary visual cortex to invisible stimuli.

PubMed

Bahrami, Bahador; Lavie, Nilli; Rees, Geraint

2007-03-20

Visual neuroscience has long sought to determine the extent to which stimulus-evoked activity in visual cortex depends on attention and awareness. Some influential theories of consciousness maintain that the allocation of attention is restricted to conscious representations [1, 2]. However, in the load theory of attention [3], competition between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimuli for limited-capacity attention does not depend on conscious perception of the irrelevant stimuli. The critical test is whether the level of attentional load in a relevant task would determine unconscious neural processing of invisible stimuli. Human participants were scanned with high-field fMRI while they performed a foveal task of low or high attentional load. Irrelevant, invisible monocular stimuli were simultaneously presented peripherally and were continuously suppressed by a flashing mask in the other eye [4]. Attentional load in the foveal task strongly modulated retinotopic activity evoked in primary visual cortex (V1) by the invisible stimuli. Contrary to traditional views [1, 2, 5, 6], we found that availability of attentional capacity determines neural representations related to unconscious processing of continuously suppressed stimuli in human primary visual cortex. Spillover of attention to cortical representations of invisible stimuli (under low load) cannot be a sufficient condition for their awareness.

Life and consciousness – The Vedāntic view

PubMed Central

Shanta, Bhakti Niskama

2015-01-01

In the past, philosophers, scientists, and even the general opinion, had no problem in accepting the existence of consciousness in the same way as the existence of the physical world. After the advent of Newtonian mechanics, science embraced a complete materialistic conception about reality. Scientists started proposing hypotheses like abiogenesis (origin of first life from accumulation of atoms and molecules) and the Big Bang theory (the explosion theory for explaining the origin of universe). How the universe came to be what it is now is a key philosophical question. The hypothesis that it came from Nothing (as proposed by Stephen Hawking, among others), proves to be dissembling, since the quantum vacuum can hardly be considered a void. In modern science, it is generally assumed that matter existed before the universe came to be. Modern science hypothesizes that the manifestation of life on Earth is nothing but a mere increment in the complexity of matter — and hence is an outcome of evolution of matter (chemical evolution) following the Big Bang. After the manifestation of life, modern science believed that chemical evolution transformed itself into biological evolution, which then had caused the entire biodiversity on our planet. The ontological view of the organism as a complex machine presumes life as just a chance occurrence, without any inner purpose. This approach in science leaves no room for the subjective aspect of consciousness in its attempt to know the world as the relationships among forces, atoms, and molecules. On the other hand, the Vedāntic view states that the origin of everything material and nonmaterial is sentient and absolute (unconditioned). Thus, sentient life is primitive and reproductive of itself – omne vivum ex vivo – life comes from life. This is the scientifically verified law of experience. Life is essentially cognitive and conscious. And, consciousness, which is fundamental, manifests itself in the gradational forms of all sentient and insentient nature. In contrast to the idea of objective evolution of bodies, as envisioned by Darwin and followers, Vedānta advocates the idea of subjective evolution of consciousness as the developing principle of the world. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight a few relevant developments supporting a sentient view of life in scientific research, which has caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of life and its origin. PMID:27066168

Life and consciousness - The Vedāntic view.

PubMed

Shanta, Bhakti Niskama

2015-01-01

In the past, philosophers, scientists, and even the general opinion, had no problem in accepting the existence of consciousness in the same way as the existence of the physical world. After the advent of Newtonian mechanics, science embraced a complete materialistic conception about reality. Scientists started proposing hypotheses like abiogenesis (origin of first life from accumulation of atoms and molecules) and the Big Bang theory (the explosion theory for explaining the origin of universe). How the universe came to be what it is now is a key philosophical question. The hypothesis that it came from Nothing (as proposed by Stephen Hawking, among others), proves to be dissembling, since the quantum vacuum can hardly be considered a void. In modern science, it is generally assumed that matter existed before the universe came to be. Modern science hypothesizes that the manifestation of life on Earth is nothing but a mere increment in the complexity of matter - and hence is an outcome of evolution of matter (chemical evolution) following the Big Bang. After the manifestation of life, modern science believed that chemical evolution transformed itself into biological evolution, which then had caused the entire biodiversity on our planet. The ontological view of the organism as a complex machine presumes life as just a chance occurrence, without any inner purpose. This approach in science leaves no room for the subjective aspect of consciousness in its attempt to know the world as the relationships among forces, atoms, and molecules. On the other hand, the Vedāntic view states that the origin of everything material and nonmaterial is sentient and absolute (unconditioned). Thus, sentient life is primitive and reproductive of itself - omne vivum ex vivo - life comes from life. This is the scientifically verified law of experience. Life is essentially cognitive and conscious. And, consciousness, which is fundamental, manifests itself in the gradational forms of all sentient and insentient nature. In contrast to the idea of objective evolution of bodies, as envisioned by Darwin and followers, Vedānta advocates the idea of subjective evolution of consciousness as the developing principle of the world. In this paper, an attempt has been made to highlight a few relevant developments supporting a sentient view of life in scientific research, which has caused a paradigm shift in our understanding of life and its origin.

The role of semantic self-perceptions in temporal distance perceptions toward autobiographical events: the semantic congruence model.

PubMed

Gebauer, Jochen E; Haddock, Geoffrey; Broemer, Philip; von Hecker, Ulrich

2013-11-01

Why do some autobiographical events feel as if they happened yesterday, whereas others feel like ancient history? Such temporal distance perceptions have surprisingly little to do with actual calendar time distance. Instead, psychologists have found that people typically perceive positive autobiographical events as overly recent, while perceiving negative events as overly distant. The origins of this temporal distance bias have been sought in self-enhancement strivings and mood congruence between autobiographical events and chronic mood. As such, past research exclusively focused on the evaluative features of autobiographical events, while neglecting semantic features. To close this gap, we introduce a semantic congruence model. Capitalizing on the Big Two self-perception dimensions, Study 1 showed that high semantic congruence between recalled autobiographical events and trait self-perceptions render the recalled events subjectively recent. Specifically, interpersonally warm (competent) individuals perceived autobiographical events reflecting warmth (competence) as relatively recent, but warm (competent) individuals did not perceive events reflecting competence (warmth) as relatively recent. Study 2 found that conscious perceptions of congruence mediate these effects. Studies 3 and 4 showed that neither mood congruence nor self-enhancement account for these results. Study 5 extended the results from the Big Two to the Big Five self-perception dimensions, while affirming the independence of the semantic congruence model from evaluative influences. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Perception of body image of adolescents and of their parents in relation to the nutritional status and blood pressure.

PubMed

Silveira Vieira, Raquel; Dal Bosco, Simone Morelo; Grave, Magali Trezinha Quevedo; Adami, Fernanda Scherer

2015-04-01

The perception of body image of adolescents is an instrument for nutritional assessment to health conditions. To verify the body image perception of adolescents and their parents in relation to nutritional status and blood pressure levels. Population-based study, and cross-sectional model, conducted with parents and adolescents aged 10-19 years old, in rural and urban zones in public schools. There was applied the Scale silhouettes for parents about the perception of the described body image and a question about the concern of the nutritional status of their children. There were verified the blood pressure, weight, height and waist circumference, the BMI (kg/m²) calculation of the adolescents, and the self-perceived body image. The data was expressed as average ± standard deviation and percentages. The sample consisted of 914 adolescents with a mean age of 13.12 ± 2.17 years, 56.8% female and 68.9% were eutrophic. As for blood pressure levels, 17.6% were classified in pre-hypertensive, 18.8% in stage 1 hypertension and 6% in stage 2. About the self-perception, 68% considered themselves being eutrophic and 64.75% of the parents classified their children as eutrophic. There was observed a direct and significant correlation among the body mass index, waist circumference, weight, systemic and diastolic blood pressure with the self-perception of the adolescents and the body image perceptions of the parents (p<0.001). The nutritional status was significantly correlated with blood pressure, waist circumference and body image perceptions of the adolescents and their respective parents. Copyright AULA MEDICA EDICIONES 2014. Published by AULA MEDICA. All rights reserved.

"I am a fat baby, who moved to a fat child, who moved to a fat teenager, who moved to a fat adult": Women's reflections of a lifetime of body and weight concern.

PubMed

Pila, Eva; Solomon-Krakus, Shauna; Egelton, Kara; Sabiston, Catherine M

2018-01-01

The present study explored how women aged 50-65 years reflect and make meaning of a lifetime of body and weight struggles. Seven purposefully selected women with longstanding body image challenges participated in interviews and reflected on their perceptions, thoughts, and emotions around their body and weight since childhood. Findings revealed consistent and consuming concerns about the body; prevalent body-related self-conscious emotions; influential social experiences that impact physical self-perceptions; and enduring impacts of weight bias, stigma, and discrimination. Collectively, these findings provide support for the stability of body disturbances and highlight the need to explore the unique body-related narratives of women in midlife.

Inattentional blindness reflects limitations on perception, not memory: Evidence from repeated failures of awareness.

PubMed

Ward, Emily J; Scholl, Brian J

2015-06-01

Perhaps the most striking phenomenon of visual awareness is inattentional blindness (IB), in which a surprisingly salient event right in front of you may go completely unseen when unattended. Does IB reflect a failure of perception, or only of subsequent memory? Previous work has been unable to answer this question, due to a seemingly intractable dilemma: ruling out memory requires immediate perceptual reports, but soliciting such reports fuels an expectation that eliminates IB. Here we introduce a way of evoking repeated IB in the same subjects and the same session: we show that observers fail to report seeing salient events' not only when they have no expectation, but also when they have the wrong expectations about the events nature. This occurs when observers must immediately report seeing anything unexpected, even mid-event. Repeated IB thus demonstrates that IB is aptly named: it reflects a genuine deficit in moment-by-moment conscious perception, rather than a form of inattentional amnesia.

Knowledge and perceptions about aging and frailty: An integrative review of the literature.

PubMed

Parish, Abby; Kim, Jennifer; Lewallen, Kanah May; Miller, Sally; Myers, Janet; Panepinto, Robbie; Maxwell, Cathy A

2018-06-14

A growing body of evidence indicates that biological aging or frailty is a determinant of health-related outcomes, however, frailty is likely poorly understood and under-recognized by the public-at-large. Using Whittemore and Knafl's methodology, we aimed to conduct an integrative review of research on public knowledge and perceptions of aging and frailty, and to create a conceptual model of our findings. Twenty-three studies are presented. The conceptual model suggests that culture, knowledge of aging, and stereotypes influence adults' beliefs and perceptions. Adults determine priorities about aging, and then subconsciously or consciously determine which parts of are controllable. If deemed controllable and important, they may participate in health behaviors to mediate aging. If deemed uncontrollable or less important, adults may aim to control their own peace of mind through acceptance. Scant findings suggest that frailty is a more subjective term in which participants often optimistically do not identify themselves as frail. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Virtually simulated social pressure influences early visual processing more in low compared to high autonomous participants.

PubMed

Trautmann-Lengsfeld, Sina Alexa; Herrmann, Christoph Siegfried

2014-02-01

In a previous study, we showed that virtually simulated social group pressure could influence early stages of perception after only 100  ms. In the present EEG study, we investigated the influence of social pressure on visual perception in participants with high (HA) and low (LA) levels of autonomy. Ten HA and ten LA individuals were asked to accomplish a visual discrimination task in an adapted paradigm of Solomon Asch. Results indicate that LA participants adapted to the incorrect group opinion more often than HA participants (42% vs. 30% of the trials, respectively). LA participants showed a larger posterior P1 component contralateral to targets presented in the right visual field when conforming to the correct compared to conforming to the incorrect group decision. In conclusion, our ERP data suggest that the group context can have early effects on our perception rather than on conscious decision processes in LA, but not HA participants. Copyright © 2013 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Shared motion signals for human perceptual decisions and oculomotor actions

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Stone, Leland S.; Krauzlis, Richard J.

2003-01-01

A fundamental question in primate neurobiology is to understand to what extent motor behaviors are driven by shared neural signals that also support conscious perception or by independent subconscious neural signals dedicated to motor control. Although it has clearly been established that cortical areas involved in processing visual motion support both perception and smooth pursuit eye movements, it remains unknown whether the same or different sets of neurons within these structures perform these two functions. Examination of the trial-by-trial variation in human perceptual and pursuit responses during a simultaneous psychophysical and oculomotor task reveals that the direction signals for pursuit and perception are not only similar on average but also co-vary on a trial-by-trial basis, even when performance is at or near chance and the decisions are determined largely by neural noise. We conclude that the neural signal encoding the direction of target motion that drives steady-state pursuit and supports concurrent perceptual judgments emanates from a shared ensemble of cortical neurons.

"I was able to have a voice without being self-conscious": students' perceptions of audience response systems in the health sciences curriculum.

PubMed

Oakes, Claudia E; Demaio, Daniel N

2013-01-01

Audience Response Systems (ARS or "clickers") are becoming a popular addition to the college classroom. Instructors are using this educational technology to elicit feedback from students, to determine students' knowledge of content before or during lectures, and to increase participation in the classroom. The purpose of this study was to examine first-year allied health students' perceptions of the impact of clickers on participation during an introductory health professions course. At the mid-point of the course, students completed a survey that assessed their perception of classroom participation. During the second half of the course, clickers were introduced to classroom activities. The survey was re-administered at the end of the course; students also had the opportunity to write a narrative comment. Students felt that clickers increased their level of interaction with the instructor and participation of the class as a whole. Clickers may be a practical way to increase student participation in first-year allied health courses.

Effects of noise and reverberation on speech perception and listening comprehension of children and adults in a classroom-like setting.

PubMed

Klatte, Maria; Lachmann, Thomas; Meis, Markus

2010-01-01

The effects of classroom noise and background speech on speech perception, measured by word-to-picture matching, and listening comprehension, measured by execution of oral instructions, were assessed in first- and third-grade children and adults in a classroom-like setting. For speech perception, in addition to noise, reverberation time (RT) was varied by conducting the experiment in two virtual classrooms with mean RT = 0.47 versus RT = 1.1 s. Children were more impaired than adults by background sounds in both speech perception and listening comprehension. Classroom noise evoked a reliable disruption in children's speech perception even under conditions of short reverberation. RT had no effect on speech perception in silence, but evoked a severe increase in the impairments due to background sounds in all age groups. For listening comprehension, impairments due to background sounds were found in the children, stronger for first- than for third-graders, whereas adults were unaffected. Compared to classroom noise, background speech had a smaller effect on speech perception, but a stronger effect on listening comprehension, remaining significant when speech perception was controlled. This indicates that background speech affects higher-order cognitive processes involved in children's comprehension. Children's ratings of the sound-induced disturbance were low overall and uncorrelated to the actual disruption, indicating that the children did not consciously realize the detrimental effects. The present results confirm earlier findings on the substantial impact of noise and reverberation on children's speech perception, and extend these to classroom-like environmental settings and listening demands closely resembling those faced by children at school.

Subliminal and Supraliminal Processing of Facial Expression of Emotions: Brain Oscillation in the Left/Right Frontal Area

PubMed Central

Balconi, Michela; Ferrari, Chiara

2012-01-01

The unconscious effects of an emotional stimulus have been highlighted by a vast amount of research, whereover it remains questionable whether it is possible to assign a specific function to cortical brain oscillations in the unconscious perception of facial expressions of emotions. Alpha band variation was monitored within the right- and left-cortical side when subjects consciously (supraliminal stimulation) or unconsciously (subliminal stimulation) processed facial patterns. Twenty subjects looked at six facial expressions of emotions (anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, and neutral) under two different conditions: supraliminal (200 ms) vs. subliminal (30 ms) stimulation (140 target-mask pairs for each condition). The results showed that conscious/unconscious processing and the significance of the stimulus can modulate the alpha power. Moreover, it was found that there was an increased right frontal activity for negative emotions vs. an increased left response for positive emotion. The significance of facial expressions was adduced to elucidate cortical different responses to emotional types. PMID:24962767

Subliminal and supraliminal processing of facial expression of emotions: brain oscillation in the left/right frontal area.

PubMed

Balconi, Michela; Ferrari, Chiara

2012-03-26

The unconscious effects of an emotional stimulus have been highlighted by a vast amount of research, whereover it remains questionable whether it is possible to assign a specific function to cortical brain oscillations in the unconscious perception of facial expressions of emotions. Alpha band variation was monitored within the right- and left-cortical side when subjects consciously (supraliminal stimulation) or unconsciously (subliminal stimulation) processed facial patterns. Twenty subjects looked at six facial expressions of emotions (anger, fear, surprise, disgust, happiness, sadness, and neutral) under two different conditions: supraliminal (200 ms) vs. subliminal (30 ms) stimulation (140 target-mask pairs for each condition). The results showed that conscious/unconscious processing and the significance of the stimulus can modulate the alpha power. Moreover, it was found that there was an increased right frontal activity for negative emotions vs. an increased left response for positive emotion. The significance of facial expressions was adduced to elucidate cortical different responses to emotional types.

Thoughts on Rigoletto.

PubMed

Grier, Francis

2011-12-01

The author discusses the traditional interpretations of the principal dramatis personae in Verdi's Rigoletto, suggesting that the opera expresses the composer's unconscious but highly perceptive and intuitive exploration of: (i) paranoid and perverse father-daughter oedipal dynamics as enacted between Rigoletto and Gilda; (ii) a folie-à-deux sado-masochistic relationship between Rigoletto and the Duke; (iii) the avoidance of conscious guilt and responsibility for Rigoletto's part in the tragedy through the rejection of insight achieved via massive projection, an addiction to mania, and perversion. In this respect Rigoletto is compared with King Lear. Some technical aspects of Verdi's compositional style employed to portray the contrasting characters of the protagonists are analysed. The paper also touches on Verdi's own possible unconscious (as well as conscious) investment in this particular opera, noting similarities between Verdi's portrait of the tragic, hunchback jester and his own self-depiction. The author notes similarities and contrasts between his analysis of the opera and recent papers by Hudson (1992),Tarnopolsky (1995)and Bergstein (2003)on the same subject. Copyright © 2010 Institute of Psychoanalysis.

The Wave Logic of Consciousness: A Hypothesis

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Orlov, Yuri F.

1982-01-01

A physical model is proposed for volitional decision making. It is postulated that consciousness reduces doubt states of the brain into labels by a quantum-mechanical measurement act of free choice. Elementary doubt states illustrate analogical encodement of information having “insufficient resolution” from a classical viewpoint. Measures of certitude (inner conviction) and doubt are formulated. “Adequate propositions” for nonclassical statements, e.g., Hamlet's soliloquy, are constructed. A role is proposed for the superposition principle in imagination and creativity. Experimental predictions are offered for positive and negative interference of doubts. Necessary criteria are made explicit for doubting sense information. Wholeness of perception is illustrated using irreducible, unitary representations of n-valued logics. The interpreted formalism includes nonclassical features of doubt, e.g., scalor representations for imprecise propositions and state changes due to self-reflection. The “liar paradox” is resolved. An internal origin is suggested for spinor dichotomies, e.g., “true-false” and “good-bad,” analogous to particle production.

[Awareness of hazards to health caused by pollution of the environment].

PubMed

Racz, A

1993-01-01

This work deals with the results of an ecological/psychological study into the development of Zagreb inhabitants awareness of the potential health risks posed by the ten most significant forms of environmental pollution and into how each examinee influences the development of ecological consciousness. This research was conducted with representative population sample of two significantly differently ecologically critical Zagreb communities: the shanty town community of Kozari Bokand the highly urbanized community of Slobostina. The survey was conducted on site using the Liekert scale in 1990. The results have shown that air and water pollution are considered potentially most dangerous, as opposed to the total lack of awareness concerning noise pollution. The factors significant in the formation of ecological awareness are: occupation and the perception of immediate danger as opposed to age, sex and personal background. However, the subject's educational level and familiarity with the relevant facts are crucial elements affecting the awakening and development of ecological consciousness.

Being watched: the effect of social self-focus on interoceptive and exteroceptive somatosensory perception.

PubMed

Durlik, Caroline; Cardini, Flavia; Tsakiris, Manos

2014-04-01

We become aware of our bodies interoceptively, by processing signals arising from within the body, and exteroceptively, by processing signals arising on or outside the body. Recent research highlights the importance of the interaction of exteroceptive and interoceptive signals in modulating bodily self-consciousness. The current study investigated the effect of social self-focus, manipulated via a video camera that was facing the participants and that was either switched on or off, on interoceptive sensitivity (using a heartbeat perception task) and on tactile perception (using the Somatic Signal Detection Task (SSDT)). The results indicated a significant effect of self-focus on SSDT performance, but not on interoception. SSDT performance was not moderated by interoceptive sensitivity, although interoceptive sensitivity scores were positively correlated with false alarms, independently of self-focus. Together with previous research, our results suggest that self-focus may exert different effects on body perception depending on its mode (private versus social). While interoception has been previously shown to be enhanced by private self-focus, the current study failed to find an effect of social self-focus on interoceptive sensitivity, instead demonstrating that social self-focus improves exteroceptive somatosensory processing. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Understanding Schizophrenia as a Disorder of Consciousness: Biological Correlates and Translational Implications from Quantum Theory Perspectives

PubMed Central

Venkatasubramanian, Ganesan

2015-01-01

From neurophenomenological perspectives, schizophrenia has been conceptualized as “a disorder with heterogeneous manifestations that can be integrally understood to involve fundamental perturbations in consciousness”. While these theoretical constructs based on consciousness facilitate understanding the ‘gestalt’ of schizophrenia, systematic research to unravel translational implications of these models is warranted. To address this, one needs to begin with exploration of plausible biological underpinnings of “perturbed consciousness” in schizophrenia. In this context, an attractive proposition to understand the biology of consciousness is “the orchestrated object reduction (Orch-OR) theory” which invokes quantum processes in the microtubules of neurons. The Orch-OR model is particularly important for understanding schizophrenia especially due to the shared ‘scaffold’ of microtubules. The initial sections of this review focus on the compelling evidence to support the view that “schizophrenia is a disorder of consciousness” through critical summary of the studies that have demonstrated self-abnormalities, aberrant time perception as well as dysfunctional intentional binding in this disorder. Subsequently, these findings are linked with ‘Orch-OR theory’ through the research evidence for aberrant neural oscillations as well as microtubule abnormalities observed in schizophrenia. Further sections emphasize the applicability and translational implications of Orch-OR theory in the context of schizophrenia and elucidate the relevance of quantum biology to understand the origins of this puzzling disorder as “fundamental disturbances in consciousness”. PMID:25912536

Dreams and Psychedelics: Neurophenomenological Comparison and Therapeutic Implications.

PubMed

Kraehenmann, Rainer

2017-01-01

A resurgence of neurobiological and clinical research is currently underway into the therapeutic potential of serotonergic or 'classical' psychedelics, such as the prototypical psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,Ndimethyltryptamine), and ayahuasca - a betacarboline- and dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing Amazonian beverage. The aim of this review is to introduce readers to the similarities and dissimilarities between psychedelic states and night dreams, and to draw conclusions related to therapeutic applications of psychedelics in psychiatry. Research literature related to psychedelics and dreaming is reviewed, and these two states of consciousness are systematically compared. Relevant conclusions with regard to psychedelicassisted therapy will be provided. Common features between psychedelic states and night dreams include perception, mental imagery, emotion activation, fear memory extinction, and sense of self and body. Differences between these two states are related to differential perceptual input from the environment, clarity of consciousness and meta-cognitive abilities. Therefore, psychedelic states are closest to lucid dreaming which is characterized by a mixed state of dreaming and waking consciousness. The broad overlap between dreaming and psychedelic states supports the notion that psychedelics acutely induce dreamlike subjective experiences which may have long-term beneficial effects on psychosocial functioning and well-being. Future clinical studies should examine how therapeutic outcome is related to the acute dreamlike effects of psychedelics. Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.

Dreams and Psychedelics: Neurophenomenological Comparison and Therapeutic Implications

PubMed Central

Kraehenmann, Rainer

2017-01-01

Background: A resurgence of neurobiological and clinical research is currently underway into the therapeutic potential of serotonergic or ‘classical’ psychedelics such as the prototypical psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine) and ayahuasca – a betacarboline- and dimethyltryptamine (DMT)-containing Amazonian beverage. The aim of this review is to introduce readers to the similarities and dissimilarities between psychedelic states and night dreams and to draw conclusions related to therapeutic applications of psychedelics in psychiatry. Methods: Research literature related to psychedelics and dreaming is reviewed and these two states of consciousness are systematically compared. Relevant conclusions with regard to psychedelic-assisted therapy will be provided. Results: Common features between psychedelic states and night dreams include perception mental imagery emotion activation fear memory extinction and sense of self and body. Differences between these two states are related to differential perceptual input from the environment clarity of consciousness and meta-cognitive abilities. Therefore psychedelic states are closest to lucid dreaming which is characterized by a mixed state of dreaming and waking consciousness Conclusion: The broad overlap between dreaming and psychedelic states supports the notion that psychedelics acutely induce dreamlike subjective experiences which may have long-term beneficial effects on psychosocial functioning and well-being. Future clinical studies should examine how therapeutic outcome is related to the acute dreamlike effects of psychedelics. PMID:28625125

An Adaptation-Induced Repulsion Illusion in Tactile Spatial Perception

PubMed Central

Li, Lux; Chan, Arielle; Iqbal, Shah M.; Goldreich, Daniel

2017-01-01

Following focal sensory adaptation, the perceived separation between visual stimuli that straddle the adapted region is often exaggerated. For instance, in the tilt aftereffect illusion, adaptation to tilted lines causes subsequently viewed lines with nearby orientations to be perceptually repelled from the adapted orientation. Repulsion illusions in the nonvisual senses have been less studied. Here, we investigated whether adaptation induces a repulsion illusion in tactile spatial perception. In a two-interval forced-choice task, participants compared the perceived separation between two point-stimuli applied on the forearms successively. Separation distance was constant on one arm (the reference) and varied on the other arm (the comparison). In Experiment 1, we took three consecutive baseline measurements, verifying that in the absence of manipulation, participants’ distance perception was unbiased across arms and stable across experimental blocks. In Experiment 2, we vibrated a region of skin on the reference arm, verifying that this focally reduced tactile sensitivity, as indicated by elevated monofilament detection thresholds. In Experiment 3, we applied vibration between the two reference points in our distance perception protocol and discovered that this caused an illusory increase in the separation between the points. We conclude that focal adaptation induces a repulsion aftereffect illusion in tactile spatial perception. The illusion provides clues as to how the tactile system represents spatial information. The analogous repulsion aftereffects caused by adaptation in different stimulus domains and sensory systems may point to fundamentally similar strategies for dynamic sensory coding. PMID:28701936

More than blindsight: Case report of a child with extraordinary visual capacity following perinatal bilateral occipital lobe injury.

PubMed

Mundinano, Inaki-Carril; Chen, Juan; de Souza, Mitchell; Sarossy, Marc G; Joanisse, Marc F; Goodale, Melvyn A; Bourne, James A

2017-11-13

Injury to the primary visual cortex (V1, striate cortex) and the geniculostriate pathway in adults results in cortical blindness, abolishing conscious visual perception. Early studies by Larry Weiskrantz and colleagues demonstrated that some patients with an occipital-lobe injury exhibited a degree of unconscious vision and visually-guided behaviour within the blind field. A more recent focus has been the observed phenomenon whereby early-life injury to V1 often results in the preservation of visual perception in both monkeys and humans. These findings initiated a concerted effort on multiple fronts, including nonhuman primate studies, to uncover the neural substrate/s of the spared conscious vision. In both adult and early-life cases of V1 injury, evidence suggests the involvement of the Middle Temporal area (MT) of the extrastriate visual cortex, which is an integral component area of the dorsal stream and is also associated with visually-guided behaviors. Because of the limited number of early-life V1 injury cases for humans, the outstanding question in the field is what secondary visual pathways are responsible for this extraordinary capacity? Here we report for the first time a case of a child (B.I.) who suffered a bilateral occipital-lobe injury in the first two weeks postnatally due to medium-chain acyl-Co-A dehydrogenase deficiency. At 6 years of age, B.I. underwent a battery of neurophysiological tests, as well as structural and diffusion MRI and ophthalmic examination at 7 years. Despite the extensive bilateral occipital cortical damage, B.I. has extensive conscious visual abilities, is not blind, and can use vision to navigate his environment. Furthermore, unlike blindsight patients, he can readily and consciously identify happy and neutral faces and colors, tasks associated with ventral stream processing. These findings suggest significant re-routing of visual information. To identify the putative visual pathway/s responsible for this ability, MRI tractography of secondary visual pathways connecting MT with the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) and the inferior pulvinar (PI) were analysed. Results revealed an increased PI-MT pathway in the left hemisphere, suggesting that this pulvinar relay could be the neural pathway affording the preserved visual capacity following an early-life lesion of V1. These findings corroborate anatomical evidence from monkeys showing an enhanced PI-MT pathway following an early-life lesion of V1, compared to adults. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Integration of Parent and Nurse Perspectives of Communication to Plan Care for Technology Dependent Children: The Theory of Shared Communication.

PubMed

Giambra, Barbara K; Broome, Marion E; Sabourin, Teresa; Buelow, Janice; Stiffler, Deborah

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to expand our understanding of the process of communication between parents of hospitalized technology dependent children and their nurses originally detailed in the Theory of Shared Communication (TSC). This grounded theory study was conducted with five parents of technology dependent children hospitalized in a large Midwestern children's hospital and nine nurses who care for technology dependent children admitted to the same hospital during July and August 2013. Semi-structured interviews and journals (parents only), field notes and a demographic survey were used to collect data which was analyzed using constant comparative analysis. Parents verified the concepts of the TSC and relationships among them. Nurses' perceptions of communication with parents reflected the same parent identified and verified concepts upon which the TSC was originally grounded including respect for own and other's expertise, asking, listening, explaining, advocating, verifying understanding and negotiating roles to achieve mutual understanding of the child's plan of care. The nurses' perceptions differed stylistically but not categorically from those of the parents. The addition of the nurse's perspectives to the verified TSC expands our understanding of this process of communication. With the integration of nurse and parent perspectives, the TSC can be used to enhance communication and care for hospitalized technology dependent children and their families. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Prototypes and same-gender bias in perceptions of hiring discrimination.

PubMed

Carlsson, Rickard; Sinclair, Samantha

2018-01-01

The present study investigated the relative importance of two explanations behind perceptions of gender discrimination in hiring: prototypes and same-gender bias. According to the prototype explanation, people perceive an event as discrimination to the extent that it fits their preconceptions of typical discrimination. In contrast, the same-gender bias explanation asserts that people more readily detect discrimination toward members of their own gender. In four experiments (n = 797), women and men made considerably stronger discrimination attributions, and were moderately more discouraged from seeking work, when the victim was female rather than male. Further, a series of regressions analyses showed beliefs in discrimination of women to be moderately correlated with discrimination attributions of female victims, but little added explanatory value of participant gender, stigma consciousness, or feminist identification. The results offer strong support for the prototype explanation.

Affective associative learning modifies the sensory perception of nociceptive stimuli without participant's awareness.

PubMed

Wunsch, Annabel; Philippot, Pierre; Plaghki, Léon

2003-03-01

The present experiment examined the possibility to change the sensory and/or the affective perception of thermal stimuli by an emotional associative learning procedure known to operate without participants' awareness (evaluative conditioning). In a mixed design, an aversive conditioning procedure was compared between subjects to an appetitive conditioning procedure. Both groups were also compared within-subject to a control condition (neutral conditioning). The aversive conditioning was induced by associating non-painful and painful thermal stimuli - delivered on the right forearm - with unpleasant slides. The appetitive conditioning consisted in an association between thermal stimuli - also delivered on the right forearm - and pleasant slides. The control condition consisted in an association between thermal stimuli - delivered for all participants on the left forearm - and neutral slides. The effects of the conditioning procedures on the sensory and affective dimensions were evaluated with visual analogue scale (VAS)-intensity and VAS-unpleasantness. Startle reflex was used as a physiological index of emotional valence disposition. Results confirmed that no participants were aware of the conditioning procedure. After unpleasant slides (aversive conditioning), non-painful and painful thermal stimuli were judged more intense and more unpleasant than when preceded by neutral slides (control condition) or pleasant slides (appetitive conditioning). Despite a strong correlation between the intensity and the unpleasantness scales, effects were weaker for the affective scale and, became statistically non-significant when VAS-intensity was used as covariate. This experiment shows that it is possible to modify the perception of intensity of thermal stimuli by a non-conscious learning procedure based on the transfer of the valence of the unconditioned stimuli (pleasant or unpleasant slides) towards the conditioned stimuli (non-painful and painful thermal stimuli). These results plead for a conception of pain as a conscious output of complex informational processes all of which are not accessible to participants' awareness. Mechanisms by which affective input may influence sensory experience and clinical implications of the present study are discussed.

Phenomenology of hallucinations, illusions, and delusions as part of seizure semiology.

PubMed

Kasper, B S; Kasper, E M; Pauli, E; Stefan, H

2010-05-01

In partial epilepsy, a localized hypersynchronous neuronal discharge evolving into a partial seizure affecting a particular cortical region or cerebral subsystem can give rise to subjective symptoms, which are perceived by the affected person only, that is, ictal hallucinations, illusions, or delusions. When forming the beginning of a symptom sequence leading to impairment of consciousness and/or a classic generalized seizure, these phenomena are referred to as an epileptic aura, but they also occur in isolation. They often manifest in the fully awake state, as part of simple partial seizures, but they also can be associated to different degrees of disturbed consciousness. Initial ictal symptoms often are closely related to the physiological functions of the cortical circuit involved and, therefore, can provide localizing information. When brain regions related to sensory integration are involved, the seizure discharge can cause specific kinds of hallucinations, for example, visual, auditory, gustatory, olfactory, and cutaneous sensory sensations. In addition to these elementary sensory perceptions, quite complex hallucinations related to a partial seizure can arise, for example, perception of visual scenes or hearing music. By involving psychic and emotional spheres of human perception, many seizures also give rise to hallucinatory emotional states (e.g., fear or happiness) or even more complex hallucinations (e.g., visuospatial phenomena), illusions (e.g., déjà vu, out-of-body experience), or delusional beliefs (e.g., identity change) that often are not easily recognized as epileptic. Here we suggest a classification into elementary sensory, complex sensory, and complex integratory seizure symptoms. Epileptic hallucinations, illusions, and delusions shine interesting light on the physiology and functional anatomy of brain regions involved and their functions in the human being. This article, in which 10 cases are described, introduces the fascinating phenomenology of subjective seizure symptoms. Copyright (c) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Audiovisual integration in hemianopia: A neurocomputational account based on cortico-collicular interaction.

PubMed

Magosso, Elisa; Bertini, Caterina; Cuppini, Cristiano; Ursino, Mauro

2016-10-01

Hemianopic patients retain some abilities to integrate audiovisual stimuli in the blind hemifield, showing both modulation of visual perception by auditory stimuli and modulation of auditory perception by visual stimuli. Indeed, conscious detection of a visual target in the blind hemifield can be improved by a spatially coincident auditory stimulus (auditory enhancement of visual detection), while a visual stimulus in the blind hemifield can improve localization of a spatially coincident auditory stimulus (visual enhancement of auditory localization). To gain more insight into the neural mechanisms underlying these two perceptual phenomena, we propose a neural network model including areas of neurons representing the retina, primary visual cortex (V1), extrastriate visual cortex, auditory cortex and the Superior Colliculus (SC). The visual and auditory modalities in the network interact via both direct cortical-cortical connections and subcortical-cortical connections involving the SC; the latter, in particular, integrates visual and auditory information and projects back to the cortices. Hemianopic patients were simulated by unilaterally lesioning V1, and preserving spared islands of V1 tissue within the lesion, to analyze the role of residual V1 neurons in mediating audiovisual integration. The network is able to reproduce the audiovisual phenomena in hemianopic patients, linking perceptions to neural activations, and disentangles the individual contribution of specific neural circuits and areas via sensitivity analyses. The study suggests i) a common key role of SC-cortical connections in mediating the two audiovisual phenomena; ii) a different role of visual cortices in the two phenomena: auditory enhancement of conscious visual detection being conditional on surviving V1 islands, while visual enhancement of auditory localization persisting even after complete V1 damage. The present study may contribute to advance understanding of the audiovisual dialogue between cortical and subcortical structures in healthy and unisensory deficit conditions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The teenager with palpitations.

PubMed

Sedaghat-Yazdi, Farshad; Koenig, Peter R

2014-02-01

Palpitations can result from cardiac awareness (increased conscious perception of the heart beating) or from a fast or irregular cardiac rhythm. Most causes for palpitations in the teenager can be diagnosed with minimal testing. Patients with an abnormal ECG, non-sinus tachycardia, abnormal cardiac examination, concerning family history, or palpitations associated with activity or syncope should be referred to a pediatric cardiologist. This article discusses the evaluation, testing, and management of teenagers with palpitations. It also provides a general guideline for referral for subspecialty evaluation. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cognitive theory and brain fact: Insights for the future of cognitive neuroscience. Comment on “Toward a computational framework for cognitive biology: Unifying approaches from cognitive neuroscience and comparative cognition” by W. Tecumseh Fitch

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Bowling, Daniel

2014-09-01

A central challenge in neuroscience is to understand the relationship between the mechanistic operation of the nervous system and the psychological phenomena we experience everyday (e.g., perception, memory, attention, emotion, and consciousness). Supported by revolutionary advances in technology, knowledge of neural mechanisms has grown dramatically over recent decades, but with few exceptions our understanding of how these mechanisms relate to psychological phenomena remains poor.

[Some implications of the "consciousness and brain" problem].

PubMed

Ivanitskiĭ, A M; Ivanitskiĭ, G A

2009-10-01

Three issues are discussed: the possible mechanism of subjective events, the rhythmic coding of thinking operations and the possible brain basis of understanding. 1. Several approaches have been developed to explain how subjective experience emerges from brain activity. One of them is the return of the nervous impulses to the sites of their primary projections, providing a synthesis of sensory information with memory and motivation. Support for the existence of such a mechanism stems from studies upon the brain activity that underlies perception (visual and somatosensory) and thought (verbal and imaginative). The cortical centers for information synthesis have been found. For perception, these are located in projection areas: for thinking,--in frontal and temporal-parietal associative cortex. Closely related ideas were also developed by G. Edelman in his re-entry theory of consciousness. Both theories emphasize the key role of memory and motivation in the origin of conscious function. 2. Rearrangements of EEC rhythms underlie mental functions. Certain rhythmical patterns are related with definite types of mental activity. The dependence of one upon the other is rather pronounced and expressive, so it becomes possible to recognize the type of mental operation being performed in mind with few seconds of the ongoing EEG, provided that the analysis of rhythms is accomplished using an artificial neural network. 3. It is commonly recognized that the computer, in contrast to the living brain, can calculate, yet cannot understand. Comprehension implies the comparison of new and old information that requires the ability to search for associations, group similar objects together, and distinguish different objects one from another. However, these functions may also be implemented on a computer. Still, it is believed that computers perform these complicated operations without genuine understanding. Evidently, comprehension additionally has to be based upon some biologically significant ground. It is hypothesized that the subjective feeling of understanding appears when current information is attributed to a definite need, which is scaled in sigh (+/-) coordinated. This coordinate system ceases the brain calculations, when "comprehension" is reached, i. e., the acceptable level of need satisfaction is attained.

AWARE-AWAreness during REsuscitation-a prospective study.

PubMed

Parnia, Sam; Spearpoint, Ken; de Vos, Gabriele; Fenwick, Peter; Goldberg, Diana; Yang, Jie; Zhu, Jiawen; Baker, Katie; Killingback, Hayley; McLean, Paula; Wood, Melanie; Zafari, A Maziar; Dickert, Neal; Beisteiner, Roland; Sterz, Fritz; Berger, Michael; Warlow, Celia; Bullock, Siobhan; Lovett, Salli; McPara, Russell Metcalfe Smith; Marti-Navarette, Sandra; Cushing, Pam; Wills, Paul; Harris, Kayla; Sutton, Jenny; Walmsley, Anthony; Deakin, Charles D; Little, Paul; Farber, Mark; Greyson, Bruce; Schoenfeld, Elinor R

2014-12-01

Cardiac arrest (CA) survivors experience cognitive deficits including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is unclear whether these are related to cognitive/mental experiences and awareness during CPR. Despite anecdotal reports the broad range of cognitive/mental experiences and awareness associated with CPR has not been systematically studied. The incidence and validity of awareness together with the range, characteristics and themes relating to memories/cognitive processes during CA was investigated through a 4 year multi-center observational study using a three stage quantitative and qualitative interview system. The feasibility of objectively testing the accuracy of claims of visual and auditory awareness was examined using specific tests. The outcome measures were (1) awareness/memories during CA and (2) objective verification of claims of awareness using specific tests. Among 2060 CA events, 140 survivors completed stage 1 interviews, while 101 of 140 patients completed stage 2 interviews. 46% had memories with 7 major cognitive themes: fear; animals/plants; bright light; violence/persecution; deja-vu; family; recalling events post-CA and 9% had NDEs, while 2% described awareness with explicit recall of 'seeing' and 'hearing' actual events related to their resuscitation. One had a verifiable period of conscious awareness during which time cerebral function was not expected. CA survivors commonly experience a broad range of cognitive themes, with 2% exhibiting full awareness. This supports other recent studies that have indicated consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness. This together with fearful experiences may contribute to PTSD and other cognitive deficits post CA. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Musical duplex perception: perception of figurally good chords with subliminal distinguishing tones.

PubMed

Hall, M D; Pastore, R E

1992-08-01

In a variant of duplex perception with speech, phoneme perception is maintained when distinguishing components are presented below intensities required for separate detection, forming the basis for the claim that a phonetic module takes precedence over nonspeech processing. This finding is replicated with music chords (C major and minor) created by mixing a piano fifth with a sinusoidal distinguishing tone (E or E flat). Individual threshold intensities for detecting E or E flat in the context of the fixed piano tones are established. Chord discrimination thresholds defined by distinguishing tone intensity were determined. Experiment 2 verified masked detection thresholds and subliminal chord identification for experienced musicians. Accurate chord perception was maintained at distinguishing tone intensities nearly 20 dB below the threshold for separate detection. Speech and music findings are argued to demonstrate general perceptual principles.

The role of alpha oscillations for illusory perception

PubMed Central

Lange, Joachim; Keil, Julian; Schnitzler, Alfons; van Dijk, Hanneke; Weisz, Nathan

2014-01-01

Alpha oscillations are a prominent electrophysiological signal measured across a wide range of species and cortical and subcortical sites. Alpha oscillations have been viewed for a long time as an “idling” rhythm, purely reflecting inactive sites. Despite earlier evidence from neurophysiology, awareness that alpha oscillations can substantially influence perception and behavior has grown only recently in cognitive neuroscience. Evidence for an active role of alpha for perception comes mainly from several visual, near-threshold experiments. In the current review, we extend this view by summarizing studies showing how alpha-defined brain states relate to illusory perception, i.e. cases of perceptual reports that are not “objectively” verifiable by distinct stimuli or stimulus features. These studies demonstrate that ongoing or prestimulus alpha oscillations substantially influence the perception of auditory, visual or multisensory illusions. PMID:24931795

Sleepiness induced by sleep-debt enhanced amygdala activity for subliminal signals of fear.

PubMed

Motomura, Yuki; Kitamura, Shingo; Oba, Kentaro; Terasawa, Yuri; Enomoto, Minori; Katayose, Yasuko; Hida, Akiko; Moriguchi, Yoshiya; Higuchi, Shigekazu; Mishima, Kazuo

2014-08-19

Emotional information is frequently processed below the level of consciousness, where subcortical regions of the brain are thought to play an important role. In the absence of conscious visual experience, patients with visual cortex damage discriminate the valence of emotional expression. Even in healthy individuals, a subliminal mechanism can be utilized to compensate for a functional decline in visual cognition of various causes such as strong sleepiness. In this study, sleep deprivation was simulated in healthy individuals to investigate functional alterations in the subliminal processing of emotional information caused by reduced conscious visual cognition and attention due to an increase in subjective sleepiness. Fourteen healthy adult men participated in a within-subject crossover study consisting of a 5-day session of sleep debt (SD, 4-h sleep) and a 5-day session of sleep control (SC, 8-h sleep). On the last day of each session, participants performed an emotional face-viewing task that included backward masking of nonconscious presentations during magnetic resonance scanning. Finally, data from eleven participants who were unaware of nonconscious face presentations were analyzed. In fear contrasts, subjective sleepiness was significantly positively correlated with activity in the amygdala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, and insular cortex, and was significantly negatively correlated with the secondary and tertiary visual areas and the fusiform face area. In fear-neutral contrasts, subjective sleepiness was significantly positively correlated with activity of the bilateral amygdala. Further, changes in subjective sleepiness (the difference between the SC and SD sessions) were correlated with both changes in amygdala activity and functional connectivity between the amygdala and superior colliculus in response to subliminal fearful faces. Sleepiness induced functional decline in the brain areas involved in conscious visual cognition of facial expressions, but also enhanced subliminal emotional processing via superior colliculus as represented by activity in the amygdala. These findings suggest that an evolutionally old and auxiliary subliminal hazard perception system is activated as a compensatory mechanism when conscious visual cognition is impaired. In addition, enhancement of subliminal emotional processing might cause involuntary emotional instability during sleep debt through changes in emotional response to or emotional evaluation of external stimuli.

Influence of Caloric Vestibular Stimulation on Body Experience in Healthy Humans

PubMed Central

Schönherr, Andreas; May, Christian Albrecht

2016-01-01

The vestibular system has more connections with and influence on higher cortical centers than previously thought. These interactions with higher cortical centers and the phenomena that they elicit require a structural intact cerebral cortex. To date, little is known about the role and influence of the vestibular system on one’s body experience. In this study we show that caloric vestibular stimulation (CVS) in healthy participants has an effect on the perceptive component of one’s body experience. After CVS all participants showed a statistically significant difference of thigh width estimation. In contrast to previous studies, which demonstrated an influence of CVS on higher cortical centers with an intact cerebral cortex both the cognitive and affective component of body experience were not effected by the CVS. Our results demonstrate the influence of the vestibular system on body perception and emphasize its role in modulating different perceptive-qualities which contributes to our body experience. We found that CVS has a limited influence on one’s conscious state, thought process and higher cortical functions. PMID:27013995

The undervalued self: social class and self-evaluation

PubMed Central

Kraus, Michael W.; Park, Jun W.

2014-01-01

Social class ranks people on the social ladder of society, and in this research we examine how perceptions of economic standing shape the way that individuals evaluate the self. Given that reminders of one’s own subordinate status in society are an indicator of how society values the self in comparison to others, we predicted that chronic lower perceptions of economic standing vis-à-vis others would explain associations between objective social class and negative self-evaluation, whereas situation-specific reminders of low economic standing would elicit negative self-evaluations, particularly in those from lower-class backgrounds. In Study 1, perceptions of social class rank accounted for the positive relationship between objective material resource measures of social class and self-esteem. In Study 2, lower-class individuals who received a low (versus equal) share of economic resources in an economic game scenario reported more negative self-conscious emotions—a correlate of negative self-evaluation—relative to upper-class individuals. Discussion focused on the implications of this research for understanding class-based cultural models of the self, and for how social class shapes self-evaluations chronically. PMID:25538654

The undervalued self: social class and self-evaluation.

PubMed

Kraus, Michael W; Park, Jun W

2014-01-01

Social class ranks people on the social ladder of society, and in this research we examine how perceptions of economic standing shape the way that individuals evaluate the self. Given that reminders of one's own subordinate status in society are an indicator of how society values the self in comparison to others, we predicted that chronic lower perceptions of economic standing vis-à-vis others would explain associations between objective social class and negative self-evaluation, whereas situation-specific reminders of low economic standing would elicit negative self-evaluations, particularly in those from lower-class backgrounds. In Study 1, perceptions of social class rank accounted for the positive relationship between objective material resource measures of social class and self-esteem. In Study 2, lower-class individuals who received a low (versus equal) share of economic resources in an economic game scenario reported more negative self-conscious emotions-a correlate of negative self-evaluation-relative to upper-class individuals. Discussion focused on the implications of this research for understanding class-based cultural models of the self, and for how social class shapes self-evaluations chronically.

Adaptive optics without altering visual perception

PubMed Central

DE, Koenig; NW, Hart; HJ, Hofer

2014-01-01

Adaptive optics combined with visual psychophysics creates the potential to study the relationship between visual function and the retina at the cellular scale. This potential is hampered, however, by visual interference from the wavefront-sensing beacon used during correction. For example, we have previously shown that even a dim, visible beacon can alter stimulus perception (Hofer, H. J., Blaschke, J., Patolia, J., & Koenig, D. E. (2012). Fixation light hue bias revisited: Implications for using adaptive optics to study color vision. Vision Research, 56, 49-56). Here we describe a simple strategy employing a longer wavelength (980nm) beacon that, in conjunction with appropriate restriction on timing and placement, allowed us to perform psychophysics when dark adapted without altering visual perception. The method was verified by comparing detection and color appearance of foveally presented small spot stimuli with and without the wavefront beacon present in 5 subjects. As an important caution, we found that significant perceptual interference can occur even with a subliminal beacon when additional measures are not taken to limit exposure. Consequently, the lack of perceptual interference should be verified for a given system, and not assumed based on invisibility of the beacon. PMID:24607992

Effects of psilocybin on time perception and temporal control of behaviour in humans.

PubMed

Wittmann, Marc; Carter, Olivia; Hasler, Felix; Cahn, B Rael; Grimberg, Ulrike; Spring, Philipp; Hell, Daniel; Flohr, Hans; Vollenweider, Franz X

2007-01-01

Hallucinogenic psilocybin is known to alter the subjective experience of time. However, there is no study that systematically investigated objective measures of time perception under psilocybin. Therefore, we studied dose-dependent effects of the serotonin (5-HT)2A/1A receptor agonist psilocybin (4-phosphoryloxy-N, N-dimethyltryptamine) on temporal processing, employing tasks of temporal reproduction, sensorimotor synchronization and tapping tempo. To control for cognitive and subjective changes, we assessed spatial working memory and conscious experience. Twelve healthy human volunteers were tested under placebo, medium (115 microg/kg), and high (250 microg/kg) dose conditions, in a double-blind experimental design. Psilocybin was found to significantly impair subjects' ability to (1) reproduce interval durations longer than 2.5 sec, (2) to synchronize to inter-beat intervals longer than 2 sec and (3) caused subjects to be slower in their preferred tapping rate. These objective effects on timing performance were accompanied by working-memory deficits and subjective changes in conscious state, namely increased reports of 'depersonalization' and 'derealization' phenomena including disturbances in subjective 'time sense.' Our study is the first to systematically assess the impact of psilocybin on timing performance on standardized measures of temporal processing. Results indicate that the serotonin system is selectively involved in duration processing of intervals longer than 2 to 3 seconds and in the voluntary control of the speed of movement. We speculate that psilocybin's selective disruption of longer intervals is likely to be a product of interactions with cognitive dimensions of temporal processing -presumably via 5-HT2A receptor stimulation.

Don't make me angry, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry: Volitional choices to act or inhibit are modulated by subliminal perception of emotional faces.

PubMed

Parkinson, Jim; Garfinkel, Sarah; Critchley, Hugo; Dienes, Zoltan; Seth, Anil K

2017-04-01

Volitional action and self-control-feelings of acting according to one's own intentions and in being control of one's own actions-are fundamental aspects of human conscious experience. However, it is unknown whether high-level cognitive control mechanisms are affected by socially salient but nonconscious emotional cues. In this study, we manipulated free choice decisions to act or withhold an action by subliminally presenting emotional faces: In a novel version of the Go/NoGo paradigm, participants made speeded button-press responses to Go targets, withheld responses to NoGo targets, and made spontaneous, free choices to execute or withhold the response for Choice targets. Before each target, we presented emotional faces, backwards masked to render them nonconscious. In Intentional trials, subliminal angry faces made participants more likely to voluntarily withhold the action, whereas fearful and happy faces had no effects. In a second experiment, the faces were made supraliminal, which eliminated the effects of angry faces on volitional choices. A third experiment measured neural correlates of the effects of subliminal angry faces on intentional choice using EEG. After replicating the behavioural results found in Experiment 1, we identified a frontal-midline theta component-associated with cognitive control processes-which is present for volitional decisions, and is modulated by subliminal angry faces. This suggests a mechanism whereby subliminally presented "threat" stimuli affect conscious control processes. In summary, nonconscious perception of angry faces increases choices to inhibit, and subliminal influences on volitional action are deep seated and ecologically embedded.

Archetypal-Imaging and Mirror-Gazing

PubMed Central

Caputo, Giovanni B.

2013-01-01

Mirrors have been studied by cognitive psychology in order to understand self-recognition, self-identity, and self-consciousness. Moreover, the relevance of mirrors in spirituality, magic and arts may also suggest that mirrors can be symbols of unconscious contents. Carl G. Jung investigated mirrors in relation to the unconscious, particularly in Psychology and Alchemy. However, the relationship between the conscious behavior in front of a mirror and the unconscious meaning of mirrors has not been clarified. Recently, empirical research found that gazing at one’s own face in the mirror for a few minutes, at a low illumination level, produces the perception of bodily dysmorphic illusions of strange-faces. Healthy observers usually describe huge distortions of their own faces, monstrous beings, prototypical faces, faces of relatives and deceased, and faces of animals. In the psychiatric population, some schizophrenics show a dramatic increase of strange-face illusions. They can also describe the perception of multiple-others that fill the mirror surface surrounding their strange-face. Schizophrenics are usually convinced that strange-face illusions are truly real and identify themselves with strange-face illusions, diversely from healthy individuals who never identify with them. On the contrary, most patients with major depression do not perceive strange-face illusions, or they perceive very faint changes of their immobile faces in the mirror, like death statues. Strange-face illusions may be the psychodynamic projection of the subject’s unconscious archetypal contents into the mirror image. Therefore, strange-face illusions might provide both an ecological setting and an experimental technique for “imaging of the unconscious”. Future researches have been proposed. PMID:25379264

Archetypal-imaging and mirror-gazing.

PubMed

Caputo, Giovanni B

2014-03-01

Mirrors have been studied by cognitive psychology in order to understand self-recognition, self-identity, and self-consciousness. Moreover, the relevance of mirrors in spirituality, magic and arts may also suggest that mirrors can be symbols of unconscious contents. Carl G. Jung investigated mirrors in relation to the unconscious, particularly in Psychology and Alchemy. However, the relationship between the conscious behavior in front of a mirror and the unconscious meaning of mirrors has not been clarified. Recently, empirical research found that gazing at one's own face in the mirror for a few minutes, at a low illumination level, produces the perception of bodily dysmorphic illusions of strange-faces. Healthy observers usually describe huge distortions of their own faces, monstrous beings, prototypical faces, faces of relatives and deceased, and faces of animals. In the psychiatric population, some schizophrenics show a dramatic increase of strange-face illusions. They can also describe the perception of multiple-others that fill the mirror surface surrounding their strange-face. Schizophrenics are usually convinced that strange-face illusions are truly real and identify themselves with strange-face illusions, diversely from healthy individuals who never identify with them. On the contrary, most patients with major depression do not perceive strange-face illusions, or they perceive very faint changes of their immobile faces in the mirror, like death statues. Strange-face illusions may be the psychodynamic projection of the subject's unconscious archetypal contents into the mirror image. Therefore, strange-face illusions might provide both an ecological setting and an experimental technique for "imaging of the unconscious". Future researches have been proposed.

Prestimulus EEG Power Predicts Conscious Awareness But Not Objective Visual Performance

PubMed Central

Veniero, Domenica

2017-01-01

Abstract Prestimulus oscillatory neural activity has been linked to perceptual outcomes during performance of psychophysical detection and discrimination tasks. Specifically, the power and phase of low frequency oscillations have been found to predict whether an upcoming weak visual target will be detected or not. However, the mechanisms by which baseline oscillatory activity influences perception remain unclear. Recent studies suggest that the frequently reported negative relationship between α power and stimulus detection may be explained by changes in detection criterion (i.e., increased target present responses regardless of whether the target was present/absent) driven by the state of neural excitability, rather than changes in visual sensitivity (i.e., more veridical percepts). Here, we recorded EEG while human participants performed a luminance discrimination task on perithreshold stimuli in combination with single-trial ratings of perceptual awareness. Our aim was to investigate whether the power and/or phase of prestimulus oscillatory activity predict discrimination accuracy and/or perceptual awareness on a trial-by-trial basis. Prestimulus power (3–28 Hz) was inversely related to perceptual awareness ratings (i.e., higher ratings in states of low prestimulus power/high excitability) but did not predict discrimination accuracy. In contrast, prestimulus oscillatory phase did not predict awareness ratings or accuracy in any frequency band. These results provide evidence that prestimulus α power influences the level of subjective awareness of threshold visual stimuli but does not influence visual sensitivity when a decision has to be made regarding stimulus features. Hence, we find a clear dissociation between the influence of ongoing neural activity on conscious awareness and objective performance. PMID:29255794

Neurobiology of rhythmic motor entrainment.

PubMed

Molinari, Marco; Leggio, Maria G; De Martin, Martina; Cerasa, Antonio; Thaut, Michael

2003-11-01

Timing is extremely important for movement, and understanding the neurobiological basis of rhythm perception and reproduction can be helpful in addressing motor recovery after brain lesions. In this quest, the science of music might provide interesting hints for better understanding the brain timing mechanism. The report focuses on the neurobiological substrate of sensorimotor transformation of time data, highlighting the power of auditory rhythmic stimuli in guiding motor acts. The cerebellar role of timing is addressed in subjects with cerebellar damage; subsequently, cerebellar timing processing is highlighted through an fMRI study of professional musicians. The two approaches converge to demonstrate that different levels of time processing exist, one conscious and one not, and to support the idea that timing is a distributed function. The hypothesis that unconscious motor responses to auditory rhythmic stimuli can be relevant in guiding motor recovery and modulating music perception is advanced and discussed.

From breeder reactors to butterflies: risk, culture, and biotechnology.

PubMed

Lomax, G P

2000-10-01

Social theories of risk suggest that a combination of scientific and cultural perspectives converge to influence risk perception. This article first surveys sociological perspectives suggesting that risks from modern technological development have become predominant concerns in the social consciousness. Particular attention is given to those theses describing how social elements work to create perception of risks in relation to new technologies. The themes that emerge from this survey are then related to contemporary debates concerning biotechnology. Specific attention is given to recent controversies regarding genetically modified crops, and parallels are drawn between debates over nuclear power and biotechnology. A procedural ethic for public discourse and decision making over the diffusion of genetically modified foods is offered. Ethical and social theories are linked with the hope that by recognizing the social dimensions of debates over new technologies a broader framework for conducting risk analysis may emerge.

Shame aversion and maladaptive eating-related attitudes and behaviors.

PubMed

Manjrekar, Eishita; Schoenleber, Michelle; Mu, Wenting

2013-12-01

Consistent with affect regulation models of eating-related psychopathology, prior research indicates that trait-like shame and state self-conscious emotion are associated with maladaptive eating-related attitudes/behaviors. The present investigation extended past research on shame and maladaptive eating-related attitudes/behaviors by examining the role of shame aversion - the perception of shame as an especially unwanted and painful emotion - in these attitudes/behaviors over and above shame-proneness, general distress, and experiential avoidance. In 488 female undergraduates, shame aversion was positively associated with dieting, self-perceptions of body shape, awareness of food content, and food preoccupation even after taking into account other possible explanatory variables. Additionally, shame aversion moderated shame-proneness' associations with dieting, awareness of food content, and food preoccupation, such that shame-proneness was positively associated with these attitudes/behaviors only when shame aversion was high. Future directions for research and clinical implications of the present findings are discussed. © 2013.

Modulations of the experience of self and time.

PubMed

Wittmann, Marc

2015-12-15

Empirical findings in the Cognitive Sciences on the relationship between feeling states and subjective time have led to the assumption that time perception entails emotional and interoceptive states. The perception of time would thereafter be embodied; the bodily self, the continuous input from the body is the functional anchor of phenomenal experience and the mental self. Subjective time emerges through the existence of the self across time as an enduring and embodied entity. This relation is prominently disclosed in studies on altered states of consciousness such as in meditative states, under the influence of hallucinogens as well as in many psychiatric and neurological conditions. An increased awareness of oneself coincides with an increased awareness of time. Conversely, a decreased awareness of the self is associated with diminished awareness of time. The body of empirical work within different conceptual frameworks on the intricate relationship between self and time is presented and discussed. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Interobject grouping facilitates visual awareness.

PubMed

Stein, Timo; Kaiser, Daniel; Peelen, Marius V

2015-01-01

In organizing perception, the human visual system takes advantage of regularities in the visual input to perceptually group related image elements. Simple stimuli that can be perceptually grouped based on physical regularities, for example by forming an illusory contour, have a competitive advantage in entering visual awareness. Here, we show that regularities that arise from the relative positioning of complex, meaningful objects in the visual environment also modulate visual awareness. Using continuous flash suppression, we found that pairs of objects that were positioned according to real-world spatial regularities (e.g., a lamp above a table) accessed awareness more quickly than the same object pairs shown in irregular configurations (e.g., a table above a lamp). This advantage was specific to upright stimuli and abolished by stimulus inversion, meaning that it did not reflect physical stimulus confounds or the grouping of simple image elements. Thus, knowledge of the spatial configuration of objects in the environment shapes the contents of conscious perception.

The relationship between language use and depression: illuminating the importance of self-reflection, self-rumination, and the need for absolute truth.

PubMed

Şimşek, Ömer Faruk

2013-01-01

The main aim of the present study was to provide additional knowledge about the mediatory processes through which language relates to depression. Although previous research gave clear evidence that language is closely related to depression, the research on intervening variables in the relationship has been limited. The present investigation tested a structural equation model in which self-concept clarity and self-consciousness mediated the relationship between personal perceptions of language and depression. Since "the need for absolute truth" construct has been shown to be important in providing greater consistency in estimates of the relationships among the variables, it has been added to the model as a control variable. The results supported the model and showed that personal perceptions of language predicted self-concept clarity, which in turn predicted the participants' self-reflection and self-rumination. Self-reflection and self-rumination, in turn, predicted depression.

Verifying different-modality properties for concepts produces switching costs.

PubMed

Pecher, Diane; Zeelenberg, René; Barsalou, Lawrence W

2003-03-01

According to perceptual symbol systems, sensorimotor simulations underlie the representation of concepts. It follows that sensorimotor phenomena should arise in conceptual processing. Previous studies have shown that switching from one modality to another during perceptual processing incurs a processing cost. If perceptual simulation underlies conceptual processing, then verifying the properties of concepts should exhibit a switching cost as well. For example, verifying a property in the auditory modality (e.g., BLENDER-loud) should be slower after verifying a property in a different modality (e.g., CRANBERRIES-tart) than after verifying a property in the same modality (e.g., LEAVES-rustling). Only words were presented to subjects, and there were no instructions to use imagery. Nevertheless, switching modalities incurred a cost, analogous to the cost of switching modalities in perception. A second experiment showed that this effect was not due to associative priming between properties in the same modality. These results support the hypothesis that perceptual simulation underlies conceptual processing.

Subliminal stimulation and somatosensory signal detection.

PubMed

Ferrè, Elisa Raffaella; Sahani, Maneesh; Haggard, Patrick

2016-10-01

Only a small fraction of sensory signals is consciously perceived. The brain's perceptual systems may include mechanisms of feedforward inhibition that protect the cortex from subliminal noise, thus reserving cortical capacity and conscious awareness for significant stimuli. Here we provide a new view of these mechanisms based on signal detection theory, and gain control. We demonstrated that subliminal somatosensory stimulation decreased sensitivity for the detection of a subsequent somatosensory input, largely due to increased false alarm rates. By delivering the subliminal somatosensory stimulus and the to-be-detected somatosensory stimulus to different digits of the same hand, we show that this effect spreads across the sensory surface. In addition, subliminal somatosensory stimulation tended to produce an increased probability of responding "yes", whether the somatosensory stimulus was present or not. Our results suggest that subliminal stimuli temporarily reduce input gain, avoiding excessive responses to further small inputs. This gain control may be automatic, and may precede discriminative classification of inputs into signals or noise. Crucially, we found that subliminal inputs influenced false alarm rates only on blocks where the to-be-detected stimuli were present, and not on pre-test control blocks where they were absent. Participants appeared to adjust their perceptual criterion according to a statistical distribution of stimuli in the current context, with the presence of supraliminal stimuli having an important role in the criterion-setting process. These findings clarify the cognitive mechanisms that reserve conscious perception for salient and important signals. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Linking psychoanalysis with neuroscience: the concept of ego.

PubMed

Rizzolatti, Giacomo; Semi, Antonio Alberto; Fabbri-Destro, Maddalena

2014-03-01

Through his whole life Marc Jeannerod was fascinated by Freud's thinking. His interest in Freud is witnessed by several of his writings in which he expresses interest in building a bridge between psychoanalysis and cognitive neuroscience. Following Jeannerod's ideas we discuss here a fundamental point of Freud's construction, the concept of ego, from a neurophysiological point of view. We maintain that, in order both to act coherently and to have a basic, first person, understanding of the behavior of others, it is necessary to posit the existence of a neurophysiological "motor" ego similar to the "rider" of the Freudian metaphor. We review then a series of neurophysiological findings showing that the systems underlying the organization of action and conscious perception are both mediated by a cortical motor network formed by parieto-frontal circuits. In conclusion, we show that the activity of this network has strong similarities to that postulated by Freud for the conscious part of ego. We also propose that the default-mode network might represent that part of ego that is mostly involved in unconscious processes. © 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Visual motion disambiguation by a subliminal sound.

PubMed

Dufour, Andre; Touzalin, Pascale; Moessinger, Michèle; Brochard, Renaud; Després, Olivier

2008-09-01

There is growing interest in the effect of sound on visual motion perception. One model involves the illusion created when two identical objects moving towards each other on a two-dimensional visual display can be seen to either bounce off or stream through each other. Previous studies show that the large bias normally seen toward the streaming percept can be modulated by the presentation of an auditory event at the moment of coincidence. However, no reports to date provide sufficient evidence to indicate whether the sound bounce-inducing effect is due to a perceptual binding process or merely to an explicit inference resulting from the transient auditory stimulus resembling a physical collision of two objects. In the present study, we used a novel experimental design in which a subliminal sound was presented either 150 ms before, at, or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence of two disks moving towards each other. The results showed that there was an increased perception of bouncing (rather than streaming) when the subliminal sound was presented at or 150 ms after the moment of coincidence compared to when no sound was presented. These findings provide the first empirical demonstration that activation of the human auditory system without reaching consciousness affects the perception of an ambiguous visual motion display.

Parenting in poverty: Attention bias and anxiety interact to predict parents' perceptions of daily parenting hassles.

PubMed

Finegood, Eric D; Raver, C Cybele; DeJoseph, Meriah L; Blair, Clancy

2017-02-01

Research has long acknowledged the centrality of parents' subjective experiences in the caregiving role for the organization of parenting behaviors and family functioning. Recent scientific advances in cognitive process models and in the neurobiology of parenting indicate that parenting is shaped in part by conscious and nonconscious cognitive processes. This study extends a growing literature on neurocognitive models of parenting by exploring the extent to which attention processes in parents operate independently and interactively with intrapsychic processes, proximal interpersonal stressors, and the larger socioeconomic context to predict perceptions of parenting hassles in primarily low-income Latino/a parents of young children living in urban areas of concentrated disadvantage (N = 185). Analyses indicated that parent reports of anxiety, intimate partner violence, and perceptions of financial hardship each uniquely predicted parents' perceptions of daily parenting hassles. Parents' attentional bias toward threat interacted with anxiety symptoms such that parents experiencing high levels of attention bias toward threat in combination with high levels of anxiety reported significantly more daily parenting hassles. Findings from the current study provide insight into the ways in which neurocognitive processes affect one aspect of parenting, with implications for programs and policies designed to support parenting for families in poverty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

An Empirical Test of Causal Inference Between Role Perceptions, Satisfaction with Work, Performance and Organizational Level

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Szilagyi, Andrew D.

1977-01-01

Attempts to empirically verify the causal source and direction of causal influence between role ambiguity, role conflict and job satisfaction and performance for three organizational levels in a hospital environment. (Author/RK)

Perception, experience and body identity.

PubMed

López-Ibor, Juan J; Ortiz, Tomás; López-Ibor, María I

2011-12-01

Physician has to know the patient in the disease and not only the disease in the patient, from the dual perspective of the body as object and the body as subject. This also affects the patient who has to cope with the reality of having a body that bursts into the subject's consciousness as a vital threat, as source of discomfort and inability and being a body (Marcel). The human body in its dual aspect has been and is a great unknown, if not a great outrage in spite of the fact that we are our body and our body is each of us. We sometimes do not feel as we are and thus a confrontation arises, sometimes more normal, others more morbid. This forces the physician to face complex ethics considerations and the scientist to accept a personal identity disorder. Dualism considers that there are two substances in us, one that distinguishes us from other beings and from the rest of the individuals of the human species, the soul, the psychic life, mind or consciousness, and another more insubstancial one, the body. The aim of the first substance is to dominate the body, to survive it after death when it is, already a corpse is meant to become putrefied, is buried, incinerated or thrown to the depth of the sea. This dualism aims to explain the origin of the evil and the attitude to defeat it and it does so efficiently. This anthropology has very ancient roots (the Upvanishads, in the orphic texts, in Plato), it is the core of Gnostic thought and the foundation of the modern science since Descartes. Some monist perspectives are a masked dualism or a mereologic fallacy, according to which, the brain is conscious, when that what is conscious is the subject, although the subject, with the brain could not be conscious. Therefore, a new perspective is proposed, chiasmatic or janicular monism, that considers the adaptive value of focusing on the reality from two perspectives, as physical universe and the world of interpersonal relationships. In the agnosias and in the phantom limb there is a confrontation between the body object and the body subject that has made it possible to investigate how the perception of the own body is and how the brain generates the schema and the body image. The study of the body experience, from the phenomenology and the anthropological psychiatry perspective, has made it possible to go greater in-depth into the knowledge of the alterations of the experience of the own body in different mental diseases, especially in those in which a confrontation between the body and the personal identity arises makes it necessary to consider the process of individual identification and a category of personal identity disorders that would include body dysmorphic disorder, erythrophobia, anorexia nervosa, body integrity identity as well as the gender-type disorders (transsexualism, nonfetishistic transvestism, gender identity disorder during childhood). Key words: Dualism, Monism, Agnosia, Phantom limb, Cenesthesia, Body schema, Body image, Body experience, Personal identity disorders, Body dysmorphic disorder, Anorexia nervosa, Personal integrity identity disorder.