Flickering brain signals in macaques offer a window into consciousness
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Doris Tsao's team reports in a bioRxiv preprint that macaques show strong neural activity for images in front of their eyes that they are not aware of, and that those images can be reconstructed with high fidelity from that activity. In binocular rivalry experiments, with simultaneous recording from the inferotemporal cortex and prefrontal cortex, brain activity switched between conscious and unconscious processing patterns about 15 times per second. The findings suggest awareness alternates rapidly between perceptual states, and that unconscious visual information remains present in the brain's signals. The work is a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed.
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- nature.comMysterious flickering brain signals could help to unlock secrets of consciousness
Doris Tsao's team reports in a bioRxiv preprint that macaques show strong neural activity for images in front of their eyes that they are not aware of, and that these images can be reconstructed with high fidelity from that activity. In binocular rivalry experiments, with simultaneous recording from the inferotemporal cortex and prefrontal cortex, brain activity switched between conscious and unconscious processing patterns about 15 times per second.
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