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

Abstract

Setting conscious perception alight What are the neuronal mechanisms that enable conscious perception? Why do some images remain subliminal? Van Vugt et al. trained monkeys to detect low-contrast images and compared neuronal activity in brain areas V1, V4, and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Some stimuli made it into consciousness, and others were subliminal depending on their propagation, which can be variable for weak stimuli (see the Perspective by Mashour). Strongly propagated stimuli initiated a state in the higher brain areas called “ignition” that caused information about a brief stimulus to become sustained and broadcasted back through recurrent interactions between many brain areas. Science , this issue p. 537 ; see also p. 493