Directed information sharing in the brain distinguishes perception from its consequences during perceptual bistability

Abstract

AbstractIn the search for the neural basis of conscious experience, perception and its cognitive consequences are typically confounded as neural activity is recorded while participants explicitly report what they experience. Here we present a novel way to disentangle perception from report using eye-movement analysis techniques based on convolutional neural networks and neurodynamical analyses based on information theory. We use a visual bistable stimulus that instantiates two well-known properties of conscious perception: integration and differentiation. At any given moment, observers either experience the stimulus as one integrated unitary percept or as two differentiated objects that are clearly distinct from each other. Using electroencephalography, we show that measures of neural information dynamics of directed information integration and differentiation closely follow participants experience when perceptual transitions were reported. We observed increased directed information from anterior to posterior electrodes (front to back) leading up to the moment the stimulus was reported to switch to the integrated percept and higher information differentiation of anterior signals leading up to reporting the differentiated percept. Crucially, neural integration dynamics were closely linked to perception and even observed in a no-report condition when perceptual transitions were inferred from eye-movements. In contrast, the link between perceptual transitions and neural differentiation was observed solely in the active report condition. Our results therefore suggest a differential role of anterior-posterior network communication vs anterior information differentiation during perception and reporting: while front to back directed information is associated with changes in the content of perception, frontal information differentiation reflects cognitive processes that are consequential of perceptual transitions, not perception per se.