Fronto-parietal networks shape human conscious report through attention gain and reorienting

Abstract

SummaryHow do attention and consciousness interact in the human brain? Rival theories of consciousness disagree on the role of fronto-parietal attentional networks in conscious perception. We recorded neural activity from 727 intracerebral contacts in 13 epileptic patients, while they detected near-threshold targets preceded by attentional cues. Unsupervised clustering revealed three patterns: (1) Attention-enhanced conscious report accompanied sustained right-hemisphere fronto-temporal activity, in networks connected by the superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) II-III, and late accumulation in bilateral dorso-prefrontal and right-hemisphere orbitofrontal cortex (SLF I-III). (2) Attentional reorienting affected conscious report through early, sustained activity in a right-hemisphere network (SLF III). (3) Conscious report accompanied left-hemisphere dorsolateral-prefrontal activity. Task modeling with recurrent neural networks identified specific excitatory and inhibitory interactions between attention and consciousness, and their causal contribution to conscious perception of near-threshold targets. Thus, distinct, hemisphere-asymmetric fronto-parietal networks support attentional gain and reorienting in shaping human conscious experience.One-Sentence SummaryIntracerebral recordings, tractography and modeling reveal the interaction of attention and consciousness in the human brain.