Conscious awareness of flicker in humans involves frontal and parietal cortex.

Full Abstract

Even when confined to the same spatial location, flickering and steady light evoke very different conscious experiences because of their distinct temporal patterns. The neural basis of such differences in subjective experience remains uncertain . Here, we used functional MRI in humans to examine the neural structures involved in awareness of flicker. Participants viewed a single point source of light that flickered at the critical flicker fusion (CFF) threshold, where the same stimulus is sometimes perceived as flickering and sometimes as steady (fused) . We were thus able to compare brain activity for conscious percepts that differed qualitatively (flickering or fused) but were evoked by identical physical stimuli. Greater brain activation was observed on flicker (versus fused) trials in regions of frontal and parietal cortex previously associated with visual awareness in tasks that did not require detection of temporal patterns . In contrast, greater activation was observed on fused (versus flicker) trials in occipital extrastriate cortex. Our findings indicate that activity of higher-level cortical areas is important for awareness of temporally distinct visual events in the context of a nonspatial task, and they thus suggest that frontal and parietal regions may play a general role in visual awareness.

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Author information

Author/s: Carmel, David (D); Lavie, Nilli (N); Rees, Geraint (G);

Affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London WC1N 3AR, United Kingdom. d.carmel(-atsign-)ucl.ac.uk

Grants: (Agency:Wellcome Trust)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Current biology : CB (Curr Biol), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2006-May; vol 16 (issue 9) : pp 907-11

Dates: Created 2006/05/09; Completed 2006/07/07; Revised 2007/08/13;

PMID: 16682352, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Adult
Behavior
Eye Movements
Female
Flicker Fusion - physiology
Frontal Lobe - physiology

Frontal Lobe - physiology
Humans
Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods
Male
Occipital Lobe - physiology
Parietal Lobe - physiology

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