Neural correlates of the contents of visual awareness in humans.

Full Abstract

The immediacy and directness of our subjective visual experience belies the complexity of the neural mechanisms involved, which remain incompletely understood. This review focuses on how the subjective contents of human visual awareness are encoded in neural activity. Empirical evidence to date suggests that no single brain area is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness. Instead, necessary and sufficient conditions appear to involve both activation of a distributed representation of the visual scene in primary visual cortex and ventral visual areas, plus parietal and frontal activity. The key empirical focus is now on characterizing qualitative differences in the type of neural activity in these areas underlying conscious and unconscious processing. To this end, recent progress in developing novel approaches to accurately decoding the contents of consciousness from brief samples of neural activity show great promise.

Learn Faster Today Improve your study skills

Author information

Author/s: Rees, Geraint (G);

Affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR, UK. g.rees(-atsign-)fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk

Grants: (Agency:Wellcome Trust)

Journal and publication information

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

Journal: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences (Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci), published in England. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-May; vol 362 (issue 1481) : pp 877-86

Dates: Created 2007/04/11; Completed 2007/06/18; Revised 2008/11/20;

PMID: 17395576, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 12/26/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article (including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.

MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Awareness
Brain - physiology
Consciousness
Humans

Humans
Visual Cortex - physiology
Visual Pathways
Visual Perception - physiology

These are the highest related articles currently in the database:

Time course of visual perception: coarse-to-fine processing and beyond. 27 Sep 2007
Electroencephalogram-based indexes indicate the drug effect on the brain, not the (un)consciousness itself. 29 Apr 2008
Awareness despite low spectral entropy values. 29 Apr 2008
Decoding human brain activity during real-world experiences. 4 Jul 2007
Early electrophysiological markers of visual awareness in the human brain. 16 Jun 2007
Contrast responsivity in MT+ correlates with phonological awareness and reading measures in children. 17 Jun 2007
Self-construal priming modulates neural substrates of self-awareness. 29 Sep 2007
Functional neuroimaging of the vegetative state. 28 Feb 2008
Neural dissociation between visual awareness and spatial attention. 3 Mar 2008
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience. 29 Nov 2007

See 100+ related articles.