Reproducibility Distinguishes Conscious from Nonconscious Neural Representations

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 327; no. 5961; pp. 97 - 99
• Main Authors: Schurger, Aaron, Pereira, Francisco, Treisman, Anne, Cohen, Jonathan D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Washington, DC American Association for the Advancement of Science 2010; The American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: Awareness - physiology; Betting; Biological and medical sciences; brain; Brain - physiology; Cognition & reasoning; Consciousness; Consciousness - physiology; Female; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Humans; Information relevance; Information representations; Instructional materials; Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Male; Mathematical vectors; Neurons; Neurons - physiology; neurophysiology; Neuroscience; Photic Stimulation; Rank tests; Sensory perception; Temporal lobe; Temporal Lobe - physiology; Unconscious (Psychology); Vertebrates: nervous system and sense organs; Visual Cortex - physiology; Visual Perception; Written correspondence; Young Adult; Noise; Stimulus; Duration
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.1180029

What qualifies a neural representation for a role in subjective experience? Previous evidence suggests that the duration and intensity of the neural response to a sensory stimulus are factors. We introduce another attribute--the reproducibility of a pattern of neural activity across different episodes--that predicts specific and measurable differences between conscious and nonconscious neural representations indepedently of duration and intensity. We found that conscious neural activation patterns are relatively reproducible when compared with nonconscious neural activation patterns corresponding to the same perceptual content. This is not adequately explained by a difference in signal-to-noise ratio.