05/02/2012 by admin.

Don’t think of a purple elephant – you know the game. It is practically impossible to manage this seemingly simple task. We will think about the suppressed thought, probably every minute or so. Why?

In fact, the more seriously we put effort into avoiding the thought, the more it comes to consciousness. In order to avoid the thought, we have to keep monitoring whether the suppression is working. We, in effect, keep asking ourselves whether a purple elephant is anywhere near our consciousness. Every once in a while, that unconscious monitoring pops the thought into consciousness.

This sort of mechanism can explain some social gaffs and freudian slips. We are just trying too hard to avoid certain subjects/words. If we were less nervous about those subjects it would be easier to avoid blurting out the unacceptable remark we are determined to avoid. I think some people call this ‘don’t mention the war’ effect after a famous Fawlty Towers episode.

I heard a story of someone trying to learn to ride a bicycle. They were finally staying upright and feeling pretty good. After a few moments there was a post along the path and they concentrated on avoiding it. The more they told themselves to avoid the post, the more they were aimed at it and in the end hit it (dead center).

What comes into the center of consciousness is what is important either because it was not predicted (a surprise) or because it is part of the on-going task we are trying to accomplish. Usually these are referred to as bottom-up and top-down steering of attention. We have to be careful not to turn a no-no thought into a top-down focus of attention.

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10/12/2011 by admin.

Attention and consciousness are often thought to be inseparable or even two words for the same thing, but under unusual circumstances they can be separated. It is not easy to separate them and so what consciousness does to assist attention would be an important function of consciousness to the extent that attention was important to survival. Well that’s a no brainer – all you have to do is not attend to what is happening when cross a busy road to understand the risk to survival of not attending to the important things. Surely this function alone would pay the biological cost of consciousness.

Consciousness, in effect, is a canvas on which the spotlight of attention can fall so that all areas of the brain can know what is currently important and so that part of the canvas can be rendered in more detail. What steers the spotlight? We have mechanisms to keep the brain focused on a task or goal, thought of as top-down control, and mechanisms to shift focus to unusual or alarming sensory input, thought of as bottom-up control. This keeps what is significant in awareness and available to the whole brain. All the resources of the brain can be brought to the important problem of the moment. Because what is currently significant is in consciousness, it is also in memory. We start memories with the most important aspect of each consecutive moment.

Victor Lamme and his group have studied attention and consciousness with, to my mind, a very reasonable attitude – forget introspection etc. and let the neurological evidence rule. Looking at the neural correlates of consciousness – the fast forward wave and the feedback wave with its synchrony across large areas of the cortex – and controlling the visual stimulus, they find the following.

Because depth of processing (attention) and the fast forward sweep (FFS)/ recurrent processing (RP) distinction are orthogonal, a visual stimulus can reach any of four stages of processing:

• Stage 1: Superficial processing during the FFS; This would happen when a stimulus is not attended and is masked. Unattended and masked words, for example, do not activate word-form selective areas, only visual areas, so do not even penetrate deeply into the ventral stream hierarchy.

• Stage 2: Deep processing during the FFS; for example, a stimulus that is attended, yet masked (and hence invisible). This stimulus does travel through the whole hierarchy of sensory to motor and prefrontal areas, and may influence behavior, as in unconscious priming.

• Stage 3: Superficial processing of a recurrent/ re-entrant nature (RP); for example, a visual stimulus that is given sufficient time to evoke RP (i.e., is not masked within ∼50 ms) yet is not attended or is neglected, as in neglect, inattentional blindness , change blindness, or the attentional blink.

• Stage 4: Deep (or a better word may be “wide-spread”) RP. This is the case when RP spans the whole hierarchy from low level sensory to high level executive areas. This occurs when a stimulus is given sufficient time to engage in RP and is attended. Others have equated this to the situation that a stimulus has entered global workspace .

Or this description:

Initially, all objects are processed by low level areas in a feedforward fashion, so that basic features are extracted at about 100ms (Stage 1). Some objects are processed more deeply at about 200ms (Stage 2), depending on top down and bottom up attentional selection. Meanwhile, recurrent processing in early visual areas emerges also at about 200ms (Stage 3) for all or most of the objects. Later still, at about 300 msec, recurrent processing grows more widespread (Stage 4) for those objects that are selected by attention (potentially slightly different ones than those that were favored initially, as attentional selection is influenced by previous processing). After stimulus removal, Stage 3 processing turns into iconic memory, while Stage 4 processing turns into working memory.

It is difficult to envisage how what is significant could be decided and broadcast without the use of some structure like consciousness awareness in which it can be tagged. And it is hard to see how the brain could work without global priorities.

Besides the significance, there is an aspect of attention that is connected with language. E.B. Bolles (here) has been writing about this for a few years – and in his theory, the words in language steer attention so that the speaker and listener can mutually focus on the same topic. So if I start by saying ‘the car’ then my listener will focus attention on some object that fits that description and/or the concept of ‘car’ in the listener’s mind. This steering of attention may be a further reason (beside the need to use working memory) why language is almost always conscious. I will be returning to language again later.

There is more to come. Previous posts in this series:

Possible functions of consciousness 1 - leading edge of memory

Possible functions of consciousness 2 – gate to meaning

Possible functions of consciousness 3 – working memory

Possible functions of consciousness 4 – place to imagine

Possible functions of consciousness 5 – create ‘now’

Possible functions of consciousness 6 – presence ‘here’

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23/08/2011 by admin.

The phenomenon of ‘conflict adaptation’ is a cognitive control function that has been thought to only apply when conscious information is used, that is, information that can be held for some time in working memory. Conflict adaptation happens in priming experiments: when a prime corresponds to the target, the target is more quickly and accurately identified but the correspondence has affects not just in its own trial but the following one, so that an incongruent prime-target produces less priming effect in the next trial. Although the priming correspondence effect applies to both conscious and unconscious primes, the conflict adaptation appeared to apply only to conscious primes. Conflict adaptation is thought to occur because following a conflict (incongruent prime-target) pre-frontal cortex control processes increase control over perceptual processes in a top-down way.

In a recent paper (see citation below), the researchers found that if attention was not relaxed between trails, the conflict adaptation could occur with unconscious priming. They used the same experiment setup as Kunde in which the priming had to be conscious to get conflict adaptation. They made only two changes: they did not use a warning sound before a trial which forced the subject to maintain vigilance between trials; and, they shortened the gap between trials to less that 1.5 seconds from about 2-2.3 seconds. Under these conditions, unconscious priming also gave conflict adaptation.

These results add to the growing body of literature suggesting that unconscious information can influence high-level (prefrontal) cognitive control functions, such as inhibitory control, task switching, error correction and conflict adaptation (present study). These results further elucidate and expand the potential influence of unconscious information on our direct, but also future decisions.

van Gaal, S., Lamme, V., & Ridderinkhof, K. (2010). Unconsciously Triggered Conflict Adaptation PLoS ONE, 5 (7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0011508

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27/07/2011 by admin.

Binocular rivalry is an experimental setup where different images are projected to each eye. We do not consciously see both images but an alternative awareness of one and then the other. From paper sited below (Roeber, Veser, Schroger, O’Shea):

One sees one of the images for a few moments, referred to as the dominant image, while the other is completely invisible, suppressed. Then, after a brief period of transition, when both or parts of the two images are seen together, the other image becomes dominant and the first becomes suppressed. The images continue to alternate in visual consciousness randomly as long as one bothers to look at them. Binocular rivalry is an important phenomenon for researching the neural correlates of consciousness because visual consciousness changes without any change in the physical stimulation.

The cause of the rivalry have been proposed by two theories. It could be the top-down result of attention; or, it may be a bottom-up mechanism involving reciprocal inhibition and adaptation.

The behavioural, fMRI, and EEG evidence is consistent with attention’s being required for rivalry to occur. But Paffen et al. proposed an intriguing alternative hypothesis, at least for their behavioural results. They proposed that:

• Attention is not required for rivalry to occur,

• Attention increases the underlying neural activity of each of the representations of the rival stimuli that compete in the low-level rivalry mechanism; this is similar to increasing the contrast of the rival stimuli, and

• This increase in activity leads to greater adaptation, leading to faster alternations.

….We decided to test Paffen et al.’s explanation of attention’s effects on rivalry by measuring ERPs. ERPs are changes in electrical activity of the brain that follow some event, measured from electrodes placed on the scalp. ERPs have temporal resolution in the order of milliseconds. The typical form of the ERP when the event is the sudden appearance of a specific visual object or feature includes a positive component peaking about 100 ms after the event, the P1, and a negative component about 170 ms after the event, the N1. …If attention affects binocular rivalry by boosting neural responses to the rival stimuli, then attending to rival stimuli should increase ERPs from a change to a rival stimulus compared to when attention is on something else. If adaptation affects binocular rivalry and attention is accompanied by increasing adaptation, as proposed by Paffen et al., then attending to rival stimuli should decrease ERPs from a change to a rival stimulus. We found the latter: Attending to the rival stimuli decreases the size of the N1 compared with when attention is on something else.

In particular when attention was on the rival grating images and subjects had to report changes in the orientation the ERP (N1 160-210 ms) was smaller than when attention was on a fixation target distant from the grating images.

To explain this paradoxical effect of attention, we propose that rivalry occurs in the attend-to-fixation condition (we found an ERP signature of rivalry in the form of a sustained negativity from 210–300 ms) but that the mechanism processing the stimulus changes is more adapted in the attend-to-grating condition than in the attend-to-fixation condition. This is consistent with the theory that adaptation gives rise to changes of visual consciousness during binocular rivalry.

For my interest, this is a further separation of attention from consciousness. Although they are found together most of the time – they do appear to be separate processes.

Roeber, U., Veser, S., Schröger, E., & O’Shea, R. (2011). On the Role of Attention in Binocular Rivalry: Electrophysiological Evidence PLoS ONE, 6 (7) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0022612

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03/07/2011 by admin.

When I was first learning to identify things through a microscope, it seemed an impossible task. There was a sea of variously shaped and coloured splauches and each one had to be examined with respect to a long set of specification that had to be memorized. But I discovered after a few of these learning tasks that what was difficult at first became extremely easy. I would just look generally at the microscope field and the cells I was searching for just popped out of the background. A similar thing happened when I was first visiting African game parks. At first I would be scanning the vista with binoculars and taking a long time to spot any animal that was visible. After a while I just looked without binoculars and saw animals, dozens of them. I needed the binoculars to identify them sometimes or to see what they were doing but for finding them in the first place – better just to relax and look. I have often wondered how we learn these search tricks.

There is a recent paper by Hussain, Sekuler and Bennett, Superior Identification of Familiar Visual Patterns a Year After Learning. I do not have access to the paper but the ScienceDaily posting is (here) The paper seems to be about this ability. Here is the abstract:

Practice improves visual performance on simple tasks in which stimuli vary along one dimension. Such learning frequently is stimulus-specific and enduring, and has been associated with plasticity in striate cortex. It is unclear if similar lasting effects occur for naturalistic patterns that vary on multiple dimensions. We measured perceptual learning in identification tasks that used faces and textures, stimuli that engage multiple stages in visual processing. Performance improved significantly across 2 consecutive days of practice. More important, the effects of practice were remarkably stable across time: Improvements were maintained approximately 1 year later, and both the relative difficulty of identifying individual stimuli and individual differences in performance were essentially constant across sessions. Finally, the effects of practice were largely stimulus-specific. Our results suggest that the characteristics of perceptual learning are similar across a spectrum of stimulus complexities.

These were not straight forward images.

Over the course of two consecutive days, participants were asked to identify a specific face or pattern from a larger group of images. The task was challenging because images were degraded — faces were cropped, for example — and shown very briefly. Participants had difficulty identifying the correct images in the early stages, but accuracy rates steadily climbed with practice.

There are some important differences between this type of memory and usual episodic memory. This is a ‘how to’ memory, like riding a bike; they are memories of how to find and identify x where no two x are the same. These memories are formed and held differently and do not suffer the modification and weakening over time that memories of events do. They are not fact or semantic memories either. I am sure I can identify quickly cell types that I learned 50 years ago but I am not sure I would remember their names or facts about them. Facts and names are getting hazy. Even some of the animal names have become a little faint.

These particular how-to-perceive memories (unlike riding a bicycle) have a very conscious affect. We see the objects of our search pop out clearly from the surroundings. This must be a product of attention swinging to them as soon as they are identified.

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09/06/2011 by admin.

Unconscious pop-out: Attentional capture by unseen feature singletons only when top-down attention is available, is the title of a paper about to be published. When the paper appears it will likely be unavailable to me, but if I can read it, I will post again with more detail. Here is most of the press release:

Paying attention to something and being aware of it seem like the same thing -they both involve somehow knowing the thing is there. However, a new study, which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, finds that these are actually separate; your brain can pay attention to something without you being aware that it’s there.

“We wanted to ask, can things attract your attention even when you don’t see them at all?” says Po-Jang Hsieh, co-author… Usually, when people pay attention to something, they also become aware of it; in fact, many psychologists assume these two concepts are inextricably linked. But more evidence has suggested that’s not the case.

To test this, Hsieh and his colleagues came up with an experiment that used the phenomenon called “visual pop-out.” They set each participant up with a display that showed a different video to each eye. One eye was shown colorful, shifting patterns; all awareness went to that eye, because that’s the way the brain works. The other eye was shown a pattern of shapes that didn’t move. Most were green, but one was red. Then subjects were tested to see what part of the screen their attention had gone to. The researchers found that people’s attention went to that red shape – even though they had no idea they’d seen it at all.

In another experiment, the researchers found that if people were distracted with a demanding task, the red shape didn’t attract attention unconsciously anymore. … “We need to be able to direct attention to objects of potential interest even before we have become aware of those objects,” he says.

What appears to be the gist of the paper is that bottom-up, perception driven, and top-down, task driven, attention can be ‘active’ at the same time; the bottom-up, in this case, determining what reaches awareness and the top-down being independent of awareness. It has been a question in my mind for some time – is attention an integral part of consciousness or just part of its preparation (like perception). This work seems to imply the later, that attention and consciousness are separate processes which interact.

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28/04/2011 by admin.

Now that fMRI can be presented to subjects in nearly real-time feedback it is possible to directly observe the result of subjective mental experience on neural activity (or vice versa). This is another way to look at consciousness. Kalina Christoff and group have a recent paper (see citation) on feedback regulation of the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPRC), an area associated with awareness of meta-cognition or control of introspection. Here is the abstract:

Recent real-time fMRI (rt-fMRI) training studies have demonstrated that subjects can achieve improved control over localized brain regions by using real-time feedback about the level of fMRI signal in these regions. It has remained unknown, however, whether subjects can gain control over anterior prefrontal cortex (PFC) regions that support some of the most complex forms of human thought. In this study, we used rt-fMRI training to examine whether subjects can learn to regulate the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC), or the lateral part of the anterior PFC, by using a meta-cognitive awareness strategy. We show that individuals can achieve improved regulation over the level of fMRI signal in their RLPFC by turning attention towards or away from their own thoughts. The ability to achieve improved modulation was contingent on observing veridical real-time feedback about the level of RLPFC activity during training; a sham-feedback control group demonstrated no improvement in modulation ability and neither did control subjects who received no rt- fMRI feedback but underwent otherwise identical training. Prior to training, meta-cognitive awareness was associated with recruitment of anterior PFC subregions, including both RLPFC and medial PFC, as well as a number of other midline and posterior cortical regions. Following training, however, regulation improvement was specific to RLPFC and was not observed in other frontal, midline, or parietal cortical regions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of acquiring control over high-level prefrontal regions through rt-fMRI training and offer a novel view into the correspondence between observable neuroscientific measures and highly subjective mental states.

Previous studies have suggested the RLPFC’s role is to monitor, coordinate, integrate and evaluate the products of of higher level stages of cognitive processing. Subjects used observation of their own thoughts to increase RLPFC activity and they used external sensory and bodily sensations to decrease the activity. With real time feedback they significantly increased their ability to control the level of activity in the RLPFC. Controls attempted the same effects without any feedback or with sham feedback and did not achieve significant changes. However, trained mediators achieve similar (not identical) effects.

While previous rt-fMRI feedback training studies have shown that subjects could learn to regulate activation with the sensorimotor contex by imagining hand movements, the insula by recalling personal affectively charged events, the anterior cingulate by attending to and away from the painful properties of a stimulus, and the inferior frontal gyrus through the use of various strategies involving sub-vocal speech, here we show that subjects can use an abstract mental process such as metacognitive awareness of one’s own thoughts to regulate activation levels in one of the highest-order cortical association regions.

This is a very powerful tool. It is a fairly probable guess that what the subjects are doing is steering attention – the focus of conscious attention. We will hear much more from this experimental setup in the future and it will shine a light on consciousness.

McCaig, R., Dixon, M., Keramatian, K., Liu, I., & Christoff, K. (2011). Improved modulation of rostrolateral prefrontal cortex using real-time fMRI training and meta-cognitive awareness NeuroImage, 55 (3), 1298-1305 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2010.12.016

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07/04/2011 by admin.

Here is the abstract of a paper by A. Shackman, J. Maxwell, B. McMenamin, L. Greischar and R. Davidson in The Journal of Neuroscience, Jan 2011, Stress Potentiates Early and Attenuates Late Stages of Visual Processing. The whole paper is not freely available unfortunately.

Stress can fundamentally alter neural responses to incoming information. Recent research suggests that stress and anxiety shift the balance of attention away from a task-directed mode, governed by prefrontal cortex, to a sensory-vigilance mode, governed by the amygdala and other threat-sensitive regions. A key untested prediction of this framework is that stress exerts dissociable effects on different stages of information processing. This study exploited the temporal resolution afforded by event-related potentials to disentangle the impact of stress on vigilance, indexed by early perceptual activity, from its impact on task-directed cognition, indexed by later postperceptual activity in humans. Results indicated that threat of shock amplified stress, measured using retrospective ratings and concurrent facial electromyography. Stress also double-dissociated early sensory-specific processing from later task-directed processing of emotionally neutral stimuli: stress amplified N1 (184–236 ms) and attenuated P3 (316–488 ms) activity. This demonstrates that stress can have strikingly different consequences at different processing stages. Consistent with recent suggestions, stress amplified earlier extrastriate activity in a manner consistent with vigilance for threat (N1), but disrupted later activity associated with the evaluation of task-relevant information (P3). These results provide a novel basis for understanding how stress can modulate information processing in everyday life and stress-sensitive disorders.

When involved in a task, the prefrontal cortex steers attention. Only surprising sensory input will usually overcome the task oriented focus of attention. It seems that stress overturns this situation and makes non-surprising sensory input override tasks in steering attention. This is probably important for the avoidance of danger – the environment requires careful monitoring. But I suppose this is part of why being upset can make it so hard to concentrate on what I’m trying to get done.

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21/02/2011 by admin.

The default mode network is not as simple as it seemed. There are probably several configurations. A recent paper (by D Stawarczyk and others) has looked at the difference between the default network when the subject is not attending to a task and when the subject is ignoring sensory stimulating from the outside world.

Here is the abstract:

The default mode network (DMN) is a set of brain regions that consistently shows higher activity at rest compared to tasks requiring sustained focused attention toward externally presented stimuli. The cognitive processes that the DMN possibly underlies remain a matter of debate. It has alternately been proposed that DMN activity reflects unfocused attention toward external stimuli or the occurrence of internally generated thoughts. The present study aimed at clarifying this issue by investigating the neural correlates of the various kinds of conscious experiences that can occur during task performance.

Four classes of conscious experiences (i.e., being fully focused on the task, distractions by irrelevant sensations/perceptions, interfering thoughts related to the appraisal of the task, and mind-wandering) that varied along two dimensions (‘‘task- relatedness’’ and ‘‘stimulus-dependency’’) were sampled using thought-probes while the participants performed a go/no-go task. Analyses performed on the intervals preceding each probe according to the reported subjective experience revealed that both dimensions are relevant to explain activity in several regions of the DMN, namely the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus, and posterior inferior parietal lobe. Notably, an additive effect of the two dimensions was demonstrated for midline DMN regions. On the other hand, lateral temporal regions (also part of the DMN) were specifically related to stimulus-independent reports. These results suggest that midline DMN regions underlie cognitive processes that are active during both internal thoughts and external unfocused attention. They also strengthen the view that the DMN can be fractionated into different subcomponents and reveal the necessity to consider both the stimulus- dependent and the task-related dimensions of conscious experiences when studying the possible functional roles of the DMN.

The digits between 1 and 9 were shown at the center of a screen. Subjects were asked to be as quick and accurate as possible in responding to each number except if the number was 3. Series of stimuli were followed by a thought-probe which interrupted the task. For each probe, subjects were asked to characterize the conscious experience they has in the few trials prior to the probe. They were given four possible responses: on-task, task-related interferences, external distractions, mind-wandering. In total the responses were respectively 32, 22, 26, 21%. Subjects had training trials, and trials in and out of a scanner. This is an interesting blend of high-tech fMRI scanning, cognitive computer screen and keyboard experimentation and reporting of conscious thoughts.

I think it may be too early to label the default network as having one, two of even four or five functions. I assume that there are various network configurations for various tasks and likewise various configurations for various ‘resting’ or default conditions. The worry-wart that is stewing over some imagined problem is likely to have a very different mind-wandering configuration to the person anticipating their up-coming vacation. I look forward to examinations of the default network for years to come.

Stawarczyk, D., Majerus, S., Maquet, P., & D’Argembeau, A. (2011). Neural Correlates of Ongoing Conscious Experience: Both Task-Unrelatedness and Stimulus-Independence Are Related to Default Network Activity PLoS ONE, 6 (2) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016997

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09/09/2010 by admin.

According to Victor Lamme, the reason that the study of consciousness is so difficult is that it gives priority to introspection and behaviour so, as a result, we are fooled into thinking that we know what we are conscious of. By adding evidence from neuroscience into the mix, he hopes to understand consciousness. He looks at the components of what we call consciousness and teases them apart: the phenomenal experience, the behavioural control, the access to the experience/ability to report it, the working memory, the attention focus. Then he asks what neural events match which aspects of consciousness.

Vision is the sense that Lamme uses to explain his model. The first cut is made between the iconic memory and working memory. The iconic image has more detail, is short-lived and overwritten by a change of scene, is not useful to cognition; while the working memory image has limited detail, can last for some time and is not overwritten by new events, is useful to cognition. The parts of the iconic image that become part of the working memory are those few which are attended to – so this cut can also be seen as consciousness with attention verses consciousness without attention.

Consciousness is then divided into stages using the neural events associated with consciousness. These events are the fast feedforward sweep (FFS) and the recurrent processing (RP). In the FFS, information flows from the visual cortex forward through the dorsal and ventral paths to the motor and frontal cortex area. This sweep starts with purely visual processing and ends with motor and executive processing. In RP, information flows out horizontally in each area and flows back to lower levels, as far back as the original visual cortex. In other words, there is a bottom-up stream followed by a sidewise and top-down spread.

Lamme’s stages are:

Stage 1 – Superficial processing during the FFS. Processing stops at the visual areas if a stimulus is not attended to and is also quickly overwritten by a masking image.

Stage 2 – Deep processing during the FFS. If stimulus is attended to but is quickly overwritten the result is that processing reaches the prefrontal and motor areas but remains unconscious.

Stage 3 – Superficial processing with RP. If the stimulus is not masked and has time to evoke RP but is not attended to or is neglected (inattentional blindness, change blindness, attentional blink), the FFS does not travel far but is followed by RP in the area it has managed to reach.

Stage 4 – Deep or widespread RP. If the stimulus has time for the FFS to travel fully forward and is attended to, the RP will span all levels from original visual to executive areas. This consciousness can be reported.

With this four stage model, Lamme labels Stages 1 & 2 as not having consciousness, Stage 3 as iconic representation and Stage 4 as working memory representation. The travel of the FFS forward is associated with attention and the spread of RP is associated with phenomenality.

Lamme argues that the inclusion of neuroscientific evidence is important.

“My main objection is against a form of cognitive psychology where mental constructs are taken as undeniable truths to which neuroscience has to be fitted. I would argue that in the study of consciousness, there are no undeniable truths.

That is the standard approach in science. Intuition told us the sun revolves around the earth, while in fact it is the other way around. Intuition dictated creation, where evolution is the counterintuitive scientific answer. To make scientific headway in our science of consciousness, we need to acknowledge that our intuitions may be wrong and need to be set aside. The upshot is that – finally – we may start solving the questions that have been bothering us for the ages.”

What a breathe of fresh air to have introspection taken off its pedestal!

I have my own list of what explanations of consciousness should address and Lamme touches most of them. My disappointment is the sparse mentions of the role of the thalamus and the nature of synchronous activity as well as the lack of a mention of the apparent projection into the near future of the representation of moving objects.

 
Lamme, V. (2010). How neuroscience will change our view on consciousness Cognitive Neuroscience, 1 (3), 204-220 DOI: 10.1080/17588921003731586

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