Неосознаваемые зрительные сигналы и непроизвольные реакции человека

Abstract

The article reports the results of the psychophysiological studies of the perception of conscious and unconscious information during purposeful human activity. The study focused on the most important aspect of sensory physiology—the perception of images. The images contained conscious and unconscious (hidden) faces. We developed the methods of signal (facial images) masking and the methods to identify the person’s unconscious perception through his/her involuntary reactions. We also proposed a set of objective physiological methods of an integrative assessment of a person’s condition. A special focus was given to transferring information along magnocellular and parvocellular neural pathways from the retina to the subcortical nuclei: to the lateral geniculate body, the superior colliculus, the pulvinar, the amygdala complex and the hypothalamus. The article explores how the received information is analysed further in the dorsal occipito-parieto-frontal large-scale neural network and the ventral occipital-temporo-frontal network. It also proposes algorithms that describe how these neural networks function. The markers of unconscious perception were revealed by psychophysiological methods of eye movement registration, EEG and fMRI. The experimental evidence revealed the influence of unconscious perception on decision making in the neural networks of the prefrontal cortex. The article offers a model of opposing interactions of the ventral and dorsal neural networks and reciprocal relationship of the neural networks of various structures of the prefrontal cortex. It has been suggested that the relationship between conscious and unconscious perception ensures decision making and the effectiveness of purposeful human behavior.