On the all-or-none rule of conscious perception

Talis Bachmann

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2013.00387

Abstract

On the all-or-none rule of conscious perception

Highlights

What are the true functional underpinnings of perception, emotion, consciousness, and subconscious processes remains an unsolved question (Alivisatos et al, 2012)
Nobody denies accumulation of pertinent data on where and how the changes in neural activity correlate with conscious experience
Specific and nonspecific thalamocortical systems provide circuits for representing the contents and guaranteeing the state of consciousness (Ribary, 2005; Liu et al, 2013), processes in the higher level sensory-perceptual cortical areas tend to correlate with awareness more than the processes in the primary areas (Logothetis et al, 1996; Hesselmann et al, 2011), reentrant activity from higher to lower level nodes seems to constitute a typical feature of circuits involved in conscious perception (Lamme, 2010), etc

Summary

Introduction

What are the true functional underpinnings of perception, emotion, consciousness, and subconscious processes remains an unsolved question (Alivisatos et al, 2012). Nobody denies accumulation of pertinent data on where and how the changes in neural activity correlate with conscious experience. We do not know whether conscious experience of a stimulus is a gradually emerging attribute of the activity of the corresponding neural circuits or is it an effect appearing abruptly as soon as a corresponding neural marker appears.

Results

Conclusion