Abstract
The presence of a change in a visual scene can influence brain activity and behavior, even in the absence of full conscious report. It may be possible for us to sense that such a change has occurred, even if we cannot specify exactly where or what it was. Despite existing evidence from electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye-tracking data, it is still unclear how this partial level of awareness relates to functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation. Using EEG, fMRI, and a change blindness paradigm, we found multi-modal evidence to suggest that sensing a change is distinguishable from being blind to it. Specifically, trials during which participants could detect the presence of a colour change but not identify the location of the change (sense trials), were compared to those where participants could both detect and localise the change (localise or see trials), as well as change blind trials. In EEG, late parietal positivity and N2 amplitudes were larger for localised changes only, when compared to change blindness. However, ERP-informed fMRI analysis found no voxels with activation that significantly co-varied with fluctuations in single-trial late positivity amplitudes. In fMRI, a range of visual (BA17,18), parietal (BA7,40), and mid-brain (anterior cingulate, BA24) areas showed increased fMRI BOLD activation when a change was sensed, compared to change blindness. These visual and parietal areas are commonly implicated as the storage sites of visual working memory, and we therefore argue that sensing may not be explained by a lack of stored representation of the visual display. Both seeing and sensing a change were associated with an overlapping occipitoparietal network of activation when compared to blind trials, suggesting that the quality of the visual representation, rather than the lack of one, may result in partial awareness during the change blindness paradigm.
Highlights
It is common for us to overestimate the amount of information that we can process and store about the world around us
Using EEG, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and a change blindness paradigm, we found multi-modal evidence to suggest that sensing a change is distinguishable from being blind to it
In the EEG data, the late parietal positivity ERP, localise trials were significantly higher in amplitude than blind trials as previously found (Scrivener et al, 2019), but sense trials were not distinguishable from those where participants were blind to the change
Summary
It is common for us to overestimate the amount of information that we can process and store about the world around us. The failure to detect changes between visual scenes is known as change blindness, and is used as evidence to suggest that our internal representation of the outside world is not as complete as once thought (Noe et al, 2000; Rensink, 2004). It was previously assumed that if we are blind to a change we cannot provide any information about it, and that the Received: 3 June 2020; Revised: 4 February 2021.
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