Journal
CURRENT BIOLOGY
Volume 31, Issue 13, Pages 2868-+Publisher
CELL PRESS
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.043
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- Charite - Universitatsmedizin Berlin
- Berlin Institute of Health
- German Research Foundation [STE 1430/8-1]
- German Ministry for Research and Education ((ERA-NET NEURON program) [01EW2007A]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Research using computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments has shown that the inferior frontal cortex plays a key role in detecting perceptual conflicts caused by ambiguous sensory information, facilitating the transformation of ambiguous sensory information into clear conscious experiences.
In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions, such as introspection or action. Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments that indicated a key role of inferior frontal cortex in detecting perceptual conflicts caused by ambiguous sensory information. Crucially, the detection of perceptual conflicts by prefrontal cortex turned out to be critical in the process of transforming ambiguous sensory information into unambiguous conscious experiences: in a third experiment, disruption of neural activity in inferior frontal cortex through transcranial magnetic stimulation slowed down the updating of conscious experience that occurs in response to perceptual conflicts. These findings show that inferior frontal cortex actively contributes to the resolution of perceptual ambiguities. Prefrontal cortex is thus causally involved in determining the contents of conscious experience.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available