Task 5 Flashcards
What are the two set of arguments which seperate consciousness from attention ?
- Pschological theoreticl one
2. Neurobiological one
What is a fundamental assumption of consciousness ?
- that it needs selective attention
- It is the gate system
What does selective attention mean ?
- we are not aware of everything we lay our eyes on
- Certain stimuli might never reach consciousness, not even when attended even though they undergo sensory processing (CALLED non selective attentional mechanism)
Which studies proove selective attention ?
- IB and CB
- CB and IB are not failures of consciousness but failures of conscious memory
How can u manipulate selective attention ?
- Preceding stimuli: via cueing a certain stimuli
- it forms a neural representation of almost the whole scene in WM
- it leaves a trace of activation - Salient stimuli
What are the three clases of processing a stimuli ?
- unconscious, unattended or attended
Which of the 3 classes of processing reach awareness ?
- Only Attended
What is meant by the block theory ?
-Block distinguish between ‘phenomenal’ and ‘access’ awareness to describe consiousness
What is realted to phenomenal awareness ?
- sensory memory
- Example: Cue works also long after the item has disappeared - > representation still present and attention can select from it
- So it is the pool of information
What is realted to access awareness ?
- working memory
What is essential according to block to come from phenomenal to access awareness or form sensory to working memory ?
- Attentional selection = Selective attention
Based on the neurobiological persepctive what is meant by attention ?
- Attention is a selection process where some inputs are processed faster, better or deeper than others,-> better chance of being memorized
How does the brain determine which stimuli will be attended to ?
- depending on the state of the brain when stimuli arrive it chooses either one or the other
- It depnds also on the combination of sensory processing with short and long-term memory explains
Which brain state do we have ?
- Neutral brain state
- biased brain state
What is meant by the neutral brain state ?
- Stimulus is choosen because it better matches with stored synaptic weight
What is meant by the bias brain state ?
- processing of a previous stimulus has left a short-term trace of activity
- The stimuli which follows a similar path will be choosen
What is the major function of competition during neuronal proccesing ?
- it prevents all inputs from reaching output areas of the brain
What is meant by the localizationist approach ?
- The search of what kind of neural activity is, capable of producing awareness
Accoring to the article what replaced the localization approach ?
- By the distinction between Feedforward sweep (FFS) and recurrent processing (RP)
What is meant by FFS ?
- It is about passing on activaition of cells in cortical areas hierachly
- Very fast
- It is an unconscious process - no visaul awareness
What is meant by RP ?
- occurs after the FFS
- It is about recurrent interactions between neurons which are mediated by feedback–feedforward circuits
- This leads to manifastion of certain information
- consouisses
Where does the FFS start ?
- V 1= 40ms (uncosncious )
- Most visual areas = 80 ms (unconscious)
- Motor cortex = 120ms (consciousness)
What did certain studies about FFS and RP reveal ?
- Backwards masking -> revealed that FFS is still active even though it is invisble / but it supressed the RP which is why we can not see it
- TMS study -> feedback from MT to V1 is necessary for motion awareness
- Anesthetized animals - > FFS still worked but RP did not
What is meant by phenomenal awareness /consciousness ?
- no reportability
- You do not have any control over them
- Sensory experience and emotions
- is capable of handeling multiple stimulus cause of limited compettition (both stimuli)
What is meant by acces awarenes / consciousness ?
- reportability
- You have control over them
- reasoning
When does phenomenal awareness occur ?
- During a late satge of FFS when the early visual areas start to to engage in recurrent interaction
When does acces awareness occur ?
- when the recurrent interactions grows and grows
- when the visual information (phenomenal awareness) is put into the context of the systems’ current needs, goals and full history -> Acces awareness
- depends also on how much the visual areas incoperate with actiona nd memory areas
What determines if phenomenal awareness will become access awareness ?
- it depends on the extend of cooperation between visaul areas and action/memory realted areas
What is the overall conclusion according to the article about attention and awareness ?
- attention and awareness are intricately related but distinguish!
- BUT: there seems more overlap between mechanisms of memory and awareness
What is meant by awareness ?
- consiousness
Explain the goal of the study done by Koch:
- dissociate selective visual attention from visual consciousness/awarenss
Explain the set up of the experience done by Koch: What was the manipulation of attention ?
- Participant lay in a magnetic scanner while they had to carry out one of two attention task while supressing a distraction cycle
- Asking participant to report the presence of a target letter when it appeared in a stream of letters (RSVP)
- report whether they could see the target grating and ignoring the letters
- > used as manipulation of attention
What are the two facts which the experimnet was build around on ?
- If both were projected into one eye, the cycle/mondrean – and the moving grating (gitter) was visible -> Visbile stumulus block
- However, when each was projected into a different eye, the target became invisible -> Invisble stimulus block
- Both are 500ms long
What does RSVP mean ?
- rapid serial visual presentation
- many pictures rapidly occuring
What are the four conditions of the study done by Koch ?
- Attending to the visible grating
- Attending to the invisible grating
- Attending away from the visible grating
- Attending away from the invisible grating
How did KOCH meassure activity ?
- Via the blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal in V1
What was the conclusion of the study ?
- BOLD response was unaffected by whether the participant lying in the scanner saw the target (grating) or not.
- paying attention to the target consistently and strongly increased BOLD activity
- > V1 neurons do not directly contribute to visual awareness only to attention
What study was used to also prove the findings of the first study ?
- A monkey study but they did not use a megentic scaner they used spiking activity in V1
- invasive
What were the conclusion of the second study with the monkeys ?
- visual attention
and consciousness are supported by distinct neuronal
mechanisms.
What are some limitations on the theory that attention and awareness are different concepts ?
- The phenomenon of blindsight caused by lesions in V1 suggests a role for V1 in awareness
- TMS study revealed that: the feedback activity from the middle temporal area to V1 is crucial for visual awareness
- BUT V1 could also just be a rode to consciousness !! instead of the place for consciousness
What ie meant by the block design ?
How do we manipulate visibality/consciousness ?
- 14 to 2 ratio in both visibule and invisble stimulus block
- over 16 seconds
- Each stimuli as one second
- meassuring BOLDS activity
How does a CB Task and WM correlate ?
- Number of items surviving CB correlate with the number of items that can be stored in WM,
What is so special about salience ?
- Salienc reflects how long term memory has shaped/modified snensory processing
Explain the process of phenomenal awareness and acces awarennes a bit more in detail:
- Multiple stimuls are presented in early stage of FFS
- at Higher stage the receptor fields become larger (compettion)
- Atentional selection solves comeptitiom
- At the same time in early visual areas recurrent interactions started (RP) -> Till there phenomenal awareness
- Then recurrent interactions grow more (selective attention start again) and then visual input will be put in needs and goals (acces awareness)
What is the difference between unattended and unconsciousses ?
- in unconsciouss u do not have a phenomenal awareness
Explain the first model by lamme:
- No distinction between attended and consciousness
- There is no unconsciously process (either attended or unattended)
Explain the second model by lamme:
- Same as the first model but now there is a unconscious state
- But still no distinction - between attended and consciousness
Explain the third model by lamme:
- Simplified version of 2 because it puts attented and conscious together
Explain the fourth model by lamme:
- Lammers supports the one
- Switched the other from b
- He says a lot of stimuli reaches our conscious state but does we need attention to report it
