Theories of consciousness

Question 1

What ‘search’ unites the theories of consciousness

Answer 1

The search for the neural correlate of consciousness. Theories are highly influenced by what is considered ‘evidence’ for the presence of a visual percept.

Question 2

Describe GNWT

Answer 2

Global neuronal workspace theory distinguishes three modes of processing a stimulus must undergo.

1. Subliminal, evoking only a weak and not very ‘deep’ activation of cortex
2. Preconscious, higher strength and deeper activation, yet because of the absence of attention, it does not reach the ‘Global Workspace’
3. Conscious, because attended, signals reach the Global Workspace, and hence can be broadcast to other modules of the brain, enabling ‘access’

Question 3

What are the neural correlates of this ‘global workspace’?

Answer 3

The Global Workspace consists of a fronto-parietal network of layer III neurons with large cell bodies and long axons. These form a ‘hub’ that interconnects wide-spread regions of the cortex.

Question 4

How do these layer III neurons produce conscious access? How long does this take to happen after stimulus onset?

Answer 4

Once information reaches the GW, it gets amplified via recurrent / reverberating (feedback) activation, causing global ignition. This manifests itself typically at a latency of about 300-400 ms after stimulus onset.

This broadcasting into the global workspace and subsequent global ignition produces ‘conscious access’ (cognition, report, etc).

Question 5

How is GNWT supported by research?

Answer 5

GNWT is supported by paradigms that contrast neural signals for stimuli that are reportedas ‘seen’ versus stimuli that are reported as ‘not seen’. Example: the Attentional Blink paradigm

Question 6

How to GNWT explain semi-conscious percepts?

Answer 6

Stimuli are either reported as ‘seen’ or as ‘not seen’ with very little in between (bimodal distribution). Conscious access is ‘all or nothing’.

Question 7

What is the neural correlate for the ‘seen’ part of either seen or or not seen?

Answer 7

Occipital signals like P1, N1 do not correlate with ‘seen’ vs ‘not seen’, nor with visibility score. N2, N4 (occipito-parietal) correlates (ns) with subjective visibility.

Only N3, P3a, P3b (frontal) correlates with the ‘seen’ vs ‘unseen’ dichotomy.

> Frontal activity is the neural correlate of what subjects report seeing

Question 8

What does this evidence for GNWT rely on?

Answer 8

What the participants report seeing

Question 9

Describe HOTT and the general brain areas involved in the supposed components

Answer 9

Higher order thought theory HOTT distinguishes first order (FO) representations from higher order (HO) representations

The FO representations reside in sensory cortex, memory regions, arousal circuits, reward circuits, proprioception, etc.

These FO representations need to be re-represented by higher order regions in frontalcortex. These re-representation are ‘thoughts’ about the FO representation.

Question 10

What requirement of HOTT distinguishes it from other cognitive theories and how?

Answer 10

That conscious experiences entail some kind of minimal inner awareness of one’s ongoing mental functioning, and this is due to the first-order state being in some ways monitored or meta-represented by a relevant higher-order representation.

This requirement of HOT distinguishes it from cognitive theories, such as GWT, which also invoke additional cognitive processes as a crucial element of conscious experience, but which do not posit this type of inner awareness.

Question 11

Describe criticism regarding HOT’s necessity of cognitive access, in the form of a kind of inner awareness, for phenomenological consciousness

Answer 11

A common objection then is that HOT makes consciousness require overly sophisticated mechanisms. One version of this criticism is that HOTT appears to commit itself to the cognitive requirement of having concepts about mental states that constitute the content of higher-order thoughts.

Question 12

How may different HOTTs respond differently to the criticism of having a cognitive requirement of having concepts about mental states that constitute the content of nigher order thoughts?

Answer 12

Some appeal to innate concepts. Others deny that the relevant conceptual capacities are sophisticated. Still others question whether concepts are required at all.

Question 13

What has the fact that higher-order philosophers tend to use propositional statements involving personal pronouns (‘I see red’) to describe the higher-order thought led to? How is this inconsistent?

Answer 13

The idea that HOT implies a conscious self that has introspective knowledge of its experiences. However, HOTT proponents, in fact, typically call upon a cognitively ‘lean’ conception of both thought and self. In some versions, a monitoring mechanism that works at the subpersonal level is postulated, while, in other versions, the thoughts are at the personal level but are arrived at automatically and without appearing to be the product of inference.

Question 14

How is signal detection theory relevant to HOTT?

Answer 14

In signal section theory, the d’ was how discriminable the two stimuli were, represents by the distance of the distributions (less overlap) and the ROC curves towards ‘hits’ and less false alarms. (deprime)

This allows you to, independently of what the decision criterion of the subject is, determine whether internally in his brain the signals are either close by or further apart.

This used to measure ‘metacognition’; a higher order thought.

Question 15

How do you then measure metacognition?

Answer 15

How sure are you that the answer you gave at the detection task is right? The (often speeded) detection / discrimination task is followed by a question where subjects rate their confidence of the answer.

There will be a signal strength where people say ‘yes’ and have high confidence (C2|r=“s2”) or say ‘no’ and have high confidence (C2|r=“s1”). Again, an ROC can be plotted, giving ‘type 2 ROC’, and metacognitive d’

Question 16

How may subjects rate their confidence to an answer? (2)

Answer 16

This can be either high /low or 1/2/3/4 etc. Or a post decision wagering (how much do you bet on being right).

Question 17

How does this measure metacognition on a conceptual level?

Answer 17

If the participants are sure that they seen the stimulus then this suggests that they not only saw it, but that they KNEW that they saw it.

Question 18

Describe a real experiment where metacognitive deprime was studied

Answer 18

Two types of stimuli were tested, rivalrous and non-rivalrous. For each stimulus, subjects had to indicate in which quadrant the stimulus was presented. Next, confidence had to be rated 1-10.

Overall, performance on both tasks is about equal (69% vs 74%, not shown). However, there is a clear difference in the relation between performance and confidence for the two tasks. For the non-rivalrous stimulus, confidence is higher when performance is better (meta d’ = 3). But for the rivalrous stimulus, confidence and performance have no relation (meta d’ =0).

Question 19

What conclusions were drawn from this study on metacognition

Answer 19

It is concluded that there is no metacognitive awareness of the performance for the rivalrous stimulus, hence the performance is unconscious (blindsight).

Question 20

How was metacognition experimentally manipulated to show that it is a higher order thought?

Answer 20

Transcranial (burst) stimulation (cTBS) of lateral Prefrontal Cortex (LPFC) impairs metacognition of face perception (Type 2 AUROC = area under the ROC curve).

Meta d’ –d’ = HOT

Question 21

Describe integrative information theory

Answer 21

The main tenets of IITcan be presented as a set of phenomenological axioms, ontological postulates, and identities…

…axioms are self-evident truths about consciousness –the only truths that, with Descartes, cannot be doubted and do not need proof (experience exists, it is irreducible etc.)…

…The central axioms, which are taken to be immediately evident, are as follows:

Question 22

Name and describe 5 of these axioms

Answer 22

Intrinsic existence- each experience is real, and it exists from its own intrinsic perspective, independent of external observers.

Information- consciousness is specific:each experience is the particular way it is, thereby differing it from other possible experiences

Composition- consciousness is structured: each experience is composed of phenomenological distinctions, elementary or higher-order, which exists within it.

Exclusion- consciousness is definite, in content and patio-temporal grain: each experience has the set of phenomenal distinctions it has, not less or more, and flows at the speed it does, not faster or slower.

Integration- consciousness is unified: each experience is irreducible to non-independent subsets of phenomenal distinctions

Question 23

Describe integration with an example

Answer 23

INTEGRATION: Consciousness is integrated: each experience is (strongly) irreducible to non-interdependent components. Thus seeing a red triangle is irreducible to seeing a triangle but no red colour, plus a red patch but no triangle.

Question 24

What is integrated information?

Answer 24

It is a number, you can have more or less integrated information. Integrated information requires information being exclusive (i.e. differentiated, specialized, selective, specific), yet also being integrated (i.e. the sum being more than the parts).

Question 25

In models of integrated information, what is the correlates between the extent of connectedness in nexts and their levels of integrated information?

Answer 25

Fully connected nets (A) have low Φ because the individual nodes do not carry unique information.

Too sparsely connected nets (D, E) have lowΦ because there is insufficient integration of the information

Non reciprocal, non uniform connections of various strengths carry the highest level of integrated information

Question 26

How do these integrated information models explain consciousness?

Answer 26

Consciousness exists in the corticothalamic system, but not in cerebellum, afferent pathways, epilepsy or sleep.

Computing Φ in simple models of neuroanatomy suggests that a functionally integrated and functionally specialized network—like the corticothalamic system—is well suited to generating high values of Φ. Architectures modeled on the cerebellum, afferent pathways, and cortical-subcortical loops give rise to complexes containing more elements, but with reduced Φ compared to the main corticothalamic complex.

Question 27

What brain structure has the highest density of neurons?

Answer 27

Cerebellum, however low phi

Question 28

How does integrated information theory explain 1) epilepsy and 2) sleep

Answer 28

Epilepsy has very active neural activity, yet no consciousness; Φ peaks in balanced states; if too many or too few elements are active, Φ collapses.

In a bistable (“sleeping”) system, Φ collapses when the number of firing elements (dotted line) is too high (high % activity), remains low during the “DOWN” state (zero % activity)

Question 29

How is phi calculated?

Answer 29

Phi is impossible to calculate for more than a few neurons, but a close approximation would be the Perturbational Complexity Index (PCI). This also is high when there is differentiated yet integrated information, i.e. with high Phi

Question 30

How is loss of integration, loss of information and integrated information observed when measuring PCI?

Answer 30

TMS pulse is applied in an area and information spread is tracked throughout connected neurons

With lack of integration there will only be a couple lips of activation and not much else. Loss of information, there is a lot of correlated activity. With integrated information there is a lot of uncoordinated and varied activity.

Integrated information also takes a bit longer to die out.

Question 31

Name another important factor in integrated information

Answer 31

Directional flow

Question 32

How does directional flow affect whether something is conscious?

Answer 32

A set of elements generates integrated information Φ only if each subset has both causes and effects in the rest of the set.

A set of 6 elements is composed of two subsets that are not interconnected. The set reduces to 2 independent subsets of 3 elements each that can be partitioned without loss. The 6 element set does not exist intrinsically (dashed black oval).

(B) All subsets of the 6 node set have causes and effects in the rest of the set. The 6 node set generates an integrated conceptual structure since it cannot be unidirectionally partitioned without loss of conceptual information. Therefore it has unified consciousness

(C,D) A set of 6 elements divides into 2 subsets of 3 elements that are connected unidirectionally. (C) The left subset has causes in the rest of the set, but no effects.

(D) The left subset has effects on the rest of the set, but no causes. In both cases, the set reduces to 2 subsystems of 3 elements each that can be unidirectionally partitioned without loss (dashed red line with directional arrow). The 6 element set does not exist intrinsically.

Question 33

How is this explanation of directional flow used to make a further claim?

Answer 33

Strictly feedforward systems have zero Φ

Question 34

Contrast integrated and feedforward systems according to integrated information theory

Answer 34

(A) A strongly integrated system gives rise to a complex in every network state. In the depicted state (yellow: 1, white: 0), elementsform a complex with ΦMax = 0.76 and 17 concepts.

(B) Given many more elements and connections, it is possible to construct a feed-forward network implementing the same input-output function as the strongly integrated system in (A) for a certain number of time steps (here at least 4). This is done by unfolding the elements over time, keeping the memory of their past state in a feed-forward chain.

The transition from the first layer to the second hidden layer in the feed-forward system is assumed to be faster than in the integrated system to compensate for the additional layers Despite the functional equivalence, the feed-forward system is unconscious, a “zombie” without phenomenological experience, since its elements do not form a complex.

Question 35

Name and describe Victors theory

Answer 35

Immigrants are a burden on the sacred motherland of Europe and should be forbidden to enter

Question 36

Name and describe Victor’s other theory (about consciousness)

Answer 36

Recurrent processing theory (RPT); RPT takes the distinction between feedforward and recurrent (re-entrant) processing as fundamental to understanding consciousness. It is the neural definition of consciousness. In doing so, it makes a distinction between attention and consciousness, and between phenomenal and access consciousness.

Question 37

Recap how contextual modulation occurs

Answer 37

V1 integration to allow contextual modulation is mediated by feedback from higher areas back to lower areas. (extrastriate area lesions abolish contextual modulation )

Question 38

What evidence shows that feedback connections and feedforward connections use different neurotransmitters

Answer 38

Recurrent processing is reduced by NMDA receptor blocker APV, Bottom up visual signals are reduced by AMPA receptor blocker CNQX, but RP is not.

Question 39

How are these findings relevant to consciousness?

Answer 39

Figure ground stimuli were shown to awake trained monkeys. Activity was recorded from V1 using implanted electrodes. In the awake state, responses to figure regions were larger than responses to background regions (contextual modulation), reflecting figure-ground segregation.

In the anesthetized condition (isoflurane inhalation), recording from the same electrodes yielded equally strong and selective feedforward activation. Feedback mediated figure ground signals were selectively absent.

Question 40

What other experimental evidence was there for not consciously perceiving feedforward signals in monkeys? (3)

Answer 40

Dichoptic masking abolishes contextual modulation, not feedforward signals.

Pattern backward masking abolishes recurrent signals at those latencies (The mask onset is 40ms, before feedback flow takes place) that also abolish the capability to perceive the fig-gnd stimuli. Feedforward activation remains intact. Masking is the mismatch between FF and FB.

Gauging responses based on conscious (phenomenal) experience via the ‘opt out’ method (~blindsight). Clear contextual modulation was observed in trials where monkeys reported seeing the figures. Monkeys failed to see figures in 8% of figure present trials. They maintained fixation instead. In those trials, contextual modulation was selectively absent, while feedforward signals remained.

Question 41

how was this requirement of recurrent signals for conscious perception studied in humans?

Answer 41

Dichoptic masking- Iconic face / house / nonsense stimuli made of line segments were presented to the two eyes. Combined (fused), they either resulted in a visible or invisible face / house etc. Fusion was ascertained via a 3D ellipse task. Visibility was verified behaviourally.

Question 42

How would activation in FFA differ for visible and invisible faces?

Answer 42

Invisible would only be slightly weaker

Question 43

What is was the difference between seeing the faces and not seeing the faces then?

Answer 43

The difference between visible and invisible faces was that visible faces evoked strong and widespread figure-ground signals (A,B,C), prolonged EEG signals (earlier than suggested by GWST) (D,E), strong theta, beta and gamma band activity in the occipital cortex, and selective interaction (functional connectivity) between FFA and lower visual areas

Question 44

What does RPT then consider as the fundamental proponent of consciousness?

Answer 44

RPT takes the distinction between feedforward and recurrent (re-entrant) processing as fundamental to understanding consciousness. It is the neural definition of consciousness.

Question 45

What is the difference with GNWT, that also takes re-entrant signals, causing global ignition as the NCC?

Answer 45

In RPT, attention (important in GNWT) is fully independent of (and even orthogonal to) the feedforward/ recurrent dimension.

Attention equals depth of processing. Some stimuli may penetrate deeper into the visual hierarchy than others, for example depending on the irrelative strength (neutral state) or on preactivation of neurons and pathways (biased state).

GNWT states that consciousness arises when there is both attention and recurrent processing while RPT only requires recurrent processing

Question 46

By making attention / cognition orthogonal to consciousness, what predictions follow?

Answer 46

1. There is a deep feedforward processing, reaching frontal parts of the brain and activating high level cognitive functions without conscious experience of the stimuli evoking these functions
2. There is conscious experience without attention, access and report

Question 47

Describe a study used to test these assumptions regarding the deep feedforward processing without conscious percept

Answer 47

Subjects had to respond as fast as possible to the GO annulus. However, they had to withold their response when the annulus was preceded by a NO-GO cue (square). The cues were either visible or masked so that they were invisible (chance performance on detection). Invisible NO-GO cues slowed down responses to the annulus (b,c). > unconscious inhibition

See docs

Question 48

Despite the behavioural effect on inhibition, are the areas involved in inhibition activated in this task? Explain what was observed

Answer 48

Yes, Consciously visible (weakly masked) NO-GO cues activated the typical prefrontal inhibition network (pre-SMA, IFG). This activation was weaker, but involved the same frontal areas for unconscious (strongly masked) cues. Moreover, the unconscious activation was functional: the stronger the activation, the more slowing down

Question 49

What happened when they changed which stimulus meant inhibition at every task?

Answer 49

Activation of (prefrontal) cognitive control processes even with flexible S-R associations and same behavioural results

Question 50

What else provided evidence for the orthogonality of consciousness and cognition?

Answer 50

There are conscious and unconscious versions of about every cognitive function imaginable. (unconsciously triggered task-set preparation, unconscious conflict detection, unnoticed response errors, implicit violation of expectancies).

An often observed difference between conscious and unconscious cognition: the integration / combination of multiple cognitive functions

Question 51

What theories does the fast feedforward sweep seem to provide evidence against and why?

Answer 51

Frontal activation in itself is not sufficient for consciousness (HOTT, GNWT?)

Question 52

Describe a study testing whether there is conscious experience without attention, access and report

Answer 52

Study attempting to abolish the report component of the NCC: Binocular rivalry where fusion does not occur, participants only have to passively observe it and not report it. The stimulus in the left eye moved to the left, and the right eye to the right, therefore optic-kinetic nystagmus would take place where it would cause saccadic eye movements which could be tracked to determine which stimulus was dominant.

OKN used to verify rivalry switches: rivalry also occurs without report. Neural correlates of switch with report > dlPFC activation. neural correlates of switch without report > NO dlPFC activation.

Therefore passively observing binocular rivalry, instead of reporting it, abolishes PFC activation, it is not required to simply perceive the stimulus.

Question 53

Describe a second study and its results where report and no report conditions are compared

Answer 53

Objects are masked or not masked and people have to either report or don’t have to report seeing the stimulus. Frontal activation / P3b is only present when objects need to be reported. In the no-report condition, objects are seen, and an occipital ERP signal distinguishes between visible and masked objects. Yet no frontal activation.

Question 54

What conversation did this spark regarding NCC?

Answer 54

Distilling NCC pre-cursors, ‘true NCC’ and consequences of the NCC

Question 55

What was the consensus outcome of this conversation regarding the distillation of NCC

Answer 55

Feedforward activation; RF properties, P1- precursors

Visual recurrent processing; CM, N200, VAN- NCC

Frontoparietal activation; GWign, P3b- consequences of NCC, attention etc

Question 56

Name the broad categories of visual functions from basic to complex (7)

Answer 56

>Feature detection
>Base groupings (conjunction of two features)
>High level categorisation 
>Perceptual interference 
> Perceptual inference 
> Incremental gestalt grouping
> Perceptual organisation

Question 57

Give some examples of High level categorisation (6)

Answer 57

(faces (TE), 
Identities (Ent) 
houses, (temporal lobe), 
Words (VFA), 
emotions (amygdala), 
'Gist' (Temporal lobe)

Question 58

What is meant by perceptual interference?

Answer 58

Information/ features that are no longer independent of each other (perceived brightness, perceived colour, colour constancy, other visual illusions)

Question 59

What is perceptual inference?

Answer 59

Information that is inferred from the visual input, going beyond what is physically there (illusory triangle)
•Illusory contours
•Ambiguous stimuli
•Many other illusions

Question 60

What is meant by Incremental gestalt grouping?

Answer 60

The binding / grouping of distant features and elements for which no specific and dedicated systems exist, requiring short or long distance (horizontal) interactions between similar neurons. Gestalt rules of perceptual organization

Question 61

Which of these categories are involved in the base fast forward sweep?

Answer 61

> Feature detection
Base groupings (conjunction of two features)
High level categorisation

Question 62

Which of these categories require recurrent processing?

Answer 62

> Incremental gestalt grouping

> Perceptual organisation

Question 63

What about the remaining two categories?

Answer 63

Still some discussion in the literature to what extent they belong to each category

Question 64

What could this suggest about the extent to which visual functions are conscious and unconscious

Answer 64

Could suggest the initial 3 are unconscious and the last two are conscious; there is a distinction between conscious and unconscious visual functions

Question 65

Name two ways in which you can manipulate conscious experience

Answer 65

Visibility manipulations and attentional manipulations

Question 66

What visual manipulations are there? (5)

Answer 66

Anesthesia
Blindsight
Masking, Dichoptic masking
CFS, Rivalry
Objective vs Subjective thresholds

Question 67

What attentional manipulations are there? (4)

Answer 67

Neglect
Attentional Blink
Change Blindness
Inattentional Blindness

Question 68

To what extent are these attentional processes governed by recurrent processes ?

Answer 68

Kanisza illusion specific neural signals are present during prolonged inattention (IB) and do not differ from non-IB signals, suggesting that they aren’t

Question 69

How was visual and attentional manipulations studied in one experiment?

Answer 69

Masking and attentional blink were combined. Either kaniza images or control images were displayed and were either strongly masked (no AB- 600-900ms lag, control images) or masked (AB- 300ms lag, kanisza images). Physical contrast of stimuli and perceptual integration were also measured (see docs). EEG was measured in both conditions

Question 70

What were the results of the masking and attentional blink study?

Answer 70

With both the contrast image difference could be decoded but with the perceptual integration image, unmasked it could be decoded but masked it could not.

Feature detection: still happens with masking (and AB)

Perceptual integration: not happening with masking, Still happening during attentional Blink

Question 71

What conclusions can be drawn from this study regarding masking and attentional blink?

Answer 71

Attention has no effect on this recurrent processing

Question 72

As more of these attentional and visual studies are carried out, what findings are made? (3)

Answer 72

• Feature extraction and categorisation are not abolished by visibility manipulations nor by attentional manipulations
• Visual functions related to perceptual organisation / integrating information over larger distances across the visual field are affected by (most) visibility manipulations
• Attention / access is not required for any visual function to be executed (although it may modulate the strength of these visual functions)

Question 73

What is meant by saying that conscious visual perception is cognitively impenetrable?

Answer 73

‘Knowing’ about visual illusions cannot make you ‘unsee’ them (triangle, colour constancy). At best, cognition / attention can slightly modulate visual percepts.

Question 74

What changes happen from feedforward to recurrent, and how can two different conclusions be drawn on this?

Answer 74

Phenomenology gets explained
Unconscious > Conscious
Feature extraction > Perceptual organisation

Functionalist conclusion: Conscious visual experience arises with perceptual organisation / binding / grouping / integration

Physicalist conclusion: Conscious visual experience arises with the transition from feedforward to recurrent visual processing

Question 75

What other feature of attention needs to be addressed?

Answer 75

attention invokes a capacity limit: you can only attend to one or a few items at a time. Yet you seem to seemany more. Somewhere, there is a bottleneck for attention (early or late)

Question 76

What is the overflow argument regarding attention?

Answer 76

The overflow argument: you see more than you can attend, cognitively access, or report

Question 77

Some claimed that if you didn’t attend then you were not aware, others said you would just get the ‘gist’ of the stimulus. How did big Vic attempt to show them that they are wrong?

Answer 77

previous studies would show 8 objects in a circle for 1000ms then 2000ms gap then show the circle again and point to one and ask if the stimulus had changed. People would perform badly on this task.

Vic repeated this study but indicated during the 2sec gap which stimulus to attend to. This resulted to a big increase in performance.

This suggests that you have a fairly decent image in your head after seeing a stimulus unless it is overwritten by another stimulus.

Question 78

What two different types of memory were presents after these results

Answer 78

memory of big dick vic’s study displayed fragile memory which is overwritten when seeing something new

Memory in the other study showed working memory that was relatively stable but had a very limited capacity

Question 79

What are the neural substrates of these kinds of memory?

Answer 79

TMS to the Right DLPFC disrupts WM not FM.

Iconic memory capacity depends on V1-V3 density. Iconic memory capacity depends on visual cortex glutamate concentration. Iconic memory capacity can be boosted or reduced by tDCS of visual cortex.

Question 80

Which of these memories depend on attention?

Answer 80

Also a simultaneous N-back task disrupts working memory but not fragile memory, indicating that WM relies on attention but FM does not.

Question 81

Who’s/ what insertion was still left to challenge regarding this wm and fragile memory?

Answer 81

Mr “you just fool yourself into think FM contains all these objects. It’s just gist!” Cohen- the notion of objects, ensemble statistics

Question 82

Describe a study which probed the amount of detail of WM and FM

Answer 82

The same task was carried out but they were just asked whether there was a change. If they said there was a change, the participants were asked to identify one of four objects that was there pre-change. If they noticed that there was a change and got the object correct then this was considered a high quality memory, if they know there was a change but didn’t no which object then this was considered a low quality change. The participants were asked pre change early, pre change late or post change.

Question 83

What were the results of the study on the amount of detail in Wm and FM?

Answer 83

In pre change early there were a high percentage of people who had a high quality perception and low percentage of people with a low quality perception,
in pre change late there slightly lower percentage of people who had a high quality and a higher percentage of people who had a low quality perception.
In post change both high and low quality perception was quite low

This suggests that fragile memory (iconic memory) is quite detailed

Question 84

Describe 2 other studies investigating the capabilities of WM and FM

Answer 84

Designed to measure the precision of WM and FM - arrows shown pointing different directions around fixation point. Gap before one arrow reappears pointing a different direction. Participants had to rotate the arrow to point in its original direction.

Designed to measure the perceptual qualities of WM and FM. The kanisza illusion was used depicting 8 arrows around the fixation point or control images. It was used to text for grouping, amodal completion and inference in FM and WM. Since there are so many little ‘pacmans’ it is difficult to notice any differences being made unless you remember the perceptual grouping.

Question 85

What were the results in the study investigating the precision of WM and FM

Answer 85

Was just as good for both wm and fm.

Question 86

What were the results in the study investigating the perceptual qualities of WM and FM?

Answer 86

Kanisza configurations boost the capacity of WM and FM. Even more for FM than for WM

Question 87

Describe a study which measured the confidence of those using wm and fm and the results

Answer 87

Had to look at a fixation point, bars were shown, there was a gap and a cue given before or after the changed or not changed stimulus and participants had to determine if the bar at the cued point changed orientation. The participants then had to state whether their answer was “sure”, “doubt” or “guess”.

Question 88

What conclusions were drawn on these studies regarding WM vs FM?

Answer 88

The whole idea of “gist” does not work, you really see all objects, details and all

Question 89

Whats the difference between iconic and fragile memory

Answer 89

iconic is right after, family is a few seconds after

Question 90

So therefore, does change blindness occur in the visual domain?

Answer 90

So change blindness only happens in the domain of access, not in the visual domain. You did see both guys, you just forgot the first, once he was gone.

So scenes are reduced to ‘gist’ in access, not in vision itself

Question 91

Some Tesco brand Jeff Bezos looking guy said “Still, why not call the intermediate stage (without access and report) pre-conscious, and only the final stage (when stuff is attended and accessed) conscious?”

What was Vicstar’s rebuttal?

Answer 91

Because taxonomy matters! If we want to explain where ‘the magic happens’, we should lay the boundary between unconscious and conscious at the right place. Which is between levels 1 and 2, not between levels 2 and 3!

We want to know what transition in brain activity ‘does the explaining’, when it comes to solving the riddle of visual experience, solving the riddle of why we are different from photo cameras. And that transition is between 1 and 2.

Only in that way, do we do justice to the search for the neural correlate of consciousness, and do we do justice towards explaining and understanding what consciousness actually is or does.

Finally, it gives consciousness its own and independent ontological status, orthogonal from cognition, attention, etc

Then he hit him a headbutt

Question 92

Explain Victor Lambo’s rebuttal in terms of the change blindness experiment of the two guys

Answer 92

You had a rich, detailed, precise and phenomenal (hence conscious) visual percept of both guys behind the counter at the moment you looked at them. This percept was lost, however, as soon as they went out of view. Your failure to notice the switch was a failure of attention, of working memory, of access. But your conscious visual perception did not fail at all.

If we would have ‘asked your brain’ at the momentyou looked at those guys, we would have seen recurrent interactions between FFA and early visual cortex, and all other neural signs and signals (such as NMDA activation) that mark the transition between unconscious and conscious processing. We would have seen integrated neural activity.

Question 93

In conclusion give three reasons why is a mistake to conflate cognition with consciousness?

Answer 93

1. Probing into the details of the change blindness phenomenon shows that conscious perception overflows cognition
2. Neural signatures of conscious vision that explain the properties of conscious vision are present in the absence of cognition
3. Conflating consciousness with cognition creates a misleading taxonomy that makes us bark up the wrong tree when it comes to really understanding consciousness

Question 94

According to RPT what is sufficient for conscious visual percept? explain

Answer 94

According to RPT, recurrent processing between visual areas is sufficientto generate a conscious visual percept. It generates a pure ‘seeing’, without cognition. There is no need for further frontal involvement. Only to report on the visual percept, store it in working memory, or do other cognitive manipulations, frontal involvement is required

Visual cortex, and hence ‘seeing’ has much higher capacity than frontal cortex / attention / access. So seeing is overflowing cognition

Question 95

What does IIT identify which allows for the generation of conscious content?

Answer 95

IIT also identifies a ‘Posterior Hot Zone’ ;) , a region of cortex in the back of the brain that is optimally organised for high Φ, and allows for the generation of conscious content

Question 96

How can the theories of consciousness be split into categories then?

Answer 96

‘Sensory’ theories
•IIT, RPT
•Perceptual organization, Integration, Binding
•The ‘Seeing’

Frontal’ theories
•GNWT, HOTT
•Attention, Access, Report, (Meta)Cognition
•The ‘Knowing’