Nature Neuroscience
8, 1391 - 1400 (2005)
Published online: 11 September 2005; | doi:10.1038/nn1549
Timing of the brain events underlying access to consciousness during the attentional blinkClaire Sergent1, Sylvain Baillet2
& Stanislas Dehaene11
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale Unité 562, Cognitive Neuroimaging, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique, 4, place du Général Leclerc, 91401 Orsay Cedex, France. 2
Cognitive Neuroscience and Brain Imaging Laboratory, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique UPR 640-LENA, Hôpital de la Salpêtrière, 47, boulevard de l'Hôpital 75651 Paris Cedex 13, France.
Correspondence should be addressed to Claire Sergent sergent@shfj.cea.fr In the phenomenon of attentional blink, identical visual stimuli are sometimes fully perceived and sometimes not detected at all. This phenomenon thus provides an optimal situation to study the fate of stimuli not consciously perceived and the differences between conscious and nonconscious processing. We correlated behavioral visibility ratings and recordings of event-related potentials to study the temporal dynamics of access to consciousness. Intact early potentials (P1 and N1) were evoked by unseen words, suggesting that these brain events are not the primary correlates of conscious perception. However, we observed a rapid divergence around 270 ms, after which several brain events were evoked solely by seen words. Thus, we suggest that the transition toward access to consciousness relates to the optional triggering of a late wave of activation that spreads through a distributed network of cortical association areas.
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