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Related Experiment Videos

Seeing invisible motion: a human FMRI study.

Konstantinos Moutoussis1, Semir Zeki

  • 1Wellcome Department of Cognitive Neurology, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, United Kingdom. k.moutoussis@ucl.ac.uk

Current Biology : CB
|March 21, 2006
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

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Visual awareness does not always align with brain activity. Higher cortical areas, including V5, can activate to physical stimuli even when they are not consciously perceived, challenging existing models of visual consciousness.

Area of Science:

  • Neuroscience
  • Visual Perception
  • Cognitive Science

Background:

  • Current theories suggest visual consciousness arises from higher-level cortical processing.
  • Previous studies linked activity in areas like V5 to the perception of visual motion.
  • Dissociations between striate cortex activity and awareness have been reported.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether activity in higher cortical areas, specifically V5, is always correlated with conscious visual perception.
  • To determine if brain activity can track physical stimuli independently of awareness.

Main Methods:

  • Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to measure brain activity in human volunteers.
  • Participants viewed peripheral gratings under crowding conditions, making them difficult to perceive.

Related Experiment Videos

  • fMRI responses were analyzed for areas V3A, V5, and parietal cortex during moving versus flickering stimulus presentation.

    • Main Results:

    • Activity in areas V3A, V5, and parietal cortex increased significantly when the grating was moving compared to flickering.
    • This increased activity occurred even when the participants were unable to consciously perceive the motion (i.e., the stimulus was invisible).
    • Brain activity in these higher visual areas dissociated from conscious perception, tracking the physical stimulus instead.

    Conclusions:

    • Stimulus-specific activation of higher cortical areas does not guarantee conscious awareness.
    • The findings challenge the view that higher cortical activity is a sufficient condition for visual consciousness.
    • Visual motion processing in areas V3A, V5, and parietal cortex can occur outside of conscious awareness.