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Updated: Aug 6, 2025

P50 Sensory Gating in Infants
Published on: December 26, 2013
Bistability of prefrontal states gates access to consciousness
Abhilash Dwarakanath1, Vishal Kapoor2, Joachim Werner3
1Department of Physiology of Cognitive Processes, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tübingen 72076, Germany; Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux énergies alternatives, Université Paris-Saclay, NeuroSpin Center, 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette, France.
Abstract:
Access of sensory information to consciousness has been linked to the ignition of content-specific representations in association cortices. How does ignition interact with intrinsic cortical state fluctuations to give rise to conscious perception? We addressed this question in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) by combining multi-electrode recordings with a binocular rivalry (BR) paradigm inducing spontaneously driven changes in the content of consciousness, inferred from the reflexive optokinetic nystagmus (OKN) pattern. We find that fluctuations between low-frequency (LF, 1-9 Hz) and beta (∼20-40 Hz) local field potentials (LFPs) reflect competition between spontaneous updates and stability of conscious contents, respectively. Both LF and beta events were locally modulated. The phase of the former locked differentially to the competing populations just before a spontaneous transition while the latter synchronized the neuronal ensemble coding the consciously perceived content. These results suggest that prefrontal state fluctuations gate conscious perception by mediating internal states that facilitate perceptual update and stability.
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