Neural dissociation between visual awareness and spatial attention
Open accessAbstract
To what extent does what we consciously see depend on where we attend to? Psychologists have long stressed the tight relationship between visual awareness and spatial attention at the behavioral level. However, the amount of overlap between their neural correlates remains a matter of debate. We recorded magnetoencephalographic signals while human subjects attended toward or away from faint stimuli that were reported as consciously seen only half of the time. Visually identical stimuli could thus be attended or not and consciously seen or not. Although attended stimuli were consciously seen slightly more often than unattended ones, the factorial analysis of stimulus-induced oscillatory brain activity revealed distinct and independent neural correlates of visual awareness and spatial attention at different frequencies in the gamma range (30-150 Hz). Whether attended or not, consciously seen stimuli induced increased mid-frequency gamma-band activity over the contralateral visual cortex, whereas spatial attention modulated high-frequency gamma-band activity in response to both consciously seen and unseen stimuli. A parametric analysis of the data at the single-trial level confirmed that the awareness-related mid-frequency activity drove the seen-unseen decision but also revealed a small influence of the attention-related high-frequency activity on the decision. These results suggest that subjective visual experience is shaped by the cumulative contribution of two processes operating independently at the neural level, one reflecting visual awareness per se and the other reflecting spatial attention.
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In studies instructing subjects to attend to a location and presenting consciously perceived or subliminal stimuli, neuronal correlates of attention and conscious perception differed when assessed with fMRI or MEG.
“In these studies, the neuronal correlates of attention and conscious perception differed if assessed with fMRI (Watanabe et al., 2011) or MEG (Wyart et al., 2012; Wyart and Tallon-Baudry, 2008).”
From Conscious Processing and the Global Neuronal Workspace Hypothesis (2020) · cites this paper as Wyart and Tallon-Baudry, 2008
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Wyart, V., & Tallon-Baudry, C.
- Affiliations
- Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (FR)
- ORCID
- Wyart, Valentin
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2008-03-05
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 2667-2679
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6671201
- OpenAlex
- W1974356429
- Cited by
- 391
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 17 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 21 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 19 · 2015: 30 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 29
- FWCI
- 16.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural dynamics and brain function
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Visual Attention and Saliency Detection
- Keywords
- visual awareness, spatial attention, neural correlates of consciousness, gamma oscillations, magnetoencephalography
- MeSH terms
- Adolescent, Adult, Attention, Awareness, Female, Humans, Male, Photic Stimulation, Space Perception, Vision, Ocular, Visual Pathways, Visual Perception
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