On the brain-imaging markers of neural correlates of consciousness

Frontiers in Psychology

Talis Bachmann¹ 

关键词: consciousness;    neural correlates;    contrastive analysis;    contents of consciousness;    criterion contents of report;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00868

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

For many years, since Baars (1988) explicitly formulated it, contrastive analysis has been the key methodological approach in experimental studies of consciousness. When certain properly chosen psychological experimental setups (allowing an invariant target stimulus either to be consciusly experienced or not) were combined with brain-imaging methods, contrastive analysis became a quite powerful tool of research (Crick, 1994; Koch, 2004). By subtracting markers of brain processes recorded in the conditions without conscious experience of the target from the markers recorded in the conditions where the same target is consciously experienced it was believed that the markers of neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) can be obtained. However, as it turned out in the subsequent theoretical and experimental analysis, the picture is not so clear and simple (Bachmann, 2000, 2009; Miller, 2007; Aru et al., 2012; de Graaf et al., 2012). For example, when in the invariant conditions of independent variables a masked visual stimulus was consciously perceived or not (consciousness of the target standed as a dependent variable), NCC which were measured as a spectral perturbation of EEG was present already before stimulus presentation (Aru and Bachmann, 2009). Thus, the neural correlate of consciousness of a stimulus was present earlier than the stimulus itself was presented. Now, a reader must not get excited here because instead of some paranormal explanations brain-science based explanations can be comfortably used.

【 授权许可】

CC BY