Conscious perception
Consciousness refers to people's awareness and attention to the outside world and themselves.[1] It is “at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives"[2].Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information, or the environment.[3] All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system.
Cognitive theory based on cognitive processing suggests that human perception of the natural world may be the oldest mode of consciousness[1]. Therefore, "the most basic concept of consciousness is perception." In other words, the problem of consciousness is equivalent to "awareness", and the most explicit manifestation of "awareness" is ‘perception’[1]. Consciousness is the perception of external stimuli and internal psychological events. Perception is the most basic feature of human consciousness, and the core of consciousness is perception. Furthermore, Consciousness is a selective process that allows only a part of the sensory input to reach awareness.[4]
The Manifestation of Conscious Perception
Some scholars point out that consciousness and perceptual awareness are two interrelated but different concepts. Perception refers to the conscious representation of the perceptual information of a stimulus. The perceptual awareness activity, that is, the mental state that is taking place, can be divided into three types. The first is to feel them subjectively. Secondly, it is difficult to detect their existence subjectively, but their existence can be perceived through attention. The third is that some mental states, such as those that cannot be represented by verbal activities, are completely implicit and inarticulate but existing awareness[1]. Obviously, conscious perception refers to the first type.
Source and Generation
Production and Promotion
Consciousness is a selective process which allows merely a part of sensory input to reach awareness. The question of which parts of the brain hold responsibilities for those things which could reach our awareness is one main puzzle in neurobiology now.[5] Conscious perception requires a constructive act whereby perceptual hypotheses are matched against information recovered from records, and serves to structure and synthesize that information recovered from different domains.[6] Single instances of imagery can have a pronounced facilitatory influence on subsequent conscious perception.[7]
Temporal Lobe Function
Previous research on the brains of primates has shown that primary and secondary cortices’ neurons provide poor representation of visual consciousness. On the contrary, the neurons in the temporal lobe seem to have reliable reflection on the actual conscious perception of a visual stimulus.[5]
Prefrontal Lobe Function
Exploring the conscious perception of near-threshold stimuli in a group of patients with right prefrontal damage and a group of matched healthy controls, results demonstrated that perceptual contrast to perceive the near-threshold targets was related to damage to the right dorsolateral pre-frontal cortex, and with reduced integrity of the ventral branch of the right superior longitudinal fascicule. These results suggest a causal role of the prefrontal lobe in conscious processing.[8]
Panagiotaropoulos and his team have shown that the electrical activity monitored in the lateral prefrontal cortex correlates with what the macaque monkeys actually perceive. Therefore, they concluded that visual awareness has not only reliable reflection in the temporal lobe, but also in the lateral prefrontal cortex of primates.[5] There is a so-called “lower-level” theories of consciousness, proposing consciously and unconsciously processed information differ on the level of activation in primary sensory brain regions. And so-called “high-level” theories of consciousness, propose that consciously and unconsciously processed information can similarly activate primary sensory brain regions, but consciously processed information activates a distributed set of fronto-parietal regions that enable the reverberation of information within the network.[8]
Temporal Distribution
Arising Stage
The mere presence of information in the brain does not always mean it is available to consciousness[9], in other words, complex cognitive processes can unfold under the absence of consciousness. Research shows there is no evidence that conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms, and also suggests that they cannot be dissociated by their time course.[10]
Conscious perception occurs at a late-arising stage of focal attentive processing, in which information integration and dissemination are involved, which means only once analysis is completed, and attended-to information is sufficiently well-integrated to be disseminated throughout the brain, does conscious perception arise.[11]
For visual perception specifically, experiments have shown that visual information can be processed and represented by the visual system without reaching consciousness, and visual consciousness arises as early as 180ms post-stimulus onset.[5]
Hierarchical Structure
Conscious perception experiences have a nested, compositional hierarchical structure. For example, certain colors are parts of certain shapes, which are parts of certain objects, which are parts of certain visual scenes, which are parts of a conscious perception experience as a whole. That is to say, the hierarchical structure of conscious perception involves a highly informative set of many nested parts that are bound into a unified whole. Furthermore, Integrated Information Theory(IIT) proposes that this structure is isomorphic to the integrated information generated in the brain.[12]
Temporal Discreteness
Conscious perception is continuous and smooth subjectively, but in fact has some level of temporal granularity which could be far below the temporal resolution of perception. Furthermore, perceptual experience can be packaged into discrete temporal frames on the sub-second scale. To better understand this, take an analogy with film projection. The frame of conscious perception is like a frame of a film in the gate of the projector, and the subjective fluency of conscious perception is like the continuity of the film as projected on the screen. The apparent flow and continuity of perception over time is a superficial phenomenon that is underlain by temporal discontinuity on a time scale of a substantial fraction of a second.[13]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 [1] Huo Yongquan. The Scientific Reconstruction and Developmental Landscape of Consciousness World.[D] Nanjing normal university.2005
- ↑ Susan Schneider; Max Velmans (2008). "Introduction". In Max Velmans; Susan Schneider (eds.). The Blackwell Companion to Consciousness. Wiley. ISBN 978-0-470-75145-9 Search this book on
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- ↑ Schacter, Daniel . Psychology. Worth Publishers.2011
- ↑ [2], Theofanis I. Panagiotaropoulos, Gustavo Deco, Vishal Kapoor & Nikos K. Logothetis Visual Consciousness in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex Neuron, Volume 74, Issue 5, 924-935, June 7th, 2012, 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.04.013.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 [3], Theofanis I. Panagiotaropoulos, et al, Visual Consciousness in the Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, Neuron, Volume 74, Issue 5, 924-935, June 7th, 2012, 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.04.013
- ↑ [4], Marcel, A. J. . (1983). Conscious and unconscious perception: an approach to the relations between phenomenal experience and perceptual processes. Cognitive Psychology, 15(2), 238-300.
- ↑ [5], Pearson, J. , Clifford, C. W. G. , & Tong, F. . (2008). The functional impact of mental imagery on conscious perception. Current Biology, 18(13), 982-986.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 [6], Colás, Itsaso, Chica, A. B. , Ródenas, Estrella, Busquier, H. , Olivares, G. , & Triviño, Mónica . (2019). Conscious perception in patients with prefrontal damage. Neuropsychologia.
- ↑ [7], Anh-Thu Mai, Tijl Grootswagers, Thomas A. Carlson,In search of consciousness: Examining the temporal dynamics of conscious visual perception using MEG time-series data,Neuropsychologia,Volume 129,2019,Pages 310-317,ISSN 0028-3932,https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2019.04.015.(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393219300880)
- ↑ [8], Peremen Z , Lamy D . Do conscious perception and unconscious processing rely on independent mechanisms? A meta-contrast study[J]. Consciousness and Cognition, 2014, 24:22-32.
- ↑ [9], Velmans M . When perception becomes conscious[J]. British Journal of Psychology, 1999, 90(4):543-566.
- ↑ [10], Haun A M , Oizumi M , Kovach C K , et al. Conscious Perception as Integrated Information Patterns in Human Electrocorticography[J]. Eneuro, 2017, 4(5):ENEURO.0085-17.2017.
- ↑ [11], White, Peter A . Is conscious perception a series of discrete temporal frames?[J]. Consciousness and Cognition, 2018, 60:98-126.
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