Research project This project aims to help distinguish the brain processes that are specific to consciousness from those of attention. These are different but interacting processes: directed attention increases the likelihood that something will be perceived consciously. In addition, attention changes the nature of the conscious experience, so that it becomes more intense: colors take on more luster and contrasts are enhanced.
In this project, we will take advantage of the intensification that attention gives to conscious experiences to identify the neural correlates of consciousness. In experiments, we will measure brain activity with fMRI while manipulating both attention and consciousness. We can thereby see how attention alters the processes that precede consciousness (unconscious processing of stimuli) and those that are specifically related to consciousness. In this way, we can contribute new knowledge about both consciousness and attention, two important fields in several disciplines.
The aim of the project is to map the brain correlates of consciousness and to separate these from the brain correlates of attention. These two concepts have previously been considered more or less synonymous, but a large number of studies have shown that attention can also be directed towards stimuli that are not consciously perceived and affect the processing of these, i.e. that there is unconscious attention. It is more debated whether there can be consciousness without attention. In many studies that are intended to measure the correlates of consciousness, it is likely rather attention that is in fact measured. With our design, we hope to access the correlates of visual consciousness specifically.
Which brain activity correlates with the perception of stimuli consciously is far from clear. Some theories suggest that it is about activity in primary sensory areas, while others argue that it requires the involvement of associative areas in the parietal and frontal lobes. Previous research from our group has shown that this activity in frontoparietal areas is dependent on things such as the nature of stimuli and the difficulty of the task. It may therefore be that this activity reflects something other than consciousness, such as attention. Similarly, research on attention has mostly used conscious stimuli, and thus correlates for consciousness may have been mistaken for attention. Through this approach, we hope to be able to isolate neural correlates specific to consciousness.
