Attention versus consciousness in the visual brain: differences in conception, phenomenology, behavior, neuroanatomy, and physiology.

A common confound between consciousness and attention makes it difficult to think clearly about recent advances in the understanding of the visual brain. Visual consciousness involves phenomenal experience of the visual world, but visual attention is more plausibly treated as a function that selects and maintains the selection of potential conscious contents, often unconsciously. In the same sense, eye movements select conscious visual events, which are not the same as conscious visual experience. According to common sense, visual experience is consciousness, and selective processes are labeled as attention. The distinction is reflected in very different behavioral measures and in very different brain anatomy and physiology. Visual consciousness tends to be associated with the "what" stream of visual feature neurons in the ventral temporal lobe. In contrast, attentional selection and maintenance are mediated by other brain regions, ranging from superior colliculi to thalamus, prefrontal cortex, and anterior cingulate. The author applied the common-sense distinction between attention and consciousness to the theoretical positions of M. I. Posner (1992, 1994) and D. LaBerge (1997, 1998) to show how it helps to clarify the evidence. He concluded that clarity of thought is served by calling a thing by its proper name.     

Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes

The close relationship between attention and consciousness has led many scholars to conflate these processes. This article summarizes psychophysical evidence, arguing that top-down attention and consciousness are distinct phenomena that need not occur together and that can be manipulated using distinct paradigms. Subjects can become conscious of an isolated object or the gist of a scene despite the near absence of top-down attention; conversely, subjects can attend to perceptually invisible objects. Furthermore, top-down attention and consciousness can have opposing effects. Such dissociations are easier to understand when the different functions of these two processes are considered. Untangling their tight relationship is necessary for the scientific elucidation of consciousness and its material substrate.     

A global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness

Both the global workspace theory and Block’s distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, are central in the current debates about consciousness and the neural correlates of consciousness. In this article, a unifying global workspace model for phenomenal and access consciousness is proposed. In the model, recurrent neural interactions take place in distinct yet interacting access and phenomenal brain loops. The effectiveness of feedback signaling onto sensory cortical maps is emphasized for the neural correlates of phenomenal consciousness. Two forms of top-down attention, attention for perception and attention for access, play differential roles for phenomenal and access consciousness. The model is implemented in a neural network form, with the simulation of single and multiple visual object processing, and of the attentional blink.     

Mental Attention, Consciousness, and the Progressive Emergence of Wisdom

I discuss the mental–attentional mechanisms of consciousness, meditation, and the emergence of wisdom. A developmental (neoPiagetian), dynamic flash-light model of mental attention is used. I model the initial stages of consciousness in infancy, showing that the growth of consciousness is influenced by the number of schemes that attention can coordinate. I discuss ordinary consciousness in adults and the stages/levels of adult development in consciousness. Wisdom is defined as an expectable but often missed outcome of adult development. To accelerate access to wisdom, two complementary paths are mentioned: a natural life-experience path and a meditation path. Maturational organismic factors and the role of mental attentional mechanisms in these two paths are discussed, and a constructivist neuropsychological model of what happens in the brain during meditation, and in higher consciousness, is sketched. Processes involved in higher stages of consciousness are then examined from this perspective.     

Self-focused attention and the experience of alcoholic intoxication

The present study investigates the relationship between self-focused attention and the experience of emotional and bodily concomitants of alcoholic intoxication. It was hypothesized that self-focused attention would amplify salient mood and bodily concomitants of intoxication after alcohol intake and counteract these concomitants after placebo treatment. Self-focused attention was assessed by measures of private body consciousness, private self-consciousness, and of self-awareness. Since alcohol intake did not influence mood, it was not possible to test our main-hypothesis linking self-focused attention with the experience of mood concomitants of intoxication. As to bodily concomitants of intoxication a strong effect of alcohol intake was disclosed. Further analysis revealed the predicted relationship between self-awareness and private body consciousness on one hand and the experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication, on the other. The relationship between private body consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was moderated by the amount of experience with alcohol. No significant relationship between private self-consciousness and experience of bodily concomitants of intoxication was found.     

Open and closed loops: A computational approach to attention and consciousness

Within recent years, researchers have proposed the independence of attention and consciousness on both empirical and conceptual grounds. However, the elusive nature of these constructs complicates progress in the investigation of their interaction. We present a framework within which we conceptualize attention and consciousness in computational terms. Here, the concepts are consi-dered as large-scale, functionally and structurally different processes, embedded in a biologically inspired architecture, spanning the full arc from stimulus to response. Our architecture assumes a general independence of attention and consciousness, but supposes strong interactions. Furthermore, it addresses the developmental aspect, stressing that these functions have to gradually develop through learning.     

意识与注意的关系-注意对意识产生的充分性与必要性探析*

意识与注意的关系是目前研究的热点之一,但一直存在争论。本文系统梳理了意识与注意之间关系的观点演变,从早期认为意识依赖于注意,到近期认为意识与注意完全分离,还从神经学研究角度探讨了意识与注意的关系,并就两者关系提出了新的看法。     

Artificial consciousness and the consciousness-attention dissociation

Artificial Intelligence is at a turning point, with a substantial increase in projects aiming to implement sophisticated forms of human intelligence in machines. This research attempts to model specific forms of intelligence through brute-force search heuristics and also reproduce features of human perception and cognition, including emotions. Such goals have implications for artificial consciousness, with some arguing that it will be achievable once we overcome short-term engineering challenges. We believe, however, that phenomenal consciousness cannot be implemented in machines. This becomes clear when considering emotions and examining the dissociation between consciousness and attention in humans. While we may be able to program ethical behavior based on rules and machine learning, we will never be able to reproduce emotions or empathy by programming such control systems—these will be merely simulations. Arguments in favor of this claim include considerations about evolution, the neuropsychological aspects of emotions, and the dissociation between attention and consciousness found in humans. Ultimately, we are far from achieving artificial consciousness.     

错误加工意识水平与错误相关脑电成分

错误加工的意识水平包括有意识水平、无意识水平以及介于两者之间的意识水平。意识水平的划分通常通过错误报告范式实现。根据其对意识水平的划分, 可以将相关研究分为二元意识水平研究和多元意识水平研究。已有研究, 主要关注于意识水平与错误诱发的Ne、Pe的关系。两类研究一致表明, Pe受意识水平的调节, 但是并没有得到fMRI研究的一致支持。对Ne的激活是否独立于意识, 研究者们仍存在争议。还有研究考察了注意对错误意识水平的影响, 结果支持Pe与意识水平共变的观点, 但是对注意如何影响错误意识水平还存在质疑。在对以上研究进行整理与分析的基础上, 对将来的研究提出了建议。     

Loading working memory enhances affective priming

Stronger affective priming (Murphy & Zajonc, 1993) with suboptimal (i.e., reduced consciousness) than with optimal (i.e., full consciousness) prime presentation suggests that nonconscious processes form an important part of emotions. Merikle and Joordens (1997) have argued that both impoverished presentation and divided attention can produce suboptimal conditions and result in parallel effects. We manipulated attention by means of a concurrent working memory load while keeping presentation duration constant, as participants evaluated Japanese ideographs that were preceded by happy, neutral, or angry faces (affective priming) and male or female faces (nonaffective priming). In contrast to nonaffective priming, affective priming was larger with divided attention than with focused attention. It is concluded that manipulations of stimulus quality and of attention can both be used to probe the distinction between conscious and nonconscious processes and that the highest chances of obtaining the pattern of stronger priming with suboptimal presentation than with optimal presentation occur in the affective domain.     

从"兼济天下"到"独善其身":魏晋南北朝士阶层社会担当意识的弱化

自汉武帝接受董仲舒"罢黜百家,独尊儒术"的建议后,儒家思想即上升为国家意识形态。儒学是一种带有强烈入世色彩的哲学思想和价值观念系统,在个体与整体的关系上,强调整体至上,公利优先的价值取向,使儒家士大夫具有强烈的社会责任意识和使命意识,但是,这种社会担当意识在魏晋南北朝时期特殊的时代氛围中弱化了。关注自我、及时行乐,成了这一时期士大夫的风尚。这一风尚对于促进个体意识的觉醒具有积极意识,但对于社会秩序的整合与重建来说,却不可避免地具有消极影响。     

Tracking the processes behind conscious perception: a review of event-related potential correlates of visual consciousness

Event-related potential (ERP) studies have attempted to discover the processes that underlie conscious visual perception by contrasting ERPs produced by stimuli that are consciously perceived with those that are not. Variability of the proposed ERP correlates of consciousness is considerable: the earliest proposed ERP correlate of consciousness (P1) coincides with sensory processes and the last one (P3) marks postperceptual processes. A negative difference wave called visual awareness negativity (VAN), typically observed around 200 ms after stimulus onset in occipitotemporal sites, gains strong support for reflecting the processes that correlate with, and possibly enable, aware visual perception. Research suggests that the early parts of conscious processing can proceed independently of top-down attention, although top-down attention may modulate visual processing even before consciousness. Evidence implies that the contents of consciousness are provided by interactions in the ventral stream, but indispensable contributions from dorsal regions influence already low-level visual responses.     

Class cleavages and ethnic conflict: Coptic Christian communities in modern Egyptian politics

Whereas the political claims of Egyptian Islamists have attracted much attention in Western media and scholarly circles, only rarely have such circles acknowledged the role played by ethno‐religious consciousness among Coptic Christians in Egyptian political life. This article analyzes the development of this consciousness through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the socio‐economic roots of ‘Coptist’ political action. Accorded particular attention is the emergence of an explicitly sectarian political discourse among groups of middle‐class Copts in the 1970s, and the related spread of ethnic consciousness through the Coptic community at large since that time.     

Motivation for Collective Action: Group Consciousness as Mediator of Personality, life Experiences, and Women's Rights Activism

Prior research on political activism focused on direct predictors of collective action (e.g., life experiences), with little attention paid to what psychologically motivates individuals to act. The group consciousness literature provides an obvious psychological motive for activism, but ignores individual difference variables that differentiate people who develop group consciousness from those who do not. This article integrates the two literatures on activism and group consciousness, and presents a model whereby group consciousness mediates relationships between collective action and personality and life experiences. The general model was evaluated empirically by examining feminist consciousness and women's rights activism in two samples. Feminist consciousness was found to mediate relationships between activism and anumber of personality and life experience variables, including low authoritarianism, political salience, sexual oppression, and education about women's position in society. The possible extension of this model to other kinds of political activism is discussed.     

Attention and consciousness: related yet different

A recent perceptual imaging experiment uses a rare 2×2 design to dissociate selective visual attention from visual consciousness. Its conclusions support the hypothesis that visual consciousness does not arise from neurons in primary visual cortex and forces a reinterpretation of numerous prior studies.     

Proximal and Distal Defense: A New Perspective on Unconscious Motivation

Death-related thoughts produce different effects on thought and behavior when they are in current focal attention and when they are on the fringes of consciousness. When such thoughts are conscious, people attempt to either remove them from consciousness or push death into the distant future by distorting their beliefs to logically imply that they have many remaining years to live. When such thoughts are highly accessible but outside current focal attention, people increase efforts to view themselves as persons of value living in a meaningful universe. In this way, awareness of the inevitability of death produces diverse effects on human thought and behavior that bear little obvious resemblance to the problem of death.     

Automatic and controlled semantic processing: a masked prime-task effect

A classical definition of automaticity establishes that automatic processing occurs without attention or consciousness, and cannot be controlled. Previous studies have demonstrated that semantic priming can be reduced if attention is directed to a low-level of analysis. This finding suggests that semantic processing is not automatic since it can be controlled. In this paper, we present two experiments that demonstrate that semantic processing may occur in the absence of attention and consciousness. A negative semantic priming effect was found when a low-level prime-task was required and when a masked lexical decision prime-task was performed (Experiment 1). This paper also discusses the limitations of the inhibitory mechanism involved in negative semantic priming effect.     

The exploration of meditation in the neuroscience of attention and consciousness

Many recent behavioral and neuroscientific studies have revealed the importance of investigating meditation states and traits to achieve an increased understanding of cognitive and affective neuroplasticity, attention and self-awareness, as well as for their increasingly recognized clinical relevance. The investigation of states and traits related to meditation has especially pronounced implications for the neuroscience of attention, consciousness, self-awareness, empathy and theory of mind. In this article we present the main features of meditation-based mental training and characterize the current scientific approach to meditation states and traits with special reference to attention and consciousness, in light of the articles contributed to this issue.     

Unity and diversity of views on intelligence and consciousness: Where the East meets the West

Intelligence is a cognitive function. Cognitive processing is a common base for cognitive theories of intelligence in both the East (India) and in the West (Europe and America). I first review the Eastern view of intelligence and its relation to consciousness. I argue that the study of consciousness has been accepted in Western psychology as a legitimate topic since William James, then present further discussion on the topic from Hindu and Buddhist philosophies. In essence, it is about awareness and the means of achieving a pure state of awareness through self-directed attention to internal thoughts, rather than external objects. The validity of a first-person observation of consciousness then becomes an important issue as well as the question of a non-physical mind. The paper concludes that using introspective reflection as a tool to explore consciousness is supported by both views.