Anterior insular activity signals perceptual conflicts induced by temporal and spatial context.
Neuroscience of Consciousness January 1, 2025 Katrin Reichenbach, Marcus Rothkirch, Lucca Jaeckel et al.
The brain resolves ambiguous sensory signals by using recent perceptual history as a predictive context. When sensory input violates this temporal context, perceptual prediction errors arise and drive spontaneous switches between alternative interpretations. Using fMRI and a bistable structure-from-motion paradigm with 26 participants, the study compared neural responses to perceptual conflicts induced by violations of temporal context versus spatial context. Only the anterior insula bilaterally showed activation for both types of conflict. Approximate prediction-error signals also appeared in the right inferior frontal gyrus and right inferior parietal lobe. These results suggest the anterior insular cortex plays a key role in detecting perceptual conflicts and constructing unambiguous conscious experiences.