The longstanding debate over whether conscious perception is continuous or discrete is addressed with a two-stage model in which unconscious processing integrates information continuously until a discrete conscious percept forms. In response to criticism from Fekete et al., the authors argue that simple sliding windows cannot account for apparent motion and related phenomena within a continuous framework. They also contend that the supervenience argument raised by their critics applies only to qualia realists, a philosophical position the authors do not adopt.
Up-regulation and down-regulation of the default mode network via real-time fMRI neurofeedback are negatively correlated in an initial session, meaning that people who get better at increasing default mode network activity tend to get worse at decreasing it, and vice versa. Age is linked to worse neurofeedback performance only in healthy individuals, not in those with psychiatric history. Adults with psychiatric history outperform healthy controls at up-regulating the default mode network, but this difference arises because healthy controls show no up-regulation learning. These findings come from analyzing open-access data from 136 participants (74 with psychiatric history, 62 healthy controls).