Bifurcation in brain dynamics reveals a signature of conscious processing independent of report
Nature Communications February 19, 2021 C. Sergent, M. Corazzol, G. Labouret et al.
The same auditory stimulus can produce either sustained or brief brain activity around 250–300 milliseconds after the sound, even when people are not performing any task. This bifurcation in electroencephalographic dynamics predicts whether people later report having consciously perceived the stimulus, both when they are asked to report on a task and when their conscious contents are sampled randomly during passive listening. Source localization shows that task-free conscious access engages the same neural networks as explicit report, except for frontal executive components. Studying variability in brain dynamics may help identify the core signatures of conscious access independently of decision or report processes.