Decoding across sensory modalities reveals common supramodal signatures of conscious perception.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America March 31, 2020 Gaëtan Sanchez, Thomas Hartmann, Marco Fuscà et al.
Neural activity in primary sensory regions not directly relevant to a task can predict conscious perception of near-threshold stimulation in a different sensory modality. Using magnetoencephalography and multivariate decoding analysis across tactile, visual, and auditory tasks, supramodal spatiotemporal patterns were identified that predicted conscious perception. These patterns included activity in visual cortex predicting conscious perception of auditory stimuli. The findings were replicated in a control experiment and were independent of the type of report (button press or withholding a button press). The results suggest a common signature of conscious access across sensory modalities, involving temporally late and widespread broadcasting of neural representations.