Perception integrates external sensory signals with internal predictions that reflect prior knowledge about the world. Previous research suggests that this integration is governed by slow alternations between an external mode, driven by sensory signals, and an internal mode, shaped by prior knowledge. Using a double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over experiment in healthy human participants,...
The signals registered by our senses are inherently ambiguous. Subjective experience, by contrast, is informative: it portrays one's interpretation of the sensory environment at a time while discarding competing alternatives. This is exemplified by bistable perception, where ambiguous sensory information induces prolonged intervals of alternating unambiguous perceptual states. According to...
The neurobiology of conscious experience is one of the fundamental mysteries in science. New evidence suggests that transcranial magnetic stimulation of the parietal cortex does not modulate bistable perception. What does this mean for the neural correlates of consciousness, and how should we search for them?
In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions, such as introspection or action. Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments that indicated a key role of...
According to the predictive coding theory of psychosis, hallucinations and delusions are explained by an overweighing of high-level prior expectations relative to sensory information that leads to false perceptions of meaningful signals. However, it is currently unclear whether the hypothesized overweighing of priors (1) represents a pervasive alteration that extends to the visual modality and...
2 In the search for the neural correlates of consciousness, it has remained controversial whether prefrontal cortex determines what is consciously experienced or, alternatively, serves only complementary functions such as introspection or action. Here, we provide converging evidence from computational modeling and two functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments for a key role of inferior...