Summary: Conscious visual phenomenology comprises multiple representational levels, from basic features to integrated percepts, raising the question of how the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) differentiate accordingly. Event-related potential (ERP) studies identified early occipitotemporal negativities as reliable NCC; yet, it remains unclear whether these capture conscious content...
Interacting with artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly prominent in everyday life. Modern AI can produce intelligent, witty, and even sarcastic responses, leading people to assume AI is conscious. This raises the question whether AI is perceived as conscious, and how people respond to such machines behaviorally and neurally. This preregistered electroencephalogram (EEG) study...
Conscious perception in daily life encompasses continuous experience and persistent percepts of visual inputs. However, the temporal dimension of consciousness, specifically neural mechanisms maintaining sustained conscious percepts over time, remains comparatively understudied. Many studies feature either brief stimulus durations or prolonged supraliminal stimuli without inducing an...
In the search for neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), prominent theories disagree about the role of sensory versus widespread fronto-parietal brain activity. Research on auditory awareness has been widely neglected, and disentangling NCCs from correlates of task-related post-perceptual processes (e.g., report) is an ongoing challenge. In the present study, we addressed these issues using...
Scientific ReportsNovember 28, 2025Theresa Rieger, Josefine Feuerstein, Niko A Busch et al.
The visual awareness negativity (VAN) has been identified as a potential neuronal correlate of consciousness (NCC). The VAN is typically found when comparing experimental trials in which a stimulus was perceived with trials in which the same stimulus was not perceived. However, if the VAN represents a reliable NCC, it should also be observed under conditions in which participants report...
Research SquareSeptember 23, 2025Theresa Rieger, Josefine Feuerstein, Niko A Busch et al.
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Abstract The visual awareness negativity (VAN) has been identified as a potential neuronal correlate of consciousness (NCC). The VAN is typically found when comparing experimental trials in which a stimulus was perceived with trials in which the same stimulus was not perceived. However, if the VAN represents a reliable NCC, it should also be observed under conditions in which participants...
Previous research on the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in visual perception revealed an early event-related potential (ERP), the visual awareness negativity (VAN), to be associated with stimulus awareness. However, due to the use of brief stimulus presentations in previous studies, it remains unclear whether awareness-related negativities represent a transient onset-related response...
While inattentional blindness and deafness studies have revealed neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) without the confound of task relevance in the visual and auditory modality, comparable studies for the somatosensory modality are lacking. Here, we investigated NCC using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in an inattentional numbness paradigm. Participants (N = 44) received weak...
Several event-related potentials (ERPs) have been proposed as neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), most prominently the early visual awareness negativity (VAN) and the late P3b component. Highly influential support for the P3b comes from studies utilizing the attentional blink (AB), where conscious perception of a first visual target (T1) impairs reporting a second target (T2) presented...
There is an ongoing debate on the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in the attentional blink (AB). Theoretical accounts propose that NCC during the attentional blink occur late in the processing hierarchy and that this quality is specific to the AB. We investigated this question by recording event-related potentials during an AB experiment with faces as T2. We analyzed ERPs to T2 stimuli...
Current theories of visual consciousness disagree about whether it emerges during early stages of processing in sensory brain regions or later when a widespread frontoparietal network becomes involved. Moreover, disentangling conscious perception from task-related postperceptual processes (e.g., report) and integrating results across different neuroscientific methods remain ongoing challenges....
In recent years, several ERP components have been identified as potential neural correlates of consciousness (NCC), including early negativities and late positivities. Based on experiments in the visual modality, it has recently been shown that awareness is often confounded with reporting it, possibly overestimating the NCC. It is unknown whether similar constraints also exist in the auditory...
The nature of conscious visual phenomenology comprises multiple representational levels, from basic features to integrated percepts, raising questions regarding the differentiation of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). While event-related potential (ERP) studies identified early occipitotemporal negativities as reliable NCC, it remains unclear whether these early negative components...