Brain responses to identical stimuli vary greatly even during well-designed cognitive tasks, and this variability is thought to stem from fluctuations in a person's cognitive context—such as attention, spontaneous thoughts, and task strategy. By combining first-person reports with neural recordings, researchers reduced this noise. Subjects viewed a three-dimensional illusion while their brain activity was recorded and they reported their cognitive context. Clustering trials by these reports revealed that patterns of neural synchrony in frontal electrodes before stimulation depended on the degree of preparation and immediacy of perception. These patterns were stable across recordings and influenced both behavioral performance and subsequent brain responses, showing that first-person data can help detect and interpret neural processes.
Cognition depends on having a body with sensorimotor capacities, which are embedded in broader biological, psychological, and cultural contexts. Sensory and motor processes are fundamentally inseparable in lived cognition and have evolved together. The enactive approach holds that perception consists of perceptually guided action and that cognitive structures emerge from recurrent sensorimotor patterns enabling such guidance.
During binocular rivalry, when perception alternates between two competing images, distributed brain activity correlates with which image is consciously seen. Magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings showed that neural responses to a frequency-tagged stimulus were modulated during its perceptual dominance. Source estimation revealed activation not only in visual cortex but also in parietal, temporal pole, and frontal regions. Perceptual switches modulated activity in visual cortex, medial parietal, and left frontal areas. During dominance, occipital and frontal regions, including anterior cingulate and medial frontal areas, became coactivated. Phase synchrony in the frequency tag band revealed a dynamically modulated distributed cortical network that varied in extent across individuals.