The involvement of the human prefrontal cortex in the emergence of visual awareness.
Zepeng Fang, Yuanyuan Dang, Zhipei Ling, Yongzheng Han, Hulin Zhao, Xin Xu, Mingsha Zhang
Elife January 24, 2024 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.89076 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Experimental study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 6 |
| Population | Human patients with implanted electrodes |
| Keywords | Event related potential Frontal lobe Human Ieeg Local field potential Saccade Visual consciousness |
| Citations | 16 |
| Key findings | The prefrontal cortex shows early awareness-related neural activity and can reliably decode awareness state, supporting its critical role in the emergence of awareness. |
Abstract
Exploring the neural mechanisms of awareness is a fundamental task of cognitive neuroscience. There is an ongoing dispute regarding the role of the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in the emergence of awareness, which is partially raised by the confound between report- and awareness-related activity. To address this problem, we designed a visual awareness task that can minimize report-related motor confounding. Our results show that saccadic latency is significantly shorter in the aware trials than in the unaware trials. Local field potential (LFP) data from six patients consistently show early (200-300ms) awareness-related activity in the PFC, including event-related potential and high-gamma activity. Moreover, the awareness state can be reliably decoded by the neural activity in the PFC since the early stage, and the neural pattern is dynamically changed rather than being stable during the representation of awareness. Furthermore, the enhancement of dynamic functional connectivity, through the phase modulation at low frequency, between the PFC and other brain regions in the early stage of the awareness trials may explain the mechanism of conscious access. These results indicate that the PFC is critically involved in the emergence of awareness.