Long-timescale dynamics shape visual conscious awareness
Zefan Zheng, Darinka Trübutschek, Yongchun Cai, Lucia Melloni
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) September 8, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.64898/2026.09.03.748970 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational analysis of 20 datasets with causal TMS experiment |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 335 |
| Population | Participants across 20 datasets |
| Intervention | Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) |
| Key findings | Subjective visibility and confidence reports showed exponential temporal decay with timescales longer than 5 seconds, while objective accuracy showed slow linear decay, yet both shared a common fluctuation dynamic. The authors argue this suggests the autocorrelation in subjective measures may reflect a genuinely aperiodic fluctuation of conscious awareness rather than response bias, and TMS evidence suggests this temporal dependency is read out in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. |
Abstract
Abstract Consciousness is mostly studied as if it were composed of independent snapshots, aggregating reports over trials and experimental contexts, disregarding any temporal aspect. However, almost nothing is known about how conscious experience spontaneously fluctuates in time. To shed light on the temporal dynamics of conscious awareness, we evaluated the temporal autocorrelation of subjective visibility/confidence reports and objective performance across 20 datasets (N= 335). Two widely used measures of consciousness dissociate in temporal autocorrelation under full spatial attention: subjective measures followed an exponential decay function with long timescales (> 5s), whereas objective accuracy exhibited a slow linear decay function. But both measures share a common underlying temporal fluctuation dynamics, suggesting that the strong autocorrelation in subjective measures cannot be fully attributed to response bias or criterion shift, but might reflect a genuinely aperiodic fluctuation of conscious awareness. Causal transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) suggests that this temporal dependency of subjective measures is read out in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), where a similarly long neural timescale has been demonstrated. Together, these findings establish a temporal constraint for neural models of conscious access: candidate mechanisms should explain not only whether a stimulus becomes consciously accessible, but also how the probability of conscious access evolves over time.