The invisible body

Abstract

Propositions• The perception of both human bodies and emotion involves distributed brain areas.• The phenomenon of visual awareness is multifaceted, involving a variety of brain areas, and mechanisms at different processing levels.• The dorsal pathway areas are less associated with visual awareness, comparing to the ventral pathway areas under CFS.• The mechanism of CFS may relate to the rhythmic attentional sampling mechanism, operating at theta frequencies.• Each methodological tool has its limitations (including CFS, 3T and 7T fMRI, univariate and multivariate analyses).• Know your data.• It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.-Arthur Conan Doyle (1892).A Scandal in Bohemia, in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.• The general public should be updated with the most recent research of consciousness (and brain science in general).• The devil is in the detail.-Proverb. Contents Chapter 1Introduction 1 Chapter 2The body as a tool for anger awareness -Differential effects of angry facial and bodily expressions on suppression from awareness 27 Chapter 3 Continuous flash suppression induces strong suppression of visual stimulus information 43 Chapter 4 Influence of continuous flash suppression mask frequency on stimulus visibility 69 Chapter 5 Ventral and dorsal pathways differently related to visual awareness of body postures under continuous flash suppression 89 Chapter 6 Action categories are represented in a large distributed network in the brain -evidence from 7T fMRI 121 Chapter 7 The influence of a short domestic-violence VR scenario on emotional face and body perception 169