How could we be conscious about the external world? Is there a role for attention to help?
Abstract
Competing theories of consciousness disagree on the role of frontoparietal networks. Here we recorded neural activity from 727 intracerebral contacts in 13 epileptic patients, while they detected near-threshold targets preceded by supra-threshold exogenous cues. Trajectory k-means clustering revealed three patterns: (1) Validly cued seen targets elicit sustained activity in right-hemisphere fronto-temporal regions, connected by superior longitudinal fasciculus (SLF) II/III, and late accumulation activity in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in right-hemisphere orbitofrontal cortex (SLF I/III). (2) Invalidly cued seen targets elicit early, sustained activity in the right-hemisphere reorienting network (SLF III). (3) Seen targets elicit late sustained left dorsolateral prefrontal activity. Task modeling with recurrent neural networks supported the causal contribution of these networks to conscious perception, and elucidated their interplay through excitatory-inhibitory mechanisms. We provide new, compelling evidence on the role of hemisphere-asymmetric frontoparietal networks associated with attentional enhancement and reorienting in conscious perception.
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