An active role of inferior frontal cortex in conscious experience

Weilnhammer, Veith; Fritsch, Merve; Chikermane, Meera; Eckert, Anna-Lena; Kanthak, Katharina; Stuke, Heiner; Kaminski, Jakob; Sterzer, Philipp

doi:10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.043

Cited by 55 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…If this is the case, why could the recent study successfully detect prolonged percept in the bistable visual perception test after applying conventional TMS over the IFC? (Weilnhammer et al, 2021) The TMS protocols are different between the previous study and the current work, and further studies are necessary to answer this question directly; but we can speculate the reason as follows. In the recent study, theta-burst TMS was administered to the IFC during rest.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, as argued in a recent TMS study ( Weilnhammer et al, 2021 ), it may be difficult to fully describe the PFC roles during bistable perception from the perspective of such attention systems only. For example, if the main function of the IFC in this experiment is to receive bottom-up attention signals from the visual cortex, distribute them to the fronto-parietal areas and direct the attention to a different perceptual inference, the neural suppression of IFC should prolong the percept duration.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…By contrast, in this study, the inhibition of IFC activity did not always lengthen the percept duration but often shortened it ( Figure 4b,c ). Given these, it would be more reasonable to infer that the top-down and bottom-up signals, which are supposed to be generated and communicated in the brain state dynamics, contain not only attention-related information but also other types of neural signal such as prediction error in predictive coding paradigm ( Brascamp et al, 2018 ; Hohwy et al, 2008 ; Weilnhammer et al, 2021 ; Weilnhammer et al, 2017 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, no empirical human study has identified such behavioural causality of the PFC (Brascamp et al, 2017) except for a recent work administering theta-burst transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) over the right IFC during rest (Weilnhammer et al, 2021). Instead, a previous study using TMS reported that neural suppression of a brain area near the right DLPFC did not affect bistable visual perception (Graaf et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal roles of prefrontal cortex during spontaneous perceptual switching are determined by brain state dynamics

Watanabe

2021

eLife

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The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is thought to orchestrate cognitive dynamics. However, in tests of bistable visual perception, no direct evidence supporting such presumable causal roles of the PFC has been reported except for a recent work. Here, using a novel brain-state-dependent neural stimulation system, we identified causal effects on percept dynamics in three PFC activities—right frontal eye fields, dorsolateral PFC (DLPFC), and inferior frontal cortex (IFC). The causality is behaviourally detectable only when we track brain state dynamics and modulate the PFC activity in brain-state-/state-history-dependent manners. The behavioural effects are underpinned by transient neural changes in the brain state dynamics, and such neural effects are quantitatively explainable by structural transformations of the hypothetical energy landscapes. Moreover, these findings indicate distinct functions of the three PFC areas: in particular, the DLPFC enhances the integration of two PFC-active brain states, whereas IFC promotes the functional segregation between them. This work resolves the controversy over the PFC roles in spontaneous perceptual switching and underlines brain state dynamics in fine investigations of brain-behaviour causality.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 68%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Causal roles of prefrontal cortex during spontaneous perceptual switching are determined by brain state dynamics

Watanabe

2021

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Non‐stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception

Kemenade

Wilbertz

Müller

et al. 2021

Human Brain Mapping

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Predictions shape our perception. The theory of predictive processing poses that our brains make sense of incoming sensory input by generating predictions, which are sent back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. These predictions are based on our internal model of the world and enable inferences about the hidden causes of the sensory input data. It has been proposed that conscious perception corresponds to the currently most probable internal model of the world. Accordingly, predictions influencing conscious perception should be fed back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivoxel pattern analysis to show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus. These results indicate that early sensory cortices in the human brain receive predictive feedback signals that reflect the current contents of conscious perception.

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Neural patterns of conscious visual awareness in the Riddoch syndrome

et al. 2023

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The Riddoch syndrome is one in which patients blinded by lesions to their primary visual cortex can consciously perceive visual motion in their blind field, an ability that correlates with activity in motion area V5. Our assessment of the characteristics of this syndrome in patient ST, using multimodal MRI, showed that: 1. ST’s V5 is intact, receives direct subcortical input, and decodable neural patterns emerge in it only during the conscious perception of visual motion; 2. moving stimuli activate medial visual areas but, unless associated with decodable V5 activity, they remain unperceived; 3. ST’s high confidence ratings when discriminating motion at chance levels, is associated with inferior frontal gyrus activity. Finally, we report that ST’s Riddoch Syndrome results in hallucinatory motion with hippocampal activity as a correlate. Our results shed new light on perceptual experiences associated with this syndrome and on the neural determinants of conscious visual experience.

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An active role of inferior frontal cortex in conscious experience

Cited by 55 publications

References 79 publications

Causal roles of prefrontal cortex during spontaneous perceptual switching are determined by brain state dynamics

Causal roles of prefrontal cortex during spontaneous perceptual switching are determined by brain state dynamics

Non‐stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception

Neural patterns of conscious visual awareness in the Riddoch syndrome

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