PubMed · 13758207
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D LAGACHE. [Consciousness and structures].. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/13758207/
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During binocular rivalry, visual perception switches between a stimulus viewed by one eye and a different stimulus viewed by the other. We studied rivalry in split-brain observers to test two explanations. Rivalry could reflect switching of activity between the cerebral hemispheres, or switching by a structure in the right frontoparietal cortex. From these two theories, we predict no rivalry when stimuli are presented to a split-brain observer's left hemisphere. Yet we found similar rivalry from the left and right hemispheres of the split-brain observers, consistent with switchings being mediated by low-level processes within each hemisphere.
Human performance may be primed by information not consciously available. Can such priming become so overwhelming that observers cannot help but act accordingly? In the present study, well-visible stimuli were preceded by whole series of unidentifiable stimuli. These series had strong, additive priming effects on behavior. However, their effect depended on the frequency with which they provided information conflicting to the visible main stimuli. Thus, effects of subliminal priming are under observers' strategic control, with the criterion presumably set as a function of the openly observable error frequency. Electrical brain potentials show that this criterion acts simultaneously at the level of visual discrimination of the primes and at motor activation evoked by the primes, thereby shielding observers from unwanted information.
Consciousness has a number of apparently disparate properties, some of which seem to be highly complex and even inaccessible to outside observation. To place these properties within a biological framework requires a theory based on a set of evolutionary and developmental principles. This paper describes such a theory, which aims to provide a unifying account of conscious phenomena.