Multiple independent components contribute to event-related potential correlates of conscious vision.

Research has revealed two major event-related potential (ERP) markers of visual awareness: the earlier Visual Awareness Negativity (VAN, around 150-250 ms after stimulus onset), and the following Late Positivity (LP, around 300-500 ms after stimulus onset). Understanding the neural sources that give rise to VAN and LP is important in order to understand what kind of neural processes underlie conscious visual perception. Although the ERPs afford high temporal resolution, their spatial resolution is limited because multiple separate neural sources sum up at the scalp level.

Beyond primary visual cortex: The leading role of lateral occipital complex in early conscious visual processing.

The study of the neural substrates that serve conscious vision is one of the unsolved questions of cognitive neuroscience. So far, consciousness literature has endeavoured to disentangle which brain areas and in what order are involved in giving rise to visual awareness, but the problem of consciousness still remains unsolved. Availing of two different but complementary sources of data (i.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of attentional orienting and reorienting revealed by fast optical imaging in occipital and parietal cortices.

The mechanisms of visuospatial attention are mediated by two distinct fronto-parietal networks: a bilateral dorsal network (DAN), involved in the voluntary orientation of visuospatial attention, and a ventral network (VAN), lateralized to the right hemisphere, involved in the reorienting of attention to unexpected, but relevant, stimuli. The present study consisted of two aims: 1) to characterize the spatio-temporal dynamics of attention and 2) to examine the predictive interactions between and within the two attention systems along with visual areas, by using fast optical imaging combined with Granger causality. Data were collected from young healthy participants performing a discrimination task in a Posner-like paradigm.