The neural activity of auditory conscious perception.

Although recent work has made headway in understanding the neural temporospatial dynamics of conscious perception, much of that work has focused on visual paradigms. To determine whether there are shared mechanisms for perceptual consciousness across sensory modalities, here we test within the auditory domain. Participants completed an auditory threshold task while undergoing intracranial electroencephalography.

Human visual consciousness involves large scale cortical and subcortical networks independent of task report and eye movement activity.

The full neural circuits of conscious perception remain unknown. Using a visual perception task, we directly recorded a subcortical thalamic awareness potential (TAP). We also developed a unique paradigm to classify perceived versus not perceived stimuli using eye measurements to remove confounding signals related to reporting on conscious experiences.