What is consciousness?

May 4, 2006

Stanford

Consciousness
An Opinionated Introduction
Jesse Prinz
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
CASBS, Stanford

A Starting Place: Vision

Where Is
Consciousness?

Intermediate Level Hypothesis

(Jackendoff, 1987)

HIGH
MID
But Is The Theory Neurally Plausible?

LOW

Hierarchical ventral system (Ungerleider & Mishkin)

Consciousness is somewhere there (Milner & Goodale)
But is it in the intermediate level?

Predictions
Low Level
V1

Intermediate Level
V2-V5

Predictions
High Level
IT

Should correlate with visual experience

Hallucination (ffytche et al.)

Motion illusion
(Tootell et al.)

Low Level
V1

Intermediate Level
V2-V5

High Level
IT

Should result blindness

Unless there is another route

Predictions
Low Level
V1

Intermediate Level
V2-V5

Predictions
High Level
IT

Low Level
V1

Intermediate Level
V2-V5

High Level
IT

Should not result blindness

Should result blindness

Recognition deficit

Different kinds for different areas

Predictions

Predictions

Predictions

When Are We Conscious?

Subliminal Perception

Prime

Winkielman et al.

Prime

Zago et al. (2005) Cereb Cortex

Test

Unilateral Neglect

From Where to When

Neglected stimulus (Rees et al. Brain 2000)

The missing
ingredient

Attention

Consciousness is located in the intermediate level, but

how does activity there become conscious?

More Evidence

Which line in the crosshair is longer?

Inattentional Blindness
(Mack and Rock, 1998)
Driver & Mattingly, Nature Neuro., 1998

More Evidence

More Evidence

Scholl demo

73% miss gorilla when counting passes

Simons & Chabris, Perception, 1999

More Evidence

73% miss gorilla when counting passes

Compare
pure change blindness

Simons & Chabris, Perception,blindness

1999

Change vs. Inattentional Blindness

What is Attention?

Forgetting

Attention
Perceptual
System

Working
Memory

Attention as gateway to memory systems

Attentional Blink
Seen minus unseen in change blindness
(Beck et al. Nature Neuroscience 2001)

What is attention? A gateway to working memory

Adapted from Marois and Ivanoff (2005)

DLPFC during seen stimulus in blindsight

(Sahraie et al. PNAS 1997)

Thanks