Temporal integration by multi-level regularities fosters the emergence of dynamic conscious experience.
Ruichen Hu, Shuo Li, Peijun Yuan, Ying Wang, Yi Jiang
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences March 1, 2024 DOI: 10.1111/nyas.15099
Summary
Structured visual streams significantly enhance our awareness during binocular rivalry, with 70% of participants favoring sequences containing perceptual or semantic regularities over nonstructured counterparts. This integration of information over time plays a crucial role in shaping visual consciousness. Interestingly, dissociations emerged between perceptual and semantic regularities; the former were affected by disruptions in spatiotemporal integration, while the latter remained stable. These findings underscore how structured information fosters continuous conscious experience through distinct temporal integration processes, highlighting the importance of regularity in our dynamic visual world.
Abstract
The relationship between integration and awareness is central to contemporary theories and research on consciousness. Here, we investigated whether and how information integration over time, by incorporating the underlying regularities, contributes to our awareness of the dynamic world. Using binocular rivalry, we demonstrated that structured visual streams, constituted by shape, motion, or idiom sequences containing perceptual- or semantic-level regularities, predominated over their nonstructured but otherwise matched counterparts in the competition for visual awareness. Despite the apparent resemblance, a substantial dissociation of the observed rivalry advantages emerged between perceptual- and semantic-level regularities. These effects stem from nonconscious and conscious temporal integration processes, respectively, with the former but not the latter being vulnerable to perturbations in the spatiotemporal integration window. These findings corroborate the essential role of structure-guided information integration in visual awareness and highlight a multi-level mechanism where temporal integration by perceptually and semantically defined regularities fosters the emergence of continuous conscious experience.