Early and late electrophysiological correlates of gradual perceptual awareness in- and outside the Attentional Blink window.
NeuroImage November 1, 2022 Marie-Luise Roth-Paysen, Anne Bröcker, Maximilian Bruchmann et al.
During the attentional blink, when a second target is missed because it appears shortly after a first target, the neural correlates of consciousness are debated. Recording event-related potentials while participants viewed faces as the second target, the study found that the N170, visual awareness negativity, and P3b brain responses all increased for seen compared to unseen faces, regardless of whether the face appeared inside or outside the attentional blink window. These components also scaled linearly with subjective visibility. The results suggest that similar early and late mechanisms of graded perceptual awareness operate both within and outside the attentional blink, across perceptual and post-perceptual processing stages.