Task requirements affect the neural correlates of consciousness.
The European journal of neuroscience November 1, 2022 Lau M Andersen, Mikkel C Vinding, Kristian Sandberg et al.
The neural correlates of consciousness may not be fixed within a single brain region; instead, they can shift depending on the task a person performs. Using magnetoencephalography, researchers compared a perceptual task and a conceptual task that used identical visual stimuli. The perceptual task recruited more occipital brain activity than the conceptual task, while frontal activity varied between the two tasks in partly unexpected ways depending on the level of perceptual awareness. These results suggest that what a person is doing—the task at hand—influences which brain areas support conscious perception, challenging the idea that consciousness can be localized to a consistent set of regions.