Early Electrophysiological Correlates of Perceptual Consciousness Are Affected by Both Exogenous and Endogenous Attention.
Journal of cognitive neuroscience June 1, 2024 Łucja Doradzińska, Michał Bola 12 citations
Visual awareness negativity (VAN), an early brain response measured by EEG, is not an attention-independent marker of conscious visual perception. Reanalysis of data from 41 participants showed that VAN's amplitude in the early time window (140-200 msec) depended heavily on attention; the effect of awareness disappeared for neutral faces that were task-irrelevant distractors. In a later window (200-350 msec), VAN appeared across all conditions but was larger for fearful or task-relevant faces. These findings challenge the idea that VAN purely reflects phenomenal awareness, instead showing it is influenced by both stimulus saliency and task demands.