Perceptual integration without conscious access.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America April 4, 2017 Johannes J Fahrenfort, Jonathan Van Leeuwen, Christian N L Olivers et al. 102 citations
The visual system can integrate fragmented input into organized surfaces and objects, a process called perceptual integration. Whether this requires conscious access was tested using the attentional blink, which impairs conscious perception. Behaviorally, the attentional blink reduced accurate conscious decisions about integrated surface structure. Yet, multivariate EEG decoding showed the brain still represented integrated percepts even when conscious access was blocked. In contrast, masking impaired both conscious decisions and neural decoding of integration, while leaving feedforward signals intact. These findings indicate that perceptual integration can occur without access to consciousness, dissociating the two processes.