The relationship between awareness and attention: evidence from ERP responses.
Neuropsychologia November 1, 2009 Mika Koivisto, Pasi Kainulainen, Antti Revonsuo 107 citations
Visual attention and awareness are intricately linked, but different types of attention play distinct roles. Experiments tracking brain responses show that spatial attention is necessary for the earliest brain correlate of phenomenal consciousness—the raw experience of seeing. This early marker emerged regardless of whether objects were selected by nonspatial attention, though later parts of it were modified by such selection. In contrast, the brain correlate of reflective consciousness, which allows the contents of phenomenal experience to be used for thought and memory, depended on both spatial attention and nonspatial selection. These findings indicate that the relationship between attention and awareness requires distinguishing between different forms of attention and different levels of consciousness.