Decoding the contents of consciousness from prefrontal ensembles
bioRxiv Preprint Server January 28, 2020 Vishal Kapoor, Abhilash Dwarakanath, Shervin Safavi et al. preprint
The prefrontal cortex can represent the contents of conscious perception even when no overt report is required. Recordings from macaque monkeys during binocular rivalry—where perception alternates between two conflicting images—showed that neural ensemble activity in the prefrontal cortex decoded which image the animal was seeing as accurately as when images were presented without competition. This decoding remained significant even when eye movements were suppressed, indicating that the signals were not solely due to oculomotor confounds. The findings suggest that prefrontal population dynamics reflect internally driven changes in conscious perception during multistable vision.