Attentional load modulates responses of human primary visual cortex to invisible stimuli.

ABSTRACT: Visual neuroscience has long sought to determine the extent to which stimulus-evoked activity in visual cortex depends on attention and awareness. Some influential theories of consciousness maintain that the allocation of attention is restricted to conscious representations [1, 2]. However, in the load theory of attention [3], competition between task-relevant and task-irrelevant stimuli for limited-capacity attention does not depend on conscious perception of the irrelevant stimuli. The critical test is whether the level of attentional load in a relevant task would determine unconscious neural processing of invisible stimuli. Human participants were scanned with high-field fMRI while they performed a foveal task of low or high attentional load. Irrelevant, invisible monocular stimuli were

SUBMITTER: Bahrami B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1885953 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature