Human observers have optimal introspective access to perceptual processes even for visually masked stimuli
Abstract
Many believe that humans can 'perceive unconsciously' -- that for weak stimuli, briefly presented and masked, above-chance discrimination is possible without awareness. Interestingly, an online survey reveals that most experts in the field recognize the lack of convincing evidence for this phenomenon, and yet they persist in this belief. Using a recently-developed bias-free experimental procedure for measuring subjective introspection (confidence), we found no evidence for unconscious perception; participants' behavior matched that of a Bayesian ideal observer, even though the stimuli were visually masked. This surprising finding suggests that the thresholds for subjective awareness and objective discrimination are effectively the same: if objective task performance is above chance, there is likely conscious experience. These findings shed new light on decades-old methodological issues regarding what it takes to consider a neurobiological or behavioral effect to be 'unconscious,' and provide a platform for rigorously investigating unconscious perception in future studies.
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Human subjects: Twelve subjects (two women, ages 19-32, ten right-handed) gave written informed consent to participate in our behavioral experiments. All subjects had normal or corrected-to-normal eyesight, and wore the same corrective lenses for all sessions, if applicable. Behavioral experiments were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the UCLA Institutional Review Board.Eighty-seven respondents replied to our informal online survey. Survey procedures were conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki and were approved by the UCLA Institutional Review Board.Thus, all survey respondents provided informed consent to participate in the informal online survey, and behavioral subjects provided written informed consent to participate in the behavioral experiments.
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© 2015, Peters & Lau
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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- Neuroscience
Unipolar brush cells (UBCs) are excitatory interneurons in the cerebellar cortex that receive mossy fiber (MF) inputs and excite granule cells. The UBC population responds to brief burst activation of MFs with a continuum of temporal transformations, but it is not known how UBCs transform the diverse range of MF input patterns that occur in vivo. Here, we use cell-attached recordings from UBCs in acute cerebellar slices to examine responses to MF firing patterns that are based on in vivo recordings. We find that MFs evoke a continuum of responses in the UBC population, mediated by three different types of glutamate receptors that each convey a specialized component. AMPARs transmit timing information for single stimuli at up to 5 spikes/s, and for very brief bursts. A combination of mGluR2/3s (inhibitory) and mGluR1s (excitatory) mediates a continuum of delayed, and broadened responses to longer bursts, and to sustained high frequency activation. Variability in the mGluR2/3 component controls the time course of the onset of firing, and variability in the mGluR1 component controls the duration of prolonged firing. We conclude that the combination of glutamate receptor types allows each UBC to simultaneously convey different aspects of MF firing. These findings establish that UBCs are highly flexible circuit elements that provide diverse temporal transformations that are well suited to contribute to specialized processing in different regions of the cerebellar cortex.