TY - JOUR
T1 - Dissociation between Awareness and Spatial Coding: Evidence from Unilateral Neglect
AU - Treccani, Barbara
AU - Cubelli, Roberto
AU - Sellaro, Roberta
AU - Umiltà, Carlo
AU - Della Sala, Sergio
PY - 2012
Y1 - 2012
N2 - Most theories of consciousness propose a causal relation between lack of spatial coding and absence of conscious experience: The failure to code the position of an object is assumed to prevent this object from entering consciousness. This is consistent with influential theories of unilateral neglect following brain damage, according to which spatial coding of neglected stimuli is defective, that would keep their processing at the nonconscious level. Contrary to this view, we report evidence showing that spatial coding and consciousness can dissociate. A patient with left neglect, who was not aware of contralesional stimuli, was able to process their color and position. However, in contrast to (ipsilesional) consciously perceived stimuli, color and position of neglected stimuli were processed separately. We propose that individual object features, including position, can be processed without attention and consciousness and that conscious perception of an object depends on the binding of its features into an integrated percept.
AB - Most theories of consciousness propose a causal relation between lack of spatial coding and absence of conscious experience: The failure to code the position of an object is assumed to prevent this object from entering consciousness. This is consistent with influential theories of unilateral neglect following brain damage, according to which spatial coding of neglected stimuli is defective, that would keep their processing at the nonconscious level. Contrary to this view, we report evidence showing that spatial coding and consciousness can dissociate. A patient with left neglect, who was not aware of contralesional stimuli, was able to process their color and position. However, in contrast to (ipsilesional) consciously perceived stimuli, color and position of neglected stimuli were processed separately. We propose that individual object features, including position, can be processed without attention and consciousness and that conscious perception of an object depends on the binding of its features into an integrated percept.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84857589122&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1162/jocn_a_00185
DO - 10.1162/jocn_a_00185
M3 - Article
C2 - 22220726
SN - 1530-8898
VL - 24
SP - 854
EP - 867
JO - The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JoCN)
JF - The Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (JoCN)
IS - 4
ER -