title: Open and closed cortico-subcortical loops: A neuro-computational account of access to consciousness in the distractor-induced blindness paradigm.
abstract: How the brain decides which information to process 'consciously' has been debated over for decades without a simple explanation at hand. While most experiments manipulate the perceptual energy of presented stimuli, the distractor-induced blindness task is a prototypical paradigm to investigate gating of information into consciousness without or with only minor visual manipulation. In this paradigm, subjects are asked to report intervals of coherent dot motion in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream, whenever these are preceded by a particular color stimulus in a different RSVP stream. If distractors (i.e., intervals of coherent dot motion prior to the color stimulus) are shown, subjects' abilities to perceive and report intervals of target dot motion decrease, particularly with short delays between intervals of target color and target motion. We propose a biologically plausible neuro-computational model of how the brain controls access to consciousness to explain how distractor-induced blindness originates from information processing in the cortex and basal ganglia. The model suggests that conscious perception requires reverberation of activity in cortico-subcortical loops and that basal-ganglia pathways can either allow or inhibit this reverberation. In the distractor-induced blindness paradigm, inadequate distractor-induced response tendencies are suppressed by the inhibitory 'hyperdirect' pathway of the basal ganglia. If a target follows such a distractor closely, temporal aftereffects of distractor suppression prevent target identification. The model reproduces experimental data on how delays between target color and target motion affect the probability of target detection.
authors: Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany; Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
authors: Christian
authors: C
authors: Ebner
authors: Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Neurology, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Psychology, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors: Henning
authors: H
authors: Schroll
authors: Experimental Psychology and Neuropsychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors: Gesche
authors: G
authors: Winther
authors: Experimental Psychology and Neuropsychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
authors: Michael
authors: M
authors: Niedeggen
authors: Computer Science, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09111 Chemnitz, Germany; Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Electronic address: fred.hamker@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de.
authors: Fred H
authors: FH
authors: Hamker
mesh_terms: D001288:Attention; D001479:Basal Ganglia; D002540:Cerebral Cortex; D003243:Consciousness; D006801:Humans; D008959:Models, Neurological; D009044:Motor Cortex; D010470:Perceptual Masking; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex; D014793:Visual Cortex; D014796:Visual Perception
keywords: Basal ganglia; Cognitive control; Computational model; Conscious access; Global workspace theory