Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes

@article{Koch2007AttentionAC,
  title={Attention and consciousness: two distinct brain processes},
  author={Christof Koch and Naotsugu Tsuchiya},
  journal={Trends in Cognitive Sciences},
  year={2007},
  volume={11},
  pages={16-22}
}
View on Elsevier
cbcl.mit.edu
930 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
59
Background Citations
460
Methods Citations
20
Results Citations
48

Figures and Tables from this paper

930 Citations

The Relationship Between Consciousness and Top-Down Attention

The Relationship between Attention and Consciousness

The relationship between attention and consciousness is a matter of importance and of intense debate among scholars. Many psychologists and brain scientists try to link these two brain processes to…

Consciousness and Attention: On Sufficiency and Necessity

Psychophysical and neurophysiological evidence for a dissociation between top-down attention and consciousness point to a functional dissociation: attention as analyzer and consciousness as synthesizer.

Resolving some confusions over attention and consciousness

Through Attention to Consciousness

There is presently a vigorous ongoing debate about the relation between attention and consciousness. This is being fuelled by results from experimental paradigms which probe various features of the…

Varieties of attention and of consciousness: evidence from neuropsychology

These findings strongly suggest that exogenous attention is a necessary condition for primary visual consciousness to emerge, and the integration of several sources of evidence is needed to further explore the taxonomy of these processes and to identify their neural correlates.

Opposing effects of attention and consciousness on afterimages

It is shown that selective attention and visual consciousness have opposite effects: paying attention to the grating decreases the duration of its afterimage, whereas consciously seeing thegrating increases the afterimage duration.

Attentional Routes to Conscious Perception

Evidence is shown that distinct sorts of spatial attention can have different effects on visual conscious perception, and Fronto-parietal networks important for spatial attention constitute plausible neural substrates for the interactions between exogenous spatial attention and conscious perception.

Interdependence of attention and consciousness.

Against the View that Consciousness and Attention are Fully Dissociable

In this paper, I will try to show that the idea that there can be consciousness without some form of attention, and high-level top-down attention without consciousness, originates from a failure to…
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 79 REFERENCES

Why visual attention and awareness are different

  • V. Lamme
  • Psychology, Biology
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences
  • 2003

Spatial attention and two modes of visual consciousness

Attention: the mechanisms of consciousness.

  • M. Posner
  • Psychology
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
  • 1994
This paper reviews recent findings in relation to classical issues in the study of attention and anatomical and physical theories of the nature of consciousness.

Conscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy

The Scope and Limits of Top-Down Attention in Unconscious Visual Processing

Consciousness and Complexity

  • A. SethG. Edelman
  • Biology, Psychology
    Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science
  • 2009
Applying measures of neural integration and complexity, together with an analysis of extensive neurological data, leads to a testable proposal-the dynamic core hypothesis-about the properties of the neural substrate of consciousness.

Attentional modulation of sensorimotor processes in the absence of perceptual awareness

Evidence is provided by showing that attentional cueing can modulate the behavioral response to invisible stimuli in a way that is distinct from enhancing their visibility, and the pattern of attentional influence on priming could not be explained by attentional modulation of the prime’s perceptual strength but was predicted by a direct attentional Influence on the nonconscious priming process itself.

Two neural correlates of consciousness

  • N. Block
  • Philosophy, Biology
    Trends in Cognitive Sciences
  • 2005

The zombie within

Although many of Freud's ideas, involving penis envy, the Oedipus complex, the Id and other fanciful creations, are mere myths that lack objective standing, science has provided credible evidence for the existence of sensorimotor systems in the primate brain that function in the absence of consciousness.

The Science of Consciousness: Psychological, Neuropsychological and Clinical Reviews

Individual chapters, presenting the latest research findings from pioneers in the field, combine to form a stimulating and accessible overview of this emerging science.
...