Neural correlates of attention differ from consciousness during a novel psychophysical task

摘要

Background: While consciousness and top-down attention seem to be inextricably connected, recent evidence has suggested that these processes can be present in the absence of the other. Recent studies show that observers can pay attention to an invisible stimulus (unconscious), and that a stimulus can be clearly seen in the absence of attention. We used a novel psychophysics task to explore the neural correlates of top-down attention and consciousness.