Reproducibility Distinguishes Conscious from Nonconscious Neural Representations

Consciousness and Reproducibility What exactly does it mean for neural information to reach subjective awareness? Previous work has suggested that the intensity and the duration of activation in brain areas that encode the contents of perception determine whether or not the information contributes directly to subjective experience. Now Schurger et al. (p. 97 , published online 12 November; see the Perspective by Schwarzkopf and Rees ) describe a third property that distinguishes conscious from nonconscious neural encoding reproducibility. Spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity were recorded while subjects performed a simple visual category-discrimination task. Activation patterns corresponding to conscious information were more reproducible—i.e., more reliable, across different presentations of the same stimulus category, compared to nonconscious activation patterns coding for the same perception.