Jason Samaha | Oscillatory dynamics supporting visual attention and awareness

Gastvortrag

  • Datum: 29.08.2017
  • Uhrzeit: 14:00 - 15:00
  • Vortragende(r): Jason Samaha
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Psychology
  • Ort: MPI für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften
  • Raum: Wilhelm Wundt Raum (A400)
The nature of perceptual consciousness has enjoyed renewed interest within the empirical sciences, yet the underlying neural mechanisms, or even correlates, of consciousness remain highly controversial. Difficulty in part stems from difficulty in accurately measuring the presence, absence, or degree of awareness because standard perceptual paradigms often confound awareness with other factors such as attention or signal strength. In this talk, I describe novel approaches for teasing apart subjective reports of awareness (e.g., confidence, visibility) from objective performance (e.g., signal processing capacity, attention). These findings are explained from a signal detection theoretic standpoint and pose challenges for existing models of perceptual decision-making based on optimal Bayesian inference or evidence accumulation. I’ll further explore the role of oscillatory neural activity (primarily in the 8-13 Hz, alpha band) in shaping subjective awareness and objective performance in a variety of tasks. This work reveals new links between specific parameters of alpha-band activity (e.g., phase, power, frequency) and specific aspects of perception. The links between alpha oscillations and perception also furnish a framework by which top-down processes modulate specific aspects of perception through the modulation of specific features of alpha oscillations.

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