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Brain Advance Access published online on May 11, 2009
Brain, doi:10.1093/brain/awp111
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© The Author (2009). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Causal role of prefrontal cortex in the threshold for access to consciousness

A. Del Cul1,2,3, S. Dehaene1,2,5,6, P. Reyes7, E. Bravo7,8 and A. Slachevsky7,9,10

1 INSERM, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Saclay, France 2 CEA, NeuroSpin Center, Saclay, France 3 Psychiatry Department, AP-HP, Albert Chenevier and Henri Mondor Hospitals, France 4 University of Paris XII, Créteil, France 5 University of Paris XI, Orsay, France 6 Collège de France, Paris, France 7 Neurological Sciences Department and Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology Program, Biomedical Sciences Institutes, Faculty of Medicine, University of Chile, Chile 8 Laboratory of Medical Image Processing, Department of Neuroradiology, Institute of Neurosurgery, Santiago, Chile 9 Cognitive Neurology and Dementia Unit, Hospital del Salvador, Santiago, Chile 10 Neurology Department, Clinica Alemana, Santiago, Chile

Correspondence to: Antoine Del Cul and Stanislas Dehaene, INSERM, Cognitive Neuroimaging Unit, Saclay, France E-mail: antoine.delcul{at}gmail.com

What neural mechanisms support our conscious perception of briefly presented stimuli? Some theories of conscious access postulate a key role of top–down amplification loops involving prefrontal cortex (PFC). To test this issue, we measured the visual backward masking threshold in patients with focal prefrontal lesions, using both objective and subjective measures while controlling for putative attention deficits. In all conditions of temporal or spatial attention cueing, the threshold for access to consciousness was systematically shifted in patients, particular after a lesion of the left anterior PFC. The deficit affected subjective reports more than objective performance, and objective performance conditioned on subjective visibility was essentially normal. We conclude that PFC makes a causal contribution to conscious visual perception of masked stimuli, and outline a dual-route signal detection theory of objective and subjective decision making.

Received June 24, 2008. Revised February 3, 2009. Accepted March 12, 2009.


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