1) The document discusses recent evidence that attention and consciousness are dissociable and may have separate neural mechanisms. Studies using dual-task paradigms have shown consciousness can occur without attention. 2) Steady state visual evoked potentials (SSVEPs) have been used to track attention and consciousness during binocular rivalry. However, SSVEPs track attention but not necessarily consciousness. 3) Going forward, researchers aim to characterize the structures of qualia and brain information to better understand the relationship between consciousness and neural activity, with attention seen as a way to perturb these structures.

1. 2021 Apr 12 @ Recent Advancements in Attention and Cognition,
Nao Tsuchiya 土谷尚嗣
School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University/Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience
Growing evidence for separate neural mechanisms for
attention and consciousness
1

2. Outline
1. Definitions of the terms
a. Attention & Consciousness
2. Dissociation of conscoiusness and attention
a. Some reviews
b. Consciousness without attention
i. dual-task, similarity rating, topological data analysis
c. Neuronal correlates of consciousness and/or attention
i. SSVEP tracks attention, but not consciousness
3. Future outlook
a. Information structure of consciousness and brain
i. Attention as a perturbation of the structure of qualia and neural
activity
2

3. Why are do we care about relationships
between consciousness and attention?
• Attention may be a key to understand consciousness (e.g., Posner
1994 PNAS)
• Attention may be a confounding factor, which needs to be carefully
controlled to study consciousness (e.g., Tse et al 2005 PNAS)
3

4. How can we address if attention is similar to
consciousness?
Without consciousness of something, can we attend to it?
Without attention, can we see? (Part 2-1)
For a given percept or behavior, are the effects of attention
the same as the effects of being conscious of? (Part 2-2)
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Maier & Tsuchiya 2020 APP or PsyArxiv
4

5. 1. Definition of the terms
5

6. What is attention?
6

7. Naive intuition?
Some types of the neural mechanisms of
attention is likely to be explained by this
“amplification”. But there are many more
components in attention (e.g., inhibition) that
may be even more important.
The neural basis of consciousness cannot be
explained by this kind of threshold model.
Maier & Tsuchiya APP or PsyArxiv
7

8. What is attention?
• (alertness, arousal)
• selective attention
• (bottom-up/exogenous attention)
• (stimulus-driven, automatic, task-independent)
• “Top-down/endogenous attention”
•
• Volitionally controlled, task-dependent, goal-oriented
• Spatial, feature-based, object-based, temporal
• Attention can
• amplify the signal, neural activity, perceptual saliency
• (or inhibit unwanted signals, neural activity and perception)
8

9. • consciousness
• (level of consciousness)
• (a single moment of unified experience)
• contents of consciousness
• =raw feeling, qualia
• phenomenal, not access, consciousness
What is consciousness?
9

10. Motion-induced blindness
(Bonneh, Cooperman, Sagi 2001 Nature)
10

11. 2. Dissociations of
conscoiusness and attention
11

12. How can we address if attention is similar to
consciousness?
Without consciousness of something, can we attend to it?
Without attention, can we see? (Part 2-1)
For a given percept or behavior, are the effects of attention
the same as the effects of being conscious of? (Part 2-2)
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Maier & Tsuchiya 2020 APP or PsyArxiv
12

13. Not necessarily give rise to
consciousness
Gives rise to
consciousness
can occur without
top-down
attention
Afterimages
Rapid vision (<120ms)
Zombie behaviors
Storage of premitive information
Local, weak integration
requires
top-down
attention
Pop-out
Priming
Adaptation
Object processing
Visual search
Thoughts
Eye-of-origin
Storage in working memory
Detection & discrimination of
unexpected or unfamiliar stimuli
Full reportability
Global, strong integration
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Dissociation between consciousness and top-down attention 16

14. McCormick 97
Kentridge et al 99a, 99b, 04, 08
Naccache et al 02
Rajimehr 04
Montaser-Kouhsari & Rajimehr 05
Kanai et al 06
Sumner et al 06
Melcher et al 06
Jiang et al 06
Sato et al 07
Bahrami et al 08
Lin et al 08 PsychSci
Lin et al 09 Curr Bio
Tapia et al 09 JExpPsy
Shin 09 AP&P
Finkbeiner 09 PsychSci
Bauer et al 09 PNAS
Hsieh, 2011 Psych Sci
Faivre and Kouider 2011 JOV
Kaunitz, Fracasso et al. 2011 JOV
Norman, Heywood et al. 2013
Tapia, Breitmeyer et al. 2012
Attention without consciousness
Mostly settled. Reviewed by Deheane et al 2006, Koch & Tsuchiya 2007, van Boxtel,
Tsuchiya, Koch 2011, Cohen et al 2012. But also see Mole 2008 and a short talk on
“Consciousness Talks” on Youtube Apr 23 by Egor Ananyev & Brown Hsieh
17

15. Not necessarily give rise to
consciousness
Gives rise to
consciousness
can occur
without
top-down
attention
Afterimages
Rapid vision (<120ms)
Zombie behaviors
Storage of premitive information
Local, weak integration
Iconic & fragile memory
Partial reportability
Gist, animal and face gender
perception in dual tasks
requires
top-down
attention
Pop-out
Priming
Adaptation
Object processing
Visual search
Thoughts
Eye-of-origin
Storage in working memory
Detection & discrimination of
unexpected or unfamiliar stimuli
Full reportability
Global, strong integration
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Dissociation between consciousness and top-down attention 18

16. Not necessarily give rise to
consciousness
Gives rise to
consciousness
can occur
without
top-down
attention
Afterimages
Rapid vision (<120ms)
Zombie behaviors
Storage of premitive information
Local, weak integration
Iconic & fragile memory
Partial reportability
Gist, animal and face gender
perception in dual tasks
requires top-down
attention
Pop-out
Priming
Adaptation
Object processing
Visual search
Thoughts
Eye-of-origin
Storage in working memory
Detection & discrimination of
unexpected or unfamiliar stimuli
Full reportability
Global, strong integration
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Dissociation between consciousness and top-down attention
Most contentious!
Dehaene et al 2006, Kouider et al 2010, Lau & Rosenthal 2011 Cohen & Dennett 2011, Cohen et
al 2012, 2016,
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007, Block 2005, 2011, Lamme 2003, Tsuchiya, Wilke, Frassle, Lamme 2015,
Haun, Koch, Tononi, Tsuchiya 2016 Neuroscience of Consciousness, Maier & Tsuchiya 2020
19

17. Deheane, Changeux, Naccache, Sackur, Sergent 2006 TICS
20

18. How can we address if attention is similar to
consciousness?
Without consciousness of something, can we attend to it?
Without attention, can we see? (Part 2-1)
For a given percept or behavior, are the effects of attention
the same as the effects of being conscious of? (Part 2-2)
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Maier & Tsuchiya 2020 APP or PsyArxiv
22

19. Dual task paradigm
Dual-Task paradigm (Braun, 1994)
Central performance
Peripheral
performance
Attention-Operating Characteristic
(AOC) plots (Sperling, 1978)
23

20. THE DUAL TASK:
Discriminations with/without attention
Top-down attentional
amplification
not required
Top-down attentional
amplificaiton
required
Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness
25

21. • Advantages
• Can manipulate stimuli and tasks with minimal confounds (e.g.,
crowding, saliency, cortical magnitifcation factors)
• Can be combined with metacognitive measures
• Disadvantages
• (Used to require substantial training) but staircase methods can
shorten it substantially
26
Dualtask advantages and disadvantages
Matthews, et al 2017 Phil Trans

22. METHODS: Dual-Task
Matthews, Schroeder, Kaunitz, van Boxtel, Tsuchiya 2017 Phil Trans
Manipulate SOA such that single-task performance
remains at ~75% accuracy
27

23. Is face discrimination possible
because it attracts bottom-up spatial attention?
Matthews, Schroeder, Kaunitz, van Boxtel, Tsuchiya 2017 Phil Trans
28

24. Face
aspect
Disk
aspect
Peripheral
Task
Letter Task
Objective Visibility Metacognition
Matthews, Schroeder, Kaunitz, van Boxtel, Tsuchiya 2017 Phil Trans
Face discrimination is possible
not because of residual spatial attnetion!
29

25. Does seeing an object and attending to an object
result in a similar increase in “neural activity”?
Let’s consider the case of Steady State Visual Evoked Potentials (SSVEP).
SSVEP has been used extensively in Binocular Rivalry:
Brown & Norcia 1997 Vision Res, Tononi et al 1998 PNAS, … Zhang
et al 2011 Neuron, Davidson 2018 eLife
31

26. Tracking consciousness
and/or attention by SSVEP
Davidson 2018 eLife
32

27. Visualizing your conscious content in each moment
Log SNR (for power) of
low frequency flicker
stimulus (4.5 Hz )
Davidson 2018 eLife
Time from button press [sec]
33

28. Visualizing your conscious content in each moment
Log SNR (for power) of
low frequency flicker
stimulus (4.5 Hz )
Davidson 2018 eLife
Time from button press [sec]
34

29. Visualizing your conscious content in each moment
Log SNR (for power) of
low frequency flicker
stimulus (4.5 Hz )
Davidson 2018 eLife
Time from button press [sec]
35

30. Button press reports confound seeing and attending.
> resulted in the development of .
Wilke et al 2009 PNAS, Frassle et al 2014 JNsci, Tsuchiya et al 2015 TICS
36

31. How can we disentangle seeing & attending?
Perceptual filling in (=disappearance) is known to increase when we pay
attention to stimuli. Similar effects reported for other phenomena, e.g.,
afterimage, after effects, motion induced blindness
A question:
Does SSVEP increase with SEEING or ATTENDING?
Weil et al 2007 PNAS, Davidson et al 2020 Neurosci Con & Davidson
2020 eLife
37

32. Davidson 2020 eLife
38

33. Davidson 2020 eLife
39

34. Davidson 2020 eLife
40

35. How can we address if attention is similar to
consciousness?
Without attention, can we see? (Part 2-1)
Yes, some stimuli, like faces, can be consciously seen
without attentional amplification under the dual task
For a given percept or behavior, are the effects of attention the
same as the effects of being conscious of? (Part 2-2)
No, SSVEP tracks attention, but not consciousness
Koch & Tsuchiya 2007 TICS (updated in Tsuchiya & Koch 2015 Neurology of Consciousness)
Maier & Tsuchiya 2020 APP or PsyArxiv
41

36. 3. Future outlook
42

37. A promising way to study the physical basis of consciousness
1. Characterize the
structure of qualia
2. Characterize the structure of
information derived from the brain
3. Characterize the
relationship between
these structures
Tsuchiya et al 2016 Neurosci Res, Maier & Tsuchiya 2020 APP, Tsuchiya 2020 MCS talk
Attentional manipulation as
an effective way to perturb
the structures of qualia and
brain activity!
43

38. Rowe, D’Souza, van Boxtel, Tsuchiya (in preparation)
44

39. Single task
(only similarity judgement)
Dual task
(only similarity judgement)
Single task
(only similarity judgement)
Dual task
(only similarity judgement)
45

40. 46
Topological data analysis to quantify
the structural properties of qualia

41. 47
1. Characterize the
structure of qualia
Towards understanding the physical basis of consciousness

42. Thanks you for your attention and consciousness!
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