Nature: flickering brain signals track awareness
Monkey brain recordings show quick flickers that track whether a sight is noticed, Nature reports. Patterns flipped about 15 times a second between aware and unaware states, the news piece says. The study is a preprint and has not yet been peer reviewed.
Monkey brain recordings show quick flickers that track whether a sight is noticed, Nature reports. Neuroscientist Doris Tsao of UC Berkeley and her team posted the work on bioRxiv. Nature said they rebuilt images from neural activity alone. That included faces the monkeys saw and faces that sat in front of their eyes but escaped notice.
In a binocular rivalry setup, one face went to one eye and a second face to the other. When both were present, face areas in the inferotemporal cortex and prefrontal cortex flipped between the two patterns about 15 times a second, Nature said. Older monkey studies had found only weak signals for unseen content. Tsao called the strong unseen signal surprising. She also said activity switched between aware and unaware patterns several times each second.
Nature said the results, which have not been peer reviewed, could be a small step toward how brains create awareness. UCLA cognitive scientist John Sakon called it an interesting paper. He said some findings were not totally unexpected and praised careful methods. Nature also noted heavy social media buzz after Tsao posted a summary online on October 17, with millions of views within days.
The Nature news piece cites the bioRxiv preprint as the study record. NewsHabit links that preprint so readers can see the methods Tsao's group described.
What we know: Nature reports a macaque study linking rapid neural flickers to whether a visual cue is consciously seen, with the study on bioRxiv.
What we don't: Whether peer review will change the claims. Only Nature has reported this so far. NewsHabit hasn't seen independent confirmation.
Where outlets agree Nature reports a macaque study linking flickering neural patterns to conscious visual perception.
Where they differ Nature leads with surprise at a strong unconscious signal, while a scientist quoted in the piece said some findings were not totally unexpected.