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Dissociable Neural Information Dynamics of Perceptual Integration and Differentiation during Bistable Perception.

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Canales-Johnson, Andrés 
Billig, Alexander J 
Olivares, Francisco 
Gonzalez, Andrés 
Garcia, María Del Carmen 

Abstract

At any given moment, we experience a perceptual scene as a single whole and yet we may distinguish a variety of objects within it. This phenomenon instantiates two properties of conscious perception: integration and differentiation. Integration is the property of experiencing a collection of objects as a unitary percept and differentiation is the property of experiencing these objects as distinct from each other. Here, we evaluated the neural information dynamics underlying integration and differentiation of perceptual contents during bistable perception. Participants listened to a sequence of tones (auditory bistable stimuli) experienced either as a single stream (perceptual integration) or as two parallel streams (perceptual differentiation) of sounds. We computed neurophysiological indices of information integration and information differentiation with electroencephalographic and intracranial recordings. When perceptual alternations were endogenously driven, the integrated percept was associated with an increase in neural information integration and a decrease in neural differentiation across frontoparietal regions, whereas the opposite pattern was observed for the differentiated percept. However, when perception was exogenously driven by a change in the sound stream (no bistability), neural oscillatory power distinguished between percepts but information measures did not. We demonstrate that perceptual integration and differentiation can be mapped to theoretically motivated neural information signatures, suggesting a direct relationship between phenomenology and neurophysiology.

Description

Keywords

auditory streaming, bistable perception, information differentiation, information integration, phenomenal consciousness, Acoustic Stimulation, Auditory Perception, Brain, Electroencephalography, Female, Humans, Male, Young Adult

Journal Title

Cereb Cortex

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1047-3211
1460-2199

Volume Title

30

Publisher

Oxford University Press (OUP)

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Wellcome Trust (via MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (CBU)) (093811/Z/10/Z)
Wellcome Trust (unknown)
This research was supported by a Wellcome Trust Biomedical Research Fellowship WT093811MA and the Chilean National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development Grant 1171200