Neural Correlates of Visual Consciousness in Humans

The immediacy and directness of conscious experience belies the complexity of the underlying neural mechanisms, which remain incompletely understood. This chapter focuses on the neural correlates of visual consciousness in humans. Activity in functionally specialized areas of ventral visual cortex is necessary for visual awareness, but recent evidence suggests that such activity may not be sufficient to support conscious vision without a contribution from parietal and prefrontal areas, reflecting processes such as selective attention and working memory. Reciprocal interactions between parietal and ventral visual cortex can serve to selectively integrate internal representations of visual events in the broader behavioral context in which they occur. Such network interactions may account for the richness of our conscious experience and may provide a fundamental neural substrate for visual consciousness.