Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness

ABSTRACTThe relationship between our conscious experiences of the visual world and the neuronal processes involved in the processing of visual information is a central theme of current research. However, it is not yet known whether conscious experiences possess unique quantitative or qualitative processing features. Recently we have shown that two visual stimuli, one consciously experienced and one not, interact as function of features and objects similarity, pointing to preserved visual representations in the absence of perceptual awareness. Here we ask whether these representations can be modified in the absence of perceptual awareness by testing interactions while the unperceived stimulus is being modified outside of one’s awareness. Observers performed a Motion Induced Blindness task, wherein a plaid ‘Target’ was morphed into a Gabor patch once disappearance was reported. Reappearances of the morphed target were induced by a visible ‘Cue’. Our results indicate that the effectiveness of the cue depends on the target representation during the time of suppression. Reappearance rates were highest when the morphed target and the cue share the same orientations. Our findings indicate that the target-cue interactions do not depend on memory-stored representations, but rather on the current state of the consciously unavailable target. We conclude that visual representations can be modified in the absence of conscious perception.