scholarly journals Limits on visual awareness of object targets in the context of other object category masks: Investigating bottlenecks in the continuous flash suppression paradigm with hand and tool stimuli

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (5) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Regine Zopf ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger ◽  
Anina N. Rich
Keyword(s):  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Object Category

scholarly journals Limits on visual awareness of object targets in the context of other object category masks: Investigating bottlenecks in the continuous flash suppression paradigm with hand and tool stimuli

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Regine Zopf ◽  
Stefan R. Schweinberger ◽  
Anina N. Rich
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Object Category ◽  
Vocal Responses ◽  
Object Categories ◽  
Image Characteristics ◽  
Hand Tool ◽  
High Level ◽  
Cortical Representations

AbstractOur capacity to become aware of visual stimuli is limited. Investigating these limits, Cohen et al. (2015, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience) found that certain object categories (e.g., faces) were more effective in blocking awareness of other categories (e.g., buildings) than other combinations (e.g., cars/chairs) in the continuous flash suppression (CFS) task. They also found that more category-pair representational similarity in higher visual cortex was related to longer category-pair breakthrough times suggesting a high-level representational architecture bottleneck for visual awareness. As the cortical representations of hands and tools overlap, these categories are ideal to test this further. We conducted CFS experiments and predicted longer breakthrough times for hands/tools compared to other pairs. In contrast to these predictions, participants were generally faster at detecting targets masked by hands or tools compared to other mask categories when giving manual (Experiment 1) or vocal responses (Experiment 2). Furthermore, we found the same inefficient mask effect for hands in the context of the categories used by Cohen et al. (2015) and found a similar behavioural pattern as the original paper (Experiment 3). Exploring potential low-level explanations, we found that the category average for edges (e.g. hands have less detail compared to cars) was the best predictor for the data. However, these category-specific image characteristics could not completely account for the Cohen et al. (2015) category pattern or for the hand/tool effects. Thus, several low- and high-level object category-specific limits for visual awareness are plausible and more investigations are needed to further tease these apart.

No impact of affective person knowledge on visual awareness: Evidence from binocular rivalry and continuous flash suppression.

Emotion ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (8) ◽  
pp. 1199-1207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Stein ◽  
Caitlyn Grubb ◽  
Maria Bertrand ◽  
Seh Min Suh ◽  
Sara C. Verosky
Keyword(s):  
Binocular Rivalry ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression

scholarly journals Real-world regularities facilitate visual awareness of objects under continuous flash suppression

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (12) ◽  
pp. 1039
Author(s):  
Timo Stein ◽  
Daniel Kaiser ◽  
Marius Peelen
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression

scholarly journals Not All Emotions Are Equal: Fear Chemosignals Lower Awareness Thresholds Only for Fearful Faces

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (7) ◽  
pp. 601-608
Author(s):  
Fábio Silva ◽  
Nuno Gomes ◽  
Sebastian Korb ◽  
Gün R Semin
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Visual Processing ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Emotional States ◽  
Body Odor ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Fearful Faces ◽  
Processing Stream ◽  
Body Odors

Abstract Exposure to body odors (chemosignals) collected under different emotional states (i.e., emotional chemosignals) can modulate our visual system, biasing visual perception. Recent research has suggested that exposure to fear body odors, results in a generalized faster access to visual awareness of different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, happy, and neutral). In the present study, we aimed at replicating and extending these findings by exploring if these effects are limited to fear odor, by introducing a second negative body odor—that is, disgust. We compared the time that 3 different emotional facial expressions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral) took to reach visual awareness, during a breaking continuous flash suppression paradigm, across 3 body odor conditions (i.e., fear, disgust, and neutral). We found that fear body odors do not trigger an overall faster access to visual awareness, but instead sped-up access to awareness specifically for facial expressions of fear. Disgust odor, on the other hand, had no effects on awareness thresholds of facial expressions. These findings contrast with prior results, suggesting that the potential of fear body odors to induce visual processing adjustments is specific to fear cues. Furthermore, our results support a unique ability of fear body odors in inducing such visual processing changes, compared with other negative emotional chemosignals (i.e., disgust). These conclusions raise interesting questions as to how fear odor might interact with the visual processing stream, whilst simultaneously giving rise to future avenues of research.

scholarly journals The advantage of fear stimuli in accessing visual awareness

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. S373-S373
Author(s):  
N. Gomes ◽  
S. Silva ◽  
C. Silva ◽  
J. Azevedo ◽  
S. Soares
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Disorders ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Neural System ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Privileged Access ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Suppression Technique ◽  
Conscious Processing ◽  
Competing Interest

IntroductionSeveral studies have shown that evolutionary relevant fear stimuli hold a privileged access to the fear module, an independent behavioral, psychophysiological and neural system that is automatically and selectively activated, and is relatively encapsulated from more advanced human cognition. However, to the best of our knowledge no study has yet directly assessed whether such stimuli are granted a facilitated access to visual awareness, compared to stimuli without such evolutionary relevance.ObjectiveIn the present study we used an interocular suppression technique, the Continuous Flash Suppression, known to reduce the activity along the geniculostriate pathway and to strongly suppress processing in the visual cortex.AimOur goal was to investigate whether ecologically relevant fear stimuli (snakes and spiders) overcame suppression and accessed awareness to a larger extent than non-evolutionary relevant animal stimuli (birds).MethodThirty university students volunteered to participate. Participants were asked to identify the screen quadrant in which the stimulus was presented in order to ensure that there was indeed a conscious processing.ResultsThe results confirmed our hypothesis by showing an advantage of fear stimuli (snakes and spiders) over the control stimulus (birds) in emerging from suppression into awareness, which was evidenced by significantly shorter response times.ConclusionsOur findings support the notion that evolutionary relevant stimuli hold a privileged access into awareness, most likely involving a direct brainstem-thalamic route to the amygdala. Importantly, they contribute to elucidate the functions and mechanisms of the fear system and may have important implications for understanding emotional disorders, since many of these involve the fear system.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

Face proprioception does not modulate access to visual awareness of emotional faces in a continuous flash suppression paradigm

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 166-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Korb ◽  
Sofia A. Osimo ◽  
Tiziano Suran ◽  
Ariel Goldstein ◽  
Raffaella Ida Rumiati
Keyword(s):  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Emotional Faces

scholarly journals Ventral and Dorsal Pathways Relate Differently to Visual Awareness of Body Postures under Continuous Flash Suppression

eNeuro ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. ENEURO.0285-17.2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Minye Zhan ◽  
Rainer Goebel ◽  
Beatrice de Gelder
Keyword(s):  
Visual Awareness ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Body Postures
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