Conscious Perception: Time for an Update?

TL;DR

This paper proposes a dynamic process model of conscious perception, suggesting that perception involves ongoing recoding influenced by context, saliency, and goals, challenging traditional discrete views.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hypothesis that conscious perception is a continuous updating process, reconciling conflicting empirical findings and offering new testable predictions.

Findings

Conscious perception may be an ongoing recoding process.

Factors like context, saliency, and goals influence perception.

The framework challenges the traditional discrete view of consciousness.

Abstract

Understanding the neural mechanism underlying subjective representation has become a central endeavor in cognitive-neuroscience. In theories of conscious perception, stimulus gaining conscious access is usually considered as a discrete neuronal event to be characterized in time or space, sometimes refer to as a 'conscious episode'. Surprisingly, the alternative hypothesis according to which conscious perception is a dynamic process has been rarely considered. Here, we discuss this hypothesis and envisage its implications. We show how it can reconcile inconsistent empirical findings on the timing of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCCs), and make testable predictions. According to this hypothesis, a stimulus is consciously perceived for as long as it is recoded to fit an ongoing stream composed of all other perceived stimuli. We suggest that this 'updating' process is governed by at least three factors (1) context, (2) stimulus saliency and (3) observer's goal. Finally, this framework forces us to reconsider the typical distinction between conscious and unconscious information processing.