Why the brain knows more than we do: non-conscious representations and their role in the construction of conscious experience

TL;DR

This paper proposes a neural coding model explaining how non-conscious brain representations, through mechanisms like reentrant signaling and statistical learning, contribute to the formation of conscious experience.

Contribution

It introduces a neural coding framework linking non-conscious representations to conscious experience via resonant circuits and temporal activity patterns.

Findings

Non-conscious stimuli influence conscious information processing.

Statistical learning in resonant circuits generates neural signatures of consciousness.

Reentrant signaling and top-down matching facilitate consolidation of conscious representations.

Abstract

Scientific studies have shown that non-conscious stimuli and representations influence information processing during conscious experience. In the light of such evidence, questions about potential functional links between non-conscious brain representations and conscious experience arise. This article discusses a neural coding model capable of explaining how statistical learning mechanisms in dedicated resonant circuits could generate specific temporal activity traces of non-conscious representations in the brain. How reentrant signaling, top-down matching, and statistical coincidence of such activity traces may lead to the progressive consolidation of temporal patterns that constitute the neural signatures of conscious experience in networks extending across large distances beyond functionally specialized brain regions is then explained.