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Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness

Recently, using Motion Induced-Blindness (MIB), we have shown that two visual stimuli, one consciously experienced and one not, interact as a function of feature and object similarity, pointing to preserved visual representations of objects, and their constitutive features, in the absence of percept...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Meital-Kfir, Noya, Sagi, Dov
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5915610/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29691414
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24554-1
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author Meital-Kfir, Noya
Sagi, Dov
author_facet Meital-Kfir, Noya
Sagi, Dov
author_sort Meital-Kfir, Noya
collection PubMed
description Recently, using Motion Induced-Blindness (MIB), we have shown that two visual stimuli, one consciously experienced and one not, interact as a function of feature and object similarity, pointing to preserved visual representations of objects, and their constitutive features, in the absence of perceptual awareness. Here we investigated whether these representations preserve the memory of the previously perceived stimulus by testing interactions with the unperceived stimulus modified while it is invisible. Observers performed the MIB task, wherein an object ‘Target’ (a plaid object) was morphed into one of its features (an oriented Gabor patch) once its disappearance was reported. Reappearances of the morphed target were induced by a visible ‘Cue’ (object or feature), with reappearance frequency used to quantify the interaction between the visible cue and the invisible target. Reappearance rates were highest when the morphed target and the cue shared the same orientations, with the plaid-cue showing reappearance rates equal to that of the orthogonal-cue. Our findings indicate that target-cue interactions do not depend on memory-stored representations, but rather, on the current state of the consciously unavailable target. We suggest that visual objects can be constructed and deconstructed in the absence of conscious perception, but only objects are consciously available.
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spelling pubmed-59156102018-04-30 Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness Meital-Kfir, Noya Sagi, Dov Sci Rep Article Recently, using Motion Induced-Blindness (MIB), we have shown that two visual stimuli, one consciously experienced and one not, interact as a function of feature and object similarity, pointing to preserved visual representations of objects, and their constitutive features, in the absence of perceptual awareness. Here we investigated whether these representations preserve the memory of the previously perceived stimulus by testing interactions with the unperceived stimulus modified while it is invisible. Observers performed the MIB task, wherein an object ‘Target’ (a plaid object) was morphed into one of its features (an oriented Gabor patch) once its disappearance was reported. Reappearances of the morphed target were induced by a visible ‘Cue’ (object or feature), with reappearance frequency used to quantify the interaction between the visible cue and the invisible target. Reappearance rates were highest when the morphed target and the cue shared the same orientations, with the plaid-cue showing reappearance rates equal to that of the orthogonal-cue. Our findings indicate that target-cue interactions do not depend on memory-stored representations, but rather, on the current state of the consciously unavailable target. We suggest that visual objects can be constructed and deconstructed in the absence of conscious perception, but only objects are consciously available. Nature Publishing Group UK 2018-04-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5915610/ /pubmed/29691414 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24554-1 Text en © The Author(s) 2018 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Meital-Kfir, Noya
Sagi, Dov
Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title_full Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title_fullStr Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title_full_unstemmed Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title_short Real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
title_sort real-time visual interactions across the boundary of awareness
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5915610/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29691414
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-24554-1
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