scholarly journals Seeing What You Feel: Affect Drives Visual Perception of Structurally Neutral Faces

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika H. Siegel ◽  
Jolie B. Wormwood ◽  
Karen S. Quigley ◽  
Lisa Feldman Barrett
Keyword(s):  
Visual Perception ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Interocular Suppression ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Suppression Technique ◽  
Positive Stimuli ◽  
The Brain

Affective realism, the phenomenon whereby affect is integrated into an individual’s experience of the world, is a normal consequence of how the brain processes sensory information from the external world in the context of sensations from the body. In the present investigation, we provided compelling empirical evidence that affective realism involves changes in visual perception (i.e., affect changes how participants see neutral stimuli). In two studies, we used an interocular suppression technique, continuous flash suppression, to present affective images outside of participants’ conscious awareness. We demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more smiling when paired with unseen affectively positive stimuli. Study 2 also demonstrated that seen neutral faces are perceived as more scowling when paired with unseen affectively negative stimuli. These findings have implications for real-world situations and challenge beliefs that affect is a distinct psychological phenomenon that can be separated from cognition and perception.

scholarly journals The emulation theory of representation: Motor control, imagery, and perception

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 377-396 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick Grush
Keyword(s):  
Motor Control ◽  
Sensory Feedback ◽  
Sensory Input ◽  
Neural Circuits ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
The Body ◽  
Feedback Delay ◽  
Run Off ◽  
Effects Of Feedback ◽  
The Brain

The emulation theory of representation is developed and explored as a framework that can revealingly synthesize a wide variety of representational functions of the brain. The framework is based on constructs from control theory (forward models) and signal processing (Kalman filters). The idea is that in addition to simply engaging with the body and environment, the brain constructs neural circuits that act as models of the body and environment. During overt sensorimotor engagement, these models are driven by efference copies in parallel with the body and environment, in order to provide expectations of the sensory feedback, and to enhance and process sensory information. These models can also be run off-line in order to produce imagery, estimate outcomes of different actions, and evaluate and develop motor plans. The framework is initially developed within the context of motor control, where it has been shown that inner models running in parallel with the body can reduce the effects of feedback delay problems. The same mechanisms can account for motor imagery as the off-line driving of the emulator via efference copies. The framework is extended to account for visual imagery as the off-line driving of an emulator of the motor-visual loop. I also show how such systems can provide for amodal spatial imagery. Perception, including visual perception, results from such models being used to form expectations of, and to interpret, sensory input. I close by briefly outlining other cognitive functions that might also be synthesized within this framework, including reasoning, theory of mind phenomena, and language.

Disorders of consciousness, memory, and will

2018 ◽  
pp. 51-86
Author(s):  
Walter Glannon
Keyword(s):  
Psychiatric Disorder ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Mental States ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Disorders Of Consciousness ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Flexible Behavior ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Insight Into

This chapter examines major psychiatric disorders as disorders of consciousness, memory, and will. All of these disorders involve disturbances in how the brain processes and integrates information about the body and external world. Distorted mental content in these psychopathologies impairs the capacity to consider different action plans, and to form and execute particular plans in particular actions. Dysfunctional mental states correlating with dysfunctional neural states impair the capacity for flexible behavior and adaptability to the environment. This dysfunction also impairs the capacity for insight into a psychiatric disorder and understanding the need for and motivation to seek treatment.

scholarly journals Breathlessness and the body: Neuroimaging evidence for the inferential leap

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olivia K Faull ◽  
Anja Hayen ◽  
Kyle T S Pattinson
Keyword(s):  
Anxiety Sensitivity ◽  
Subjective Evaluation ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Afferent Input ◽  
The Body ◽  
Published Data ◽  
Psychological Traits ◽  
Perception System ◽  
The Brain

AbstractBreathlessness debilitates millions of people with chronic illness. Mismatch between breathlessness severity and objective disease markers is common and poorly understood. Traditionally, sensory perception was conceptualised as a stimulus-response relationship, although this cannot explain how conditioned symptoms may occur in the absence of physiological signals from the lungs or airways. A Bayesian model is now proposed in which the brain generates sensations based on expectations learned from past experiences (priors), which are then checked against incoming afferent signals. In this model, psychological factors may act as moderators. They may either alter priors, or change the relative attention towards incoming sensory information, leading to more variable interpretation of an equivalent afferent input.In the present study we conducted a preliminary test of this model in a supplementary analysis of previously published data (Hayen 2017). We hypothesised that individual differences in psychological traits (anxiety, depression, anxiety sensitivity) would correlate with the variability of subjective evaluation of equivalent breathlessness challenges. To better understand the resulting inferential leap in the brain, we explored whether these behavioural measures correlated with activity in areas governing either prior generation or sensory afferent input.Behaviorally, anxiety sensitivity was found to positively correlate with each subject’s variability of intensity and unpleasantness during mild breathlessness, and with unpleasantness during strong breathlessness. In the brain, anxiety sensitivity was found to positively correlate with activity in the anterior insula during mild breathlessness, and negatively correlate with parietal sensorimotor areas during strong breathlessness.Our findings suggest that anxiety sensitivity may reduce the robustness of this Bayesian sensory perception system, increasing the variability of breathlessness perception and possibly susceptibility to symptom misinterpretation. These preliminary findings in healthy individuals demonstrate how differences in psychological function influence the way we experience bodily sensations, which might direct us towards better understanding of symptom mismatch in clinical populations.

Introduction to the Nervous System

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peggy Mason
Keyword(s):  
Spinal Cord ◽  
Nervous System ◽  
The Body ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Sensory Stimuli ◽  
System P ◽  
Brainstem Stroke ◽  
Primary Deficit ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
The Brain

The primary regions and principal functions of the central nervous system are introduced through the story of Jean-Dominique Bauby who became locked in after suffering a brainstem stroke. Bauby blinked out his story of locked-in syndrome one letter at a time. The primary deficit of locked-in syndrome is in voluntary movement because pathways from the brain to motoneurons in the brainstem and spinal cord are interrupted. Perception is also disturbed as pathways responsible for transforming sensory stimuli into conscious awareness are interrupted as they ascend through the brainstem into the forebrain. Homeostasis, through which the brain keeps the body alive, is also adversely affected in locked-in syndrome because it depends on the brain, spinal cord and autonomic nervous system. Abstract functions such as memory, language, and emotion depend fully on the forebrain and are intact in locked-in syndrome, as clearly evidenced by Bauby’s eloquent words.

scholarly journals Causal events enter awareness faster than non-causal events

PeerJ ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. e2932 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pieter Moors ◽  
Johan Wagemans ◽  
Lee de-Wit
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Methods ◽  
Perceptual Processing ◽  
Interocular Suppression ◽  
Continuous Flash Suppression ◽  
Perception Of Causality ◽  
Suppression Technique ◽  
Visual Phenomena ◽  
Sensory Evidence ◽  
Low Levels ◽  
Visual Properties

Philosophers have long argued that causality cannot be directly observed but requires a conscious inference (Hume, 1967). Albert Michotte however developed numerous visual phenomena in which people seemed to perceive causality akin to primary visual properties like colour or motion (Michotte, 1946). Michotte claimed that the perception of causality did not require a conscious, deliberate inference but, working over 70 years ago, he did not have access to the experimental methods to test this claim. Here we employ Continuous Flash Suppression (CFS)—an interocular suppression technique to render stimuli invisible (Tsuchiya & Koch, 2005)—to test whether causal events enter awareness faster than non-causal events. We presented observers with ‘causal’ and ‘non-causal’ events, and found consistent evidence that participants become aware of causal events more rapidly than non-causal events. Our results suggest that, whilst causality must be inferred from sensory evidence, this inference might be computed at low levels of perceptual processing, and does not depend on a deliberative conscious evaluation of the stimulus. This work therefore supports Michotte’s contention that, like colour or motion, causality is an immediate property of our perception of the world.

Countercurrents in Matter and Mind

Perception ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 26 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 177-177
Author(s):  
S Hochstein ◽  
M Ahissar
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Learning ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
External World ◽  
Learning Effects ◽  
Efficient Manner ◽  
Cortical Hierarchy ◽  
Internal Information ◽  
Task Conditions ◽  
Perceptual Systems ◽  
The Brain

An especially efficient manner of transmission of matter or energy, employed by numerous biological systems, is the countercurrent mechanism. Transfer is effected between two closely aligned streaming currents where the currents flow in opposite directions. Final transfer can be 100% rather than the 50% ceiling of concurrent streams. We now report that perceptual systems may employ a similar mechanism. Information derived from the external world by the senses is transferred to the perceptual system in a hierarchy of processing areas. Simultaneously, this information is intermixed with previously stored internal information. The degree of mixture of previously existing information, with new, unprocessed information is titrated along the hierarchy. The brain may tap various points along the countercurrents to obtain the mixtures required for different tasks. Perceptual learning affects first the inner levels of this cortical hierarchy and only later descends to their input levels to achieve better performance with more difficult task conditions. Learning effects discussed at ECVP over the last two decades are reviewed in the light of this cortical scheme. Many seemingly contradictory findings are reconciled when put in the framework of countercurrent streams which respectively process sensory information and guide perceptual learning.

scholarly journals The predictive brain in action: Involuntary actions reduce body prediction errors

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Lanillos ◽  
Sae Franklin ◽  
David W. Franklin
Keyword(s):  
Prediction Error ◽  
Sensory Information ◽  
The Body ◽  
Predictive Processing ◽  
Body Ownership ◽  
Prediction Errors ◽  
Uncertain Information ◽  
Energy Principle ◽  
Virtual Hand ◽  
The Brain

AbstractThe perception of our body in space is flexible and manipulable. The predictive brain hypothesis explains this malleability as a consequence of the interplay between incoming sensory information and our body expectations. However, given the interaction between perception and action, we might also expect that actions would arise due to prediction errors, especially in conflicting situations. Here we describe a computational model, based on the free-energy principle, that forecasts involuntary movements in sensorimotor conflicts. We experimentally confirm those predictions in humans by means of a virtual reality rubber-hand illusion. Participants generated movements (forces) towards the virtual hand, regardless of its location with respect to the real arm, with little to no forces produced when the virtual hand overlaid their physical hand. The congruency of our model predictions and human observations shows that the brain-body is generating actions to reduce the prediction error between the expected arm location and the new visual arm. This observed unconscious mechanism is an empirical validation of the perception-action duality in body adaptation to uncertain situations and evidence of the active component of predictive processing.Author SummaryHumans’ capacity to perceive and control their body in space is central in awareness, adaptation and safe interaction. From low-level body perception to body-ownership, discovering how the brain represents the body and generates actions is of major importance for cognitive science and also for robotics and artificial intelligence. The present study shows that humans move their body to match the expected location according to other (visual) sensory input, which corresponds to reducing the prediction error. This means that the brain adapts to conflicting or uncertain information from the senses by unconsciously acting in the world.

Benjamin Libet’s Big Experiment

2019 ◽  
pp. 186-199
Author(s):  
Alan J. McComas
Keyword(s):  
Electrical Activity ◽  
Neural Activity ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Sensory Stimulus ◽  
Conscious Awareness ◽  
Evoked Responses ◽  
Temporal Reference ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter describes Benjamin Libet’s finding that electrical activity in the brain precedes conscious awareness. Libet’s work had shown that, no matter how brief it was, a sensory stimulus evoked responses in the cortex that lasted hundreds of milliseconds. He also suggested that, just as the somatosensory cortex was able to refer sensations to a particular point on the opposite side of the body (“spatial reference”) so it could refer sensations to an earlier moment—the time when impulse activity had first been initiated in the cortex following the stimulus (“temporal reference”). These were important conclusions and inevitably became the subjects of debate following their publication. But Libet was soon to deliver a greater surprise when he discovered that a decision only entered consciousness when the underlying neural activity was already far advanced. Rather than the mind controlling the brain—thought by thought—it was the other way round and “free will,” seemingly so self-evident, was an illusion.

scholarly journals Functional roles of three cues that provide nonsynaptic modes of communication in the brain: electromagnetic field, oxygen, and carbon dioxide

2018 ◽  
Vol 119 (1) ◽  
pp. 356-368 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi F. Agnati ◽  
Diego Guidolin ◽  
Guido Maura ◽  
Manuela Marcoli
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide ◽  
Central Nervous System ◽  
Brain Function ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
External World ◽  
The Body ◽  
Functional Roles ◽  
Metabolic Substrates ◽  
The Central Nervous System ◽  
The Brain

The integrative actions of the brain depend on the exchange of information among its computational elements. Hence, this phenomenon plays the key role in driving the complex dynamics of the central nervous system, in which true computations interact with noncomputational dynamical processes to generate brain representations of the body and of the body in the external world, and hence the finalistic behavior of the organism. In this context, it should be pointed out that, besides the intercellular interactions mediated by classical electrochemical signals, other types of interactions, namely, “cues” and “coercions,” also appear to be exploited by the system to achieve its function. The present review focuses mainly on cues present in the environment and on those produced by cells of the body, which “pervade” the brain and contribute to its dynamics. These cues can also be metabolic substrates, and, in most cases, they are of fundamental importance to brain function and the survival of the entire organism. Three of these highly pervasive cues will be analyzed in greater detail, namely, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and electromagnetic fields (EMF). Special emphasis will be placed on EMF, since several authors have suggested that these highly pervasive energy fluctuations may play an important role in the global integrative actions of the brain; hence, EMF signaling may transcend classical connectionist models of brain function. Thus the new concept of “broadcasted neuroconnectomics” has been introduced, which transcends the current connectomics view of the brain.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document