====== Perceptual consciousness ======

The problem of perceptual [[consciousness]]—the question of how our subjective experiences (colors as we see them; sounds as we hear them; tastes, etc., as we feel them) could be accounted for in terms of brain processes—is often regarded as the greatest unsolved mystery of our times.
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A fundamental scientific question concerns the [[neural basis]] of perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring resulting from the processing of sensory events. Although recent studies identified neurons reflecting stimulus visibility, their functional role remains unknown. 

Pereira et al. from [[Geneva]] showed that perceptual consciousness and monitoring involve evidence accumulation. They performed [[single-unit recording]] in a participant with a [[microelectrode]] in the [[posterior parietal cortex]], while they detected vibrotactile stimuli around the detection threshold and provided confidence estimates. They find that detected stimuli elicited neuronal responses resembling evidence accumulation during [[decision-making]], irrespective of motor confounds or task demands. They generalized these findings in healthy volunteers using [[electroencephalography]]. Behavioral and neural responses are reproduced with a computational model considering a stimulus as detected if accumulated [[evidence]] reaches a bound, and [[confidence]] as the distance between maximal evidence and that bound. They concluded that gradual changes in neuronal dynamics during evidence accumulation relates to perceptual consciousness and perceptual monitoring in humans
((Pereira M, Megevand P, Tan MX, Chang W, Wang S, Rezai A, Seeck M, Corniola M, Momjian S, Bernasconi F, Blanke O, Faivre N. [[Evidence accumulation]] relates to perceptual consciousness and monitoring. Nat Commun. 2021 May 31;12(1):3261. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23540-y. PMID: 34059682.))