Our second journal club concerns a recent debate on the role of the prefrontal cortex in conscious experience. One of the major debates on consciousness is that between higher-order and first-order approaches. People who support higher-order approaches typically take prefrontal cortex as the key region in which phenomenally conscious experiences arise, while people who support first-order approaches usually think that it is the sensory regions, not the prefrontal cortex, which gives rise to conscious experiences. In Lau and Brown’s 2012 paper [1], they offer some empirical cases to support the higher-order views, arguing that the subjects can still have conscious experience without first-order representations. On the other hand, in Malach’s 2011 comment [2], he argues that some of the empirical data shown in Lau and Rosenthal’s 2011 paper are in fact compatible with first-order theories, therefore, more empirical evidence is still needed.
The debate on the role
of prefrontal cortex and between the two approaches will be continued at the
ASSC 17 meeting on July 13 as the first symposium. Brown, Malach, Levine, and
Rahnev will all join this exciting debate!
We encourage you to read
the following materials and then join in the discussion in the comments!
1. Lau and Brown 2012 “The
Emperor’s New Phenomenology? The Empirical Case for Conscious Experiences
without First-Order Representations” [paper link]
2. Malach 2011 TiCS “Conscious
perception and the frontal lobes: comment on Lau and Rosenthal” [paper link]
_______
Additional readings:
- Rahnev et al 2011 Nature Neuroscience “Attention induces conservative subjective biases in visual perception” [paper link]
- Lau and Rosenthal 2011 TiCS “Empirical support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness” [paper link]
