CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN
COGNITION & NEUROSCIENCES/ConnexConnex

The relationships between spatial attention and conscious perception are currently the object of intense debate. Recent evidence of double dissociations between attention and consciousness cast doubt on the time-honored concept of attention as a gateway to consciousness. Evidence will be presented from experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology and neuroimaging, showing that distinct sorts of spatial attention can have different effects on visual conscious perception. While endogenous, or top-down attention, has weak influence on subsequent conscious perception, exogenous, or bottom-up forms of spatial attention appear instead to be a necessary, although not sufficient, step in the development of reportable visual experiences. Fronto-parietal networks important for spatial attention, with peculiar inter-hemispheric differences, constitute plausible neural substrates for the interactions between exogenous spatial attention and conscious perception.

References:
Chica AB and Bartolomeo P (2012) Attentional routes to conscious perception. Front. Psychology 3:1. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00001

Bartolomeo P, Thiebaut de Schotten M and Chica AB (2012) Brain networks of visuospatial attention and their disruption in visual neglect. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:110. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2012.00110