The Visual Brain and Its Many Consciousnesses
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1
University College London, United Kingdom
The visual brain is now known to consist of many distinct visual areas, specialized to process and perceive different attributes of the visual scene. Contrary to common assumption, we do not perceive different attributes simultaneously. Instead we perceive some attributes before others; for example we perceive colour by about 100ms before we perceive motion, and we perceive simple forms after we perceive colour. Since perceiving an attribute is being conscious of it, and the perception of these different attributes is the result of activity in geographically distinct visual areas, it follows that visual consciousness is distributed in space. Equally, since we become conscious of different attributes at different times, visual consciousness is also distributed in time. It follows therefore that there is not a single unified visual consciousness, but there are instead many visual micro-consciousnesses. Moreover, binding of activity in these different areas occurs post-consciously.
Conference:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience, Bodrum, Türkiye, 1 Sep - 5 Sep, 2008.
Presentation Type:
Oral Presentation
Topic:
Keynote Lectures
Citation:
Zeki
S
(2008). The Visual Brain and Its Many Consciousnesses.
Conference Abstract:
10th International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience.
doi: 10.3389/conf.neuro.09.2009.01.008
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Received:
26 Nov 2008;
Published Online:
26 Nov 2008.
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Correspondence:
Semir Zeki, University College London, London, United Kingdom, s.zeki@ucl.ac.uk