A new no-report paradigm reveals that face cells encode both consciously perceived and suppressed stimuli

Abstract

A powerful paradigm to identify neural correlates of consciousness is binocular rivalry, wherein a constant visual stimulus evokes a varying conscious percept. It has recently been suggested that activity modulations observed during rivalry may represent the act of report rather than the conscious percept itself. Here, we performed single-unit recordings from face patches in macaque inferotemporal (IT) cortex using a no-report paradigm in which the animal’s conscious percept was inferred from eye movements. We found that large proportions of IT neurons represented the conscious percept even without active report. Furthermore, on single trials we could decode both the conscious percept and the suppressed stimulus. Together, these findings indicate that (1) IT cortex possesses a true neural correlate of consciousness and (2) this correlate consists of a population code wherein single cells multiplex representation of the conscious percept and veridical physical stimulus, rather than a subset of cells perfectly reflecting consciousness.