Late Positivity Does Not Meet the Criteria to be Considered a Proper Neural Correlate of Perceptual Awareness.
Frontiers in systems neuroscience January 1, 2020 Chiara Mazzi, Gaetano Mazzeo, Silvia Savazzi
Contrastive analysis of EEG data is used to identify neural correlates of consciousness, but it may be confounded by processes before or after conscious perception. To isolate visual awareness from post-perceptual decision-making, participants performed an orientation discrimination task while shifting their response criterion across sessions. The N1 and P3 components were sensitive to the response criterion, and their modulation increased with criterion shifts, indicating involvement in decision-making independent of awareness. When ignoring the response criterion, both Visual Awareness Negativity (VAN) and Late Positivity (LP) were significant for aware versus unaware contrasts.