This article illustrates how the paintings of visual artists activate multiple brain processes that contribute to their conscious perception. Paintings of different artists may activate different combinations of brain processes to achieve their artist’s aesthetic goals. Neural models of how advanced brains see have characterized various of these processes. These models are used to explain how p...

the formulation of global health policy is political; and all institutions operating in the global health landscape are political. this is because policies and institutions inevitably represent certain values, reflect particular ideologies, and preferentially serve some interests over others. this may be expressed explicitly and consciously; or implicitly and unconsciously. but it’s important t...

Functional neuroimaging studies of endogenous cued attention suggest that a fronto-parietal attentional network keeps track of current task objectives in working memory and enhances activity in posterior sensory regions that underlie the perceptual processing of behaviorally relevant stimuli. Relatively little is known, however, about whether consciously perceived, irrelevant instructional cues...

We address the issue of how visual information stored in working memory (WM) is introspected. In other words, how do we become aware of WM content in order to consciously examine or manipulate it? Influential models of WM have suggested that WM representations are either conscious by definition, or directly accessible for conscious inspection. We propose that WM introspection does not operate o...

Previous research has established that conscious stimuli can lead to non-conscious predictions. Yet, it also suggests that conscious awareness of stimuli is a necessary condition for using them in predictions. We use subliminal movement – with and without obstacles – to examine predictions from subliminal stimuli. In four experiments, a moving object was masked with continuous flash suppression...

Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, is a cognitive and neural theory of how the brain autonomously learns to categorize, recognize, and predict objects and events in a changing world. This article reviews classical and recent developments of ART, and provides a synthesis of concepts, principles, mechanisms, architectures, and the interdisciplinary data bases that they have helped to explain and ...

Virtual reality (VR) represents a turning point in technological development and human-computer interaction, since it allows abstract information to be experienced and acted upon as concrete objects and events. The interplay between consciousness, reasoning and action is reconsidered in the light of what is now possible with VR technology. Such technology provides tools for investigating the na...

Effective fear processing relies on the amygdala and medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC). Post-trauma reactions provide a compelling model for examining how the heightened experience of fear impacts these systems. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been associated with excessive amygdala and a lack of MPFC activity in response to nonconscious facial signals of fear, but responses to consciou...