Progress in cognitive neuroscientific studies of visual awareness

The psychological and neural mechanisms of consciousness are among the most baffling problems in cognitive neuroscience. In this field, visual awareness is a topic that has been largely investigated, due to easy manipulation and measurable effects. The present article begins with the phenomena of dissociations between visual awareness and visual stimulus, visual awareness and visual attention, as well as visual awareness and vision-guided behavior, along with the corresponding experimental evidence. Furthermore, the neural mechanism of visual awareness is also discussed. It has been generally believed that visual awareness is the function of higher-order cerebral areas; however, recent discoveries have demonstrated that feedback from higher- to lower-order cortex areas is necessary for generating consciousness. The present article presents an in-depth analysis regarding this feedback process, and exploring its relationship with the generation and mechanisms of consciousness. Finally, theoretical controversies and discrepancies, as well as result conflicts from various studies, have been collected, compared and discussed. Because the field of consciousness continues to be an extremely mysterious and complicated psychological phenomenon, there is a great need for further studies to explore and clarify this topic.