Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Investigating Bifurcation Dynamics and Neural Correlates of Consciousness Using EEG and Report/No-Report Paradigms

Poster Session F - Tuesday, April 1, 2025, 8:00 – 10:00 am EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Kimiya Kasraeian¹ (kkasraei@ucsc.edu), Jason Samaha¹; ¹UCSC

Understanding the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) requires isolating neural activity directly linked to conscious perception from confounding factors such as sensory encoding, attention, and post-perceptual processes. This study explores whether bifurcation dynamics—sharp transitions in neural activity between perceived and non-perceived states—serve as a general neural signature of perceptual consciousness. Using a report/no-report paradigm, we plan to investigate the temporal dynamics and representational content of awareness in the domain of visual perception. Participants are presented with Gabor patch stimuli varying in contrast, location, and orientation. In report conditions, participants provide subjective visibility ratings and perform an objective localization task, enabling analysis of trials with spontaneous perceptual variability. In no-report conditions, participants engage in an unrelated fixation task, minimizing task-related and reporting confounds while maintaining conscious perception of stimuli. Univariate and multivariate decoding techniques will be applied to high density EEG recordings in order to track the time course of neural activity distinguishing between seen and unseen stimuli. This study aims to identify whether bifurcation dynamics occur in multivariate EEG signals, reflecting the presence, location, or orientation of stimuli. Cross-decoding between no-report and report conditions evaluates whether NCCs emerge independently of reporting and post-perceptual processes. By advancing a methodological framework that disentangles NCCs from confounding processes, this work contributes to understanding the emergence of conscious awareness and the relationship between its temporal dynamics and representational content. This research also addresses key theoretical questions about the generalizability of bifurcation as a neural signature of awareness.

Topic Area: PERCEPTION & ACTION: Vision