Consciousness is more than meets the eye: a call for a multisensory study of subjective experience

Nathan Faivre (), Anat Arzi, Claudia Lunghi () and Roy Salomon
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Nathan Faivre: CES - Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, LNCO - Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience - EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Anat Arzi: CAM - University of Cambridge [UK]
Claudia Lunghi: Department of Translational Research on New Technologies in Medicine and Surgery - UniPi - University of Pisa [Italy] = Università di Pisa [Italia] = Université de Pise [Italie]
Roy Salomon: LNCO - Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience - EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

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Abstract: Over the last 30 years, our understanding of the neurocognitive bases of consciousness has improved, mostly through studies employing vision. While studying consciousness in the visual modality presents clear advantages, we believe that a comprehensive scientific account of subjective experience must not neglect other exteroceptive and interoceptive signals as well as the role of multisensory interactions for perceptual and self-consciousness. Here, we briefly review four distinct lines of work which converge in documenting how multisensory signals are processed across several levels and contents of consciousness. Namely, how multisensory interactions occur when consciousness is prevented because of perceptual manipulations (i.e. subliminal stimuli) or because of low vigilance states (i.e. sleep, anesthesia), how interactions between exteroceptive and interoceptive signals give rise to bodily self-consciousness, and how multisensory signals are combined to form metacognitive judgments. By describing the interactions between multisensory signals at the perceptual, cognitive, and metacognitive levels, we illustrate how stepping out the visual comfort zone may help in deriving refined accounts of consciousness, and may allow cancelling out idiosyncrasies of each sense to delineate supramodal mechanisms involved during consciousness.

Keywords: contents of consciousness; metacognition; unconscious processing; states of consciousness; self (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec and nep-neu
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Published in Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2017, 3 (1), ⟨10.1093/nc/nix003⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01492508

DOI: 10.1093/nc/nix003

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