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Cerebral Cortex Advance Access originally published online on December 1, 2008
Cerebral Cortex 2009 19(8):1896-1904; doi:10.1093/cercor/bhn216
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© 2008 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Visual Awareness, Emotion, and Gamma Band Synchronization

Qian Luo1, Derek Mitchell1, Xi Cheng2, Krystal Mondillo1, Daniel Mccaffrey1, Tom Holroyd3, Frederick Carver3, Richard Coppola3 and James Blair1

1 Mood and Anxiety Disorders Program, 2 Genes, Cognition, and Psychosis Program, 3 MEG Core Facility, National Institute of Mental Health, 15K North Drive, Room 300C, MSC 2670, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA

Address correspondence to email: luoj{at}mail.nih.gov.

What makes us become aware? A popular hypothesis is that if cortical neurons fire in synchrony at a certain frequency band (gamma), we become aware of what they are representing. We tested this hypothesis adopting brain-imaging techniques with good spatiotemporal resolution and frequency-specific information. Specifically, we examined the degree to which increases in event-related synchronization (ERS) in the gamma band were associated with awareness of a stimulus (its detectability) and/or the emotional content of the stimulus. We observed increases in gamma band ERS within prefrontal–anterior cingulate, visual, parietal, posterior cingulate, and superior temporal cortices to stimuli available to conscious awareness. However, we also observed increases in gamma band ERS within the amygdala, visual, prefrontal, parietal, and posterior cingulate cortices to emotional relative to neutral stimuli, irrespective of their availability to conscious access. This suggests that increased gamma band ERS is related to, but not sufficient for, consciousness.

Key Words: consciousness • emotion • gamma • MEG • synchronization • visual awareness


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