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Striate cortex (V1) activity gates awareness of motion

Nature Neuroscience volume 8, pages 143–144 (2005)Cite this article

Abstract

A key question in understanding visual awareness is whether any single cortical area is indispensable. In a transcranial magnetic stimulation experiment, we show that observers' awareness of activity in extrastriate area V5 depends on the amount of activity in striate cortex (V1). From the timing and pattern of effects, we infer that back-projections from extrastriate cortex influence information content in V1, but it is V1 that determines whether that information reaches awareness.

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Figure 1: Motion and size of reported phosphenes.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by a scholarship from the University College London Graduate School and grants from the UK Medical Research Council (A.C., N.L., V.W.) and the Wellcome Trust (V.W., A.C.). V.W. is supported by the Royal Society.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, 17 Queen Square, London, WC1N 3AR, UK

    Juha Silvanto, Nilli Lavie & Vincent Walsh

  2. Department of Psychology, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London, WC1H 0AP, UK

    Juha Silvanto, Nilli Lavie & Vincent Walsh

  3. Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3UD, UK

    Alan Cowey

Authors
  1. Juha Silvanto
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  2. Alan Cowey
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  3. Nilli Lavie
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  4. Vincent Walsh
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Correspondence to Juha Silvanto.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Methods (PDF 38 kb)

Supplementary Notes

TMS stimulation of V5 and frontal eye fields. (PDF 17 kb)

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Silvanto, J., Cowey, A., Lavie, N. et al. Striate cortex (V1) activity gates awareness of motion. Nat Neurosci 8, 143–144 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1038/nn1379

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