Online research in philosophy

Pessoa et al. fail to make a clear distinction between visual perception and subjective visual awareness. Their most controversial claims, however, concern subjective visual awareness rather than visual perception: visual awareness is externalized to the “personal level,” thus denying the view that consciousness is a natural biological phenomenon somehow constructed inside the brain.

Rolls's proposal that the amygdala is critical for the association of visual objects with reward is not consistent with recent ablation evidence. Stimulus-reward association learning is more likely to depend on basal forebrain efferents to the inferior temporal cortex, some of which pass through the amygdala. It is more likely that the amygdala is involved in rapid modulation of stimulus reward value.