We replicate the famous “invisible gorilla” experiment where a salient gorilla is unnoticed; a single-neuron fires only when the patient is conscious of the gorilla; a different neuron fires when the patient first notices the gorilla

Single neuron evidence of inattentional blindness in humans. Brandon Freiberg, Moran Cerf. Neuropsychologia, December 10 2021, 108111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2021.108111

Highlights

• We study a patient undergoing brain surgery with electrodes implanted in her head.

• We replicate the famous “invisible gorilla” experiment where a salient gorilla is unnoticed.

• A single-neuron fires only when the patient is conscious of the gorilla.

• A different neuron fires when the patient first notices the gorilla.

• An interplay between the network (LFP) and the neurons drives the conscious experience.

Abstract: Recording directly from the brain of a patient undergoing neurosurgery with electrodes implanted deep in her skull we identified neurons that change their properties when the patient became consciously aware of content. Specifically, we showed the patient an established clip of a gorilla passing through the screen, unnoticeable, in a classic inattentional blindness task, and identified a neuron in the right amygdala that fired only when the patient was aware of the gorilla. A different neuron coded the moment of insight, when the patient realized that she had missed the salient gorilla in previous trials. A third cluster of neurons fired when the patient was exposed to a post-clip question (“How many passes did you count?“) and reflected on the content. Neurons in this cluster altered their response behavior between unaware and aware states.

To investigate the interplay between the neurons' activity and characterize the potential cascade of information flow in the brain that leads to conscious awareness, we looked at the neurons' properties change, their activities’ alignment and the correlation across the cells. Examining the coherence between the spiking activity of the responsive neurons and the field potentials in neighboring sites we identified an alignment in the alpha and theta bands. This spike-field coherence hints at an involvement of attention and memory circuits in the perceptual awareness of the stimulus.

Taken together, our results suggest that conscious awareness of content emerges when there is alignment between individual neurons' activity and the local field potentials. Our work provides direct neural correlate for the psychological process by which one can look at things directly but fail to perceive them with the “mind's eye”.

Keywords: Inattentional blindnessHuman electrophysiologySinge neuron recordingSpike-field coherenceConsciousness