Determinants and consequences of conscious visual awareness (2008-2010)
Abstract
This project will identify the causes underlying a range of hitherto mysterious phenomena, where normally salient images can intermittently disappear from awareness without any physical changes to the stimulus. The project is driven by an innovative account linking such disappearances to a functional adaptation, prevalent in daily life, which facilitates vision in cluttered environments. Extrapolated predictions based on this account will be tested by identifying the determinants of several disappearance phenomena and by exploring the cognitive and emotional consequences of such disappearances thereby shedding new light on fundamental issues concerning both the determinants and functions visual of consciousness.
