From pre-stimulus activity to the contents of consciousness – A spatiotemporal view: Reply to comments on “Beyond task response-Pre-stimulus activity modulates contents of consciousness”

Abstract

What are the exact neuronal mechanisms of pre-post-stimulus interaction and how can that account for the intrinsically subjective nature of the contents of consciousness? This is the key question lurking behind the various excellent and very thoughtful commentaries to our target article which we group along four main topics and questions. (i) What is the role of neural features like alpha power, phase dynamics, trial-to-trial variability and fractal scale-free dynamics in yielding pre-post-stimulus interaction and its conscious contents. (ii) What do we mean by ‘content’ of consciousness? This concerns its meaning, its characterization as internal or external, and its relation to the basic subjectivity of consciousness. (iii) How does our approach stand to other theories of consciousness like the Dendritic Integration Theory (DIT), GNWT and IIT? This concerns the convergence among the different theories that highlight distinct aspects. (iv) How can we detail the spatiotemporal shaping of the contents of consciousness including their intrinsically subjective nature through pre-post-stimulus interaction? This concerns the details of how the non-additive pre-post-stimulus interaction shapes the subjective nature of our experience of conscious contents, that is, how the neuronal activity connects to the phenomenal features of consciousness. Together, we conclude that the contents of consciousness are shaped primarily in a temporal-dynamic and spatial-topographic way through the non-additive pre-post-stimulus interaction. Such spatiotemporal shaping of the contents in our consciousness constitutes their intrinsically subjective nature which must be distinguished from their (more objective) modulation by cognitive, sensory, affective, and motor functions.