The role of extra-striate areas in conscious motor behavior: a registered report with Fast-Optical Imaging

Disclosing the brain areas responsible for the emergence of visual awareness and their timing of activation represents one of the major challenges in consciousness research. In particular, isolating the neural processes strictly related to consciousness from concurrent neural dynamics either related to prerequisites or post-perceptual processing has long engaged consciousness research. In this framework, the present study aims at unravelling the spatio-temporal dynamics underlying conscious vision by adopting a distinctive experimental design in which both awareness and motor response are manipulated, allowing the segregation of neural activity strictly related to awareness from response-related mechanisms. To this aim, we will employ a GO/NOGO detection task, in which participants will respond or withhold responding according to the experimental condition. Critically, during the performance of the task, participants brain activity will be recorded by means of Event-Related Optical Signal (EROS) technique, which provides accurate information about brain functions both from the temporal and spatial point of view, simultaneously. The combination of this experimental design with EROS recording will enable us to pinpoint the neural correlates underlying conscious vision and to disentangle them from processes related to the response. In addition, by coupling conventional EROS analysis with Granger Causality analysis, we will be able to clarify the potential interplay between consciousness-related extra-striate areas and response-related motor areas.