Dissecting visual awareness with FMRI.

In recent years, substantial progress has been made in the scientific study of perceptual awareness, or synonymously, the contents of consciousness. By many standards, the field of consciousness research is in a phase of unprecedented productivity and progress, with high-impact publications, popular science books, specialized journals, dedicated academic societies, scientific conferences, and, above all, competing cognitive and neurobiological theories of consciousness . In the present review, I highlight a selection of recent fMRI and related behavioral studies that examine the neuronal underpinnings of awareness in higher order and early visual cortex. After the introduction, I also provide a brief overview of the crucial problem of measurement, that is, the fact that any exploration of consciousness depends on some kind of report, which pertains to all studies summarized in this review.