Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study on the Role of Awareness in Visual Perception in Healthy Adult Subjects.

The objective of the study concerns the investigation of the role of awareness in visual perception, highlighting the brain systems involved during non-processing Aware of stimuli belonging to different semantic categories. Specifically, the theoretical perspective of reference is that of the so-called "grounded cognition", according to which the representation of the concepts of semantic knowledge is conveyed by information sensorimotor and affective, introspective and social states. The main objective is therefore to evaluate whether the meaning of the stimulus can be extracted in the absence of awareness, investigating the neural response in the brain regions known to be involved in the conscious processing of stimuli belonging to the semantic categories in question.

To this end, two different experimental paradigms were implemented. A first paradigm aimed at investigating the unconscious representation of semantic knowledge in the context of language, therefore using visual stimuli in lexical mode (words). A second paradigm aimed at investigating the same phenomena in the field of visual perception of objects in space, using stimuli in iconic mode (images).