OSCR

Early correlates of visual awareness are affected by self-related information.

Overview

Authors: Tommaso Ciorli1, Oskar MacGregor2, Martin Nilsson3,4, Alessio Borriero1, Ieva Smate3, Andreas Kalckert3, Lorenzo Pia1,5
ORCID iDs: Tommaso Ciorli, Lorenzo Pia
  1. Department of Psychology, University of Turin, Via Giuseppe Verdi, 10, 10124 Turin, Italy
  2. Department of Information Technology, University of Skövde, School of Informatics, Högskolevägen 1, PO Box 408, 541 28 Skövde, Sweden
  3. Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skövde, Högskolevägen 3, 541 45 Skövde, Sweden
  4. Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences, and Society, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, H1 ARC, 171 77 Stockholm, Sweden
  5. Neuroscience Institute of Turin, Via Giuseppe Verdi, 10, 10124 Turin, Italy
Institutions: University of Turin (Italy); University of Skövde (Sweden); Stockholm University (Sweden); Karolinska Institutet (Sweden)
Journal: Neuroscience of consciousness, volume 2026, issue 1, article niag042
Dates: received 29 October 2025; accepted 7 July 2026; published online 30 July 2026
Type: Research article · Language: English
License: CC BY
Identifiers: DOI 10.1093/nc/niag042 · PMID 42535147 · PMCID PMC13422636 · OpenAlex W7171868377
Open access: gold, a free copy (OpenAlex)
Status: data only
Categories: EEG (modality), cognitive (subfield)
Methods: Spectral & time-frequency, Connectivity, Statistics, Smoothing, state filtering, decompositions, Preprocessing, Evoked potentials, Physiology & signal measures
Keywords: visual awareness negativity, stimulus salience, face awareness, event-related potentials, self-face processing, self-related information
Topic: Face Recognition and Perception (Cognitive Neuroscience, Neuroscience), according to OpenAlex
Funding: PRIN PNRR (P2022SAPYZ)
Citations: not cited yet (Europe PMC); 123 references in the paper

Abstract

Self-related cues, most notably one’s own face, are highly salient and confer processing advantages at both conscious and unconscious levels. Whether such self-related information and stimulus salience modulate the earliest electroencephalography (EEG) correlate of visual awareness, the visual awareness negativity (VAN), remains unknown. In this study, we examined whether self-related information influences the amplitude, latency, and topography of the VAN. Thirty-six participants performed a backward masking task while an EEG was recorded as viewing either their own or a familiar face under masked and unmasked conditions. VAN was computed for each identity by subtracting unaware from aware face-specific trials. Results showed that VAN amplitude was greater during self-face perception, specifically over the right hemisphere. Moreover, VAN was larger at parieto-occipital than at occipital electrodes. These findings indicate that stimulus salience related to self-information directly impacts the earliest neural correlates of visual awareness. Such an effect may reflect enhanced perceptual or attentional mechanisms triggered by self-related content. This suggests either that early awareness correlates are embedded within perceptual and attentional dynamics that shape conscious access, or that the VAN does not constitute a purely content-independent correlate of consciousness.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Code

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Data

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Data availability

Data is available at the following OSF repository link (https://osf.io/gu3jx/overview). For any other information, contact the corresponding author.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

Versions

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 7 authors, 6 keywords, 1 funder, 120 references.

Cite

This paper

Ciorli, T., MacGregor, O., Nilsson, M., Borriero, A., Smate, I., Kalckert, A., & Pia, L. (2026). Early correlates of visual awareness are affected by self-related information. Neuroscience of consciousness, 2026(1), niag042. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag042

BibTeX

@article{ciorli2026early,
author = {Ciorli, Tommaso and MacGregor, Oskar and Nilsson, Martin and Borriero, Alessio and Smate, Ieva and Kalckert, Andreas and Pia, Lorenzo},
title = {{Early correlates of visual awareness are affected by self-related information}},
journal = {Neuroscience of consciousness},
year = {2026},
month = jul,
volume = {2026},
number = {1},
pages = {niag042},
publisher = {Oxford University Press},
issn = {2057-2107},
doi = {10.1093/nc/niag042},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag042},
pmid = {42535147},
pmcid = {PMC13422636}
}

RIS

TY - JOUR
AU - Ciorli, Tommaso
AU - MacGregor, Oskar
AU - Nilsson, Martin
AU - Borriero, Alessio
AU - Smate, Ieva
AU - Kalckert, Andreas
AU - Pia, Lorenzo
TI - Early correlates of visual awareness are affected by self-related information
T2 - Neuroscience of consciousness
J2 - Neurosci Conscious
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/07/30
VL - 2026
IS - 1
SP - niag042
SN - 2057-2107
PB - Oxford University Press
DO - 10.1093/nc/niag042
UR - https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag042
LA - en
ER -

CSL-JSON

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