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The phase of low-frequency, rhythmic cortical activity is essential for organizing brain processes because it provides a recurrent temporal frame for information coding. However, the low-frequency cortical phase exhibits great flexibility in response to external influences. Given that brain rhythms have been found to track respiratory inputs, we hypothesized that slow breathing, commonly associated with mental regulation, could reorganize the relationship between these two rhythmic systems through the adjustment of the cortical phase to such a slow train of inputs. Based on simultaneous magnetoencephalography and respiratory measurements, we report that while participants performed paced breathing, slow relative to normal breathing modulated cortical phase activity in the alpha range across widespread brain areas. Such modulation effects were specifically locked to the middle of the inspiration stage and exhibited a well-structured pattern. At the single-subject level, the phase angles underlying the effects became more likely to be diametrically opposed across breaths, indicating unique and consistent phase adjustment to slow inspiratory inputs. Neither cardiac fluctuations nor breathing-unrelated task effects could account for the findings. We suggest that slow-paced inspiration could organize the cortical phase in a regularized phase pattern, revealing a rhythmic but dynamic neural network integrated with different neurophysiological systems through volitional control. NEW & NOTEWORTHY Breathing is more complicated than a simple gas exchange, as it is integrated with numerous cognitive and emotional functions. Controlled slow breathing has often been used to regulate mental processes. This magnetoencephalography study demonstrates that slow-paced relative to normal-paced inspiration could organize the timing of alpha rhythmic activities across breathing cycles in a structured manner over widespread brain areas. Our results reveal how a volitionally controlled change in respiratory behavior could systematically modulate cortical activity.

Background Phase clustering within a single neurophysiological signal plays a significant role in a wide array of cognitive functions. Inter-trial phase coherence (ITC) is commonly used to assess to what extent phases are clustered in a similar direction over samples. However, this measure is especially dependent on sample size. Although ITC was transformed into ITCz, namely, Rayleigh’s Z, to “correct” for the sample-size effect in previous research, the validity of this strategy has not been formally tested. New method This study introduced cosine similarity (CS) as an alternative solution, as this measure is an unbiased and consistent estimator for finite sample size and is considered less sensitive to the sample-size effect. Results In a series of studies using either artificial or real datasets, CS was robust against sample size variation even with small sample sizes. Moreover, several different aspects of examinations confirmed that CS could successfully detect phase-clustering differences between datasets with different sample sizes. Comparison with existing methods Existing measures suffer from sample-size effects. ITCz produced a mixed pattern of bias in assessing phase clustering according to sample size, whereas ITC overestimated the degree of phase clustering with small sample sizes. Conclusions The current study not only reveals the incompetence of the previous “correction” measure, ITCz, but also provides converging evidence showing that CS may serve as an optimal measure to quantify phase clustering.

In contrast to the classic view that facial expressions convey specific emotional states, recent theories have postulated that perception is a highly contextualised phenomenon. The present study utilised sequential effects as a probe to examine how the preceding context informs current facial expression perception, while participants performed a binary categorisation task on a sequence of expressions morphed from fearful to disgusted prototypes. We found that preceding stimuli/responses played differential roles in expression-based sequential effects. When preceding responses were analytically controlled for, the participants were biased to categorise the current targets as being either away from or close to the category of preceding expressions, yielding stimulus-related contrast or assimilation effects, depending on whether the stimulus similarity between the preceding and current expressions was small or large. When the stimulus similarity between successive expressions was analytically controlled for, preceding responses slanted current categorisation judgments toward response-related assimilative consequences. Distinct from stimulus-related contrast, both stimulus-related and response-related assimilations were robust since they could persist for expressions presented up to two trials back and when the perceptual quality of the stimuli was poor. We suggest that the criterion-shift account is generally compatible with the overall findings, revealing how facial expression perception is temporally contextualised.

An important issue facing the empirical study of consciousness concerns how the contents of incoming stimuli gain access to conscious processing. According to classic theories, facial stimuli are processed in a hierarchical manner. However, it remains unclear how the brain determines which level of stimulus content is consciously accessible when facing an incoming facial stimulus. Accordingly, with a magnetoencephalography technique, this study aims to investigate the temporal dynamics of the neural mechanism mediating which level of stimulus content is consciously accessible. Participants were instructed to view masked target faces at threshold so that, according to behavioral responses, their perceptual awareness alternated from consciously accessing facial identity in some trials to being able to consciously access facial configuration features but not facial identity in other trials. Conscious access at these two levels of facial contents were associated with a series of differential neural events. Before target presentation, different patterns of phase angle adjustment were observed between the two types of conscious access. This effect was followed by stronger phase clustering for awareness of facial identity immediately during stimulus presentation. After target onset, conscious access to facial identity, as opposed to facial configural features, was able to elicit more robust late positivity. In conclusion, we suggest that the stages of neural events, ranging from prestimulus to stimulus-related activities, may operate in combination to determine which level of stimulus contents is consciously accessed. Conscious access may thus be better construed as comprising various forms that depend on the level of stimulus contents accessed. NEW & NOTEWORTHY The present study investigates how the brain determines which level of stimulus contents is consciously accessible when facing an incoming facial stimulus. Using magnetoencephalography, we show that prestimulus activities together with stimulus-related activities may operate in combination to determine conscious face detection or identification. This finding is distinct from the previous notion that conscious face detection precedes identification and provides novel insights into the temporal dynamics of different levels of conscious face perception.

Facial expressions are highly dynamic signals that are rarely categorized as static, isolated displays. However, the role of sequential context in facial expression categorization is poorly understood. This study examines the fine temporal structure of expression-based categorization on a trial-to-trial basis as participants categorized a sequence of facial expressions. The results showed that the local sequential context provided by preceding facial expressions could bias the categorical judgments of current facial expressions. Two types of categorization biases were found: (a) Assimilation effects– current expressions were categorized as close to the category of the preceding expressions, and (b) contrast effects–current expressions were categorized as away from the category of the preceding expressions. The effects of such categorization biases were modulated by the relative distance between the preceding and current expressions, as well as by the different experimental contexts, possibly including the factors of face identity and the range effect. Thus, the present study suggests that facial expression categorization is not a static process. Rather, the temporal relation between the preceding and current expressions could inform categorization, revealing a more dynamic and adaptive aspect of facial expression processing.

Participants performed a priming task during which emotional faces served as prime stimuli and emotional words served as targets. Prime-target pairs were congruent or incongruent and two levels of prime visibility were obtained by varying the duration of the masked primes. To probe a neural signature of the impact of the masked primes, lateralized readiness potentials (LRPs) were recorded over motor cortex. During the high-visibility condition, responses to word targets were faster when the prime-target pairs were congruent than when they were incongruent, providing evidence of priming effects. In line with the behavioral results, the electrophysiological data showed that high-visibility face primes resulted in LRP differences between congruent and incongruent trials, suggesting that prime stimuli initiated motor preparation. Contrary to the above pattern, no evidence for reaction time or LRP differences was observed during the low-visibility condition, revealing that the depth of facial expression processing is dependent upon stimulus visibility.

Existing models of facial identity perception often assume that information conveyed by facial stimuli provides the sole basis for identity judgments, largely ignoring the involvement of contextual effects. Capitalizing on sequential effects, the present study investigates whether facial identity is judged relative to a context shaped by stimuli presented in previous trials. When categorizing a sequence of facial identities, our results demonstrated that participants' categorization of current faces varied according to the local sequential context provided by the immediately preceding faces and, to some extent, by the preceding stimuli presented two trials prior to the current trial. Moreover, this variation depended on the relative distance between the preceding and current faces. Notably, the nature of these identity-based sequential effects was qualitatively different between male and female participants. Female participants tended to respond to the current faces with the same category label as on the preceding faces. However, male participants responded with the same label only when the relative distance was small, but responded with a different label when the relative distance was increasingly large. The present study demonstrates that relative information between the preceding and current faces may be used as evidence to inform a judgment. However, this process is multifaceted rather than unitary and depends in part on participant gender.

Preceding contexts strongly influence current decision-making. To elucidate the neural mechanism that underlies this phenomenon, magnetoencephalographic signals were recorded while participants performed a binary categorization task on a sequence of facial expressions. The behavioral data indicated that the categorization of current facial expressions differed between the contexts shaped by the immediately preceding expression. We found that the effects of the preceding context were linked to prestimulus power activities in the low-frequency band. However, these context-dependent neural markers did not reflect behavioral decisions. Rather, the beta power observed primarily after stimulus onset and located at distinct sensors was predictive of the trial-by-trial decisions. Despite these results, the coupling strength between context-dependent and decision-related power differed between preceding contexts, suggesting that the context-dependent power interacted with decision-related power in a systemic manner and in turn biased behavioral decisions. Taken together, these findings suggest that categorization decisions are mediated by a series of power activities that coordinate the influence of preceding contexts on current categorization.

Although the nature of the relationship between attention and awareness is actively debated, the possibility that different forms of attention might interact differently with awareness has never been directly tested. We examine here whether voluntary and involuntary spatial attentions, two forms of attention that were distinguished by manipulating the predictability of central arrow cues, interact in the same way with visual awareness. Conscious perception was enhanced by both voluntary and involuntary attentions, and to a similar extent, suggesting volition may not be an essential feature for awareness. However, the influence of attention was dependent on the awareness of the target stimulus: Voluntary attention shortened reaction times and improved discrimination accuracy of cued relative to uncued stimuli, but only when the stimuli were consciously perceived. Involuntary attention shortened reaction times for cued relative to uncued target stimuli, but only when the stimuli were not consciously perceived. Our results imply that the nature of the relationship between attention and awareness is not a simple one but depends on the type of attention involved. More specifically, our results suggest that the aware or unaware status of the stimulus could determine whether attentional facilitation is driven by voluntary or involuntary mechanisms, a proposal that goes in the opposite direction of the classical view that attention controls awareness. Because voluntary attentional benefits were observed in aware trials but involuntary attentional benefits were observed in unaware trials only, our results also argue against the idea that attentional effects on conscious and unconscious processing are fundamentally of the same nature.

While the role of attention in determining the neural fate of unattended emotional items has been investigated in the past, it remains unclear whether bottom-up and top-down factors have differential effects in shaping responses evoked by such stimuli. To study the effects of bottom-up and top-down factors on the processing of neutral and fearful faces, we employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants performed attentional tasks that manipulated these factors. To probe the impact of top-down mechanisms on the processing of face distractors, target letters either had to be found among several distinct nontarget letters (attentional load condition) or among identical nontarget letters (baseline condition). To probe the impact of bottom-up factors, we decreased the salience of the targets by reducing their size and contrast relative to baseline (salience condition). Our findings revealed that bottom-up and top-down manipulations produced dissociable effects on amygdala and fusiform gyrus responses to fearful-face distractors when task difficulty was equated. When the attentional load of the main task was high, weaker responses were evoked by fearful-face distractors relative to baseline during the early trials. By contrast, decreasing target salience resulted in increased responses relative to baseline. The present findings suggest that responses evoked by unattended fearful faces are modulated by several factors, including attention and stimulus salience.