Distinct ventral stream and prefrontal cortex representational dynamics during sustained conscious visual perception

Instances of sustained stationary sensory input are ubiquitous. However, previous work focused almost exclusively on transient onset responses. This presents a critical challenge for neural theories of consciousness, which should account for the full temporal extent of experience. To address this question, we use intracranial recordings from ten human patients with epilepsy to view diverse images of multiple durations. We reveal that, in sensory regions, despite dramatic changes in activation magnitude, the distributed representation of categories and exemplars remains sustained and stable. In contrast, in frontoparietal regions, we find transient content representation at stimulus onset. Our results highlight the connection between the anatomical and temporal correlates of experience. To the extent perception is sustained, it may rely on sensory representations and to the extent perception is discrete, centered on perceptual updating, it may rely on frontoparietal representations.