The mesencephalon as a source of preattentive consciousness
Francisco Aboitiz a1, Javier López-Calderón a1andVladimir López a1a2 a1 Centro de Investigaciones Médicas, Departamento de Psiquiatría, Escuela de Medicina, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; faboitiz@uc.cljavlopez@uc.clhttp://www.neuro.cl a2 Department of Neurosciences, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA. vlopezh@uc.cl
By themselves, mesencephalic subcortical mechanisms provide a preattentive kind of consciousness, related to stimulus-related, short-latency dopamine release triggered by collicular input. Elaborate forms of consciousness, containing identifiable objects (visual, auditory, tactile, or chemical), imply longer-lasting phenomena that depend on the activation of prosencephalic networks. Nevertheless, the maintenance of these higher-level networks strongly depends on long-lasting mesencephalic dopamine release.
