Whether the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural substrates of consciousness is currently debated. Against prefrontal theories of consciousness, many have argued that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex does not correlate with consciousness but with subjective reports. We defend prefrontal theories of consciousness against this argument. We surmise that the requirement for reports is not a satisfying explanation of the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious trials, and that prefrontal theories of consciousness come out of this (...) debate unscathed. (shrink)

Easy of learning judgments occur before active learning begins, and it is a prediction of how difficult it will be to learn new material in future learning. This study compared the amplitude of event-related potential components and brain activation regions between high and low EOL judgments by adopting ERPs with a classical EOL judgment paradigm, aiming to confirm the ease-of-processing hypothesis. The results showed that the magnitudes of EOL judgments are affected by encoding fluency cues, and the judgment magnitude increases (...) with encoding fluency; low EOL judgments are associated with higher N400 amplitude at the left superior frontal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus. High EOL judgments showed enlarged slow-wave potentials than low EOL judgments at the left medial temporal lobe, right ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Our results support the ease-of-processing hypothesis, particularly, by affirming that EOL judgments are affected by encoding fluency in two processing stages. N400 reflects the process of acquiring encoding fluency cues, while slow-wave indicates that individuals use encoding fluency cues for metacognitive monitoring. (shrink)