Content Specificity of the Contralateral Delay Activity

The neural signature and cognitive architecture of how a visual stimulus reaches conscious awareness have not been conclusively determined. Recently, we have reported an ERP activity corresponding with a period of perceptual persistence which has been typically reported in working memory research, known as the contralateral delay activity (CDA). Specifically, we reported how the CDA can be used to track how on object fades in out of consciousness. Here, we report on the behaviour of the CDA when the type of item in this paradigm is manipulated between face, animal and object stimuli. We recorded EEG activity while participants viewed a bilateral Shape-from-Motion display and analyzed where and how large a CDA is observed. Our findings show that the CDA is generalizable to different item types fading from awareness, with no differences between item conditions. This work supports the content-invariant involvement of working memory processes in sustaining conscious awareness.MAS