Right-hemisphere frontoparietal oscillations precede conscious report of visual targets.

Abstract

What neural events precede conscious reports? Hemisphere-asymmetric attentional networks are causally related to conscious perception (Bartolomeo et al., 2025; Kaufmann et al., 2024), but their spectrotemporal dynamics remain unclear. Here, we used magnetoencephalography to examine brain oscillations occurring in human participants (male and female) before a near-threshold target during the cue-target period. In 67% of trials, a supra-threshold visual cue appeared near the target placeholder box, indicating that the target would appear at that location (valid condition). In the remaining 33% of trials, the target appeared at the opposite location (invalid condition). We analyzed brain oscillations, coherence, and theta-gamma phase-amplitude (PAC) coupling in 18 regions of interest involved in attentional and perception (Martin-Signes et al., 2024). Results revealed that: (1) Report of validly cued targets was preceded by early ([~]58 ms post-cue) beta-band activity in the right-hemisphere superior parietal lobule. (2) Report of invalidly cued targets was preceded by late ([~]166 ms post-cue) beta-band activity in the right temporo-occipital (TO) region, PAC in the right lateral visual cortex, and low gamma coherence between this region and the left temporo-parietal junction, (3) Unreported invalidly cued targets were preceded by PAC in the right TO, and by high gamma coherence between this region and the right middle frontal gyrus suggesting a pre-target bias. We show that conscious report is preceded by temporally dissociable, frequency-specific reconfigurations of right-lateralized attentional networks, with an early parietal beta-mediated orienting window and a later ventral beta- and gamma-mediated window that predict conscious reports before target onset. Significance statementConscious perception depends not only on sensory signals, but also on how attentional networks prepare the brain in advance. Using MEG and a spatial cueing task with near-threshold targets, we show distinct right-hemisphere beta- and gamma-band dynamics predicting whether an upcoming stimulus will be reported or missed. Validly cued reports rely on early beta activity in the right superior parietal lobule, whereas invalid reports and omission errors are linked to later beta activity in the right temporo-occipital region, early theta-gamma coupling between this region and the right middle frontal gyrus, and theta-gamma phase-amplitude coupling. These findings reveal hemisphere-asymmetric spectrotemporal signatures by which attention biases predictive processing and shapes the conscious report of future stimuli, informing theories of conscious perception.