By recording from microelectrodes in monkey prefrontal cortex (PFC), researchers have decoded the contents of conscious perception in cognitive areas (lateral prefrontal cortex) in conditions in which perceptions are not determined by the stimulus, binocular rivalry, and flash suppression [1–4]. As I noted in my recent Trends in Cognitive Sciences article [5], such results cannot be taken to support cognitive theories of consciousness because of the ‘bored monkey problem’: the idea that subjects whose only task is fixating a dot may have thoughts about the noticeably different stimuli, causing prefrontal differences that do not reflect prefrontal consciousness. This was the negative point of my article, and in their commentary Phillips and Morales (P&M) [6] do not dispute it.

中文翻译：

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解决无聊的猴子问题

通过从猴子前额叶皮层 (PFC) 中的微电极进行记录，研究人员解码了认知区域（外侧前额叶皮层）在知觉不受刺激、双眼竞争和闪光抑制决定的条件下的意识知觉内容 [1–4 ]。正如我在最近的认知科学趋势文章 [5] 中指出的那样，由于“无聊猴子问题”，这样的结果不能被用来支持意识的认知理论：唯一任务是注视一个点的受试者可能会思考明显不同的刺激，导致不反映前额叶意识的前额叶差异。这是我文章的负面观点，在他们的评论中，菲利普斯和莫拉莱斯 (P&M) [6] 对此没有异议。