Through the neurally evolving process of dynamic contextual modulation of perceptual contents, it remains unclear how the content of awareness is determined. Here we quantified the visual illusion of orientation repulsion, wherein the target appears tilted against the surrounding’s orientation, and examined whether its extent changed when the target awareness was quickened by a preceding flanker. Independently of spatial cueing, repulsion was reduced when the flanker preceded the target by 100 ms compared with when they appeared simultaneously. We confirmed that the preceding flanker quickened the awareness of a nearby target relative to distant ones by 40 ms. Furthermore, the preceding flanker that was greater than 7 degrees away from the target still evoked such reduction of repulsion. These findings imply that the content of awareness is determined by the temporal interaction of two distinct processes: one controls the moment of awareness, and the other represents the perceptual content.

通过感知内容的动态情境调制的神经演化过程，目前尚不清楚意识的内容是如何确定的。在这里，我们量化了方向排斥的视觉错觉，其中目标看起来相对于周围的方向倾斜，并检查当目标意识被前面的侧翼加速时其程度是否发生变化。与空间提示无关，与同时出现相比，当侧翼先于目标 100 毫秒时，排斥力会降低。我们证实，前面的侧翼攻击使附近目标的感知速度比远处目标的感知速度快了 40 毫秒。而且，前面的侧翼与目标的距离大于7度，仍然会引起这种排斥力的减弱。这些发现意味着意识的内容是由两个不同过程的时间相互作用决定的：一个控制意识的时刻，另一个代表感知内容。