Figure 1.

Experimental design. Participants were presented with cues of items to detect, followed by blocks of visual noise. Each block ended with an actual image embedded in noise, at a threshold that was determined for each participant before their scan (shown here at a low threshold for visualization purposes). Blocks contained an unpredictable amount of pure noise and occasionally ended with an incorrect (noncued) fruit or vegetable to keep participants on task. The objects in the final trial are displayed here in each corner although they could appear in any corner in the actual experiment. Every block ended with a unique instance of that kind of fruit or vegetable (e.g., no particular tangerine appeared more than once). Data associated with the last noise time-point (after accounting for the hemodynamic lag) were discarded to ensure that the signal-ascent from viewing the image-in-noise did not influence the analyzed data.