Electrophysiological brain activity that elicits a subjective experience remains a prolific field of study that spans several modalities. Electroencephalography (EEG) and magnetoencephalography (MEG) data gathered in experimental tasks in visual, auditory and somatosensory perception has identified two distinct event-related responses (ERPs): an early negativity referred to as the perceptual awareness negativity (PAN) around 120-200ms post stimulus onset, postulated to exist for each modality, and a late positivity (LP) 250-600ms after stimulus onset. Out of the sensory modalities, the visual awareness negativity (VAN) was the first PAN to be discovered and is the most well-researched (Dembski et al., 2021).
This systematic review aims to investigate the literature related to auditory awareness negativity (AAN) to determine its characteristics and its relation to the LP. Two frameworks will be employed to determine what this means for auditory consciousness: recurrent processing theory (RPT) and global neuronal workspace theory (GNWT). The results reveal that the RPT framework offers the most plausible explanation since the AAN is a more reliable indicator of phenomenal consciousness than its later counterpart the LP.