Contribution of ACC to consciousness
It has been proposed that ACC may play a key role in consciousness (Albright et al. , 2000), and such conclusions are mainly generated from human imaging studies. It is believed that neurons in the ACC may contribute to the conscious self. Dehaene et al (2003) reported that conscious but not subliminal conflict affected ACC in normal human subjects (Dehaene et al. , 2003). Interestingly, in patients suffering from schizophrenia, the activity in the ACC was reduced. In patients with DOC, Qin et al (2010) reported that the degree of consciousness in patients with DOC was correlated with neural activity in the ACC triggered by auditory self-related stimuli, further confirming possible roles of ACC in consciousness (Qin et al. , 2010). More interestingly, in healthy subjects, Stottinger et al (2015) reported that ACC along with the anterior insula was activated at the moment when conscious representations are updated (Stottinger et al. , 2015), indicating that ACC activity can contribute to conscious self-recognition.