Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

In the human brain, cognitive-control processes are generally considered distinct from the unconscious mechanisms elicited by subliminal priming. Here, we show that cognitive control engaged in situations of response conflict interacts with the negative (inhibitory) phase of subliminal priming. Thus, cognitive control may surprisingly share common processes with nonconscious brain mechanisms. In contrast, our findings reveal that subliminal inhibition does not, however, interact with control adaptation--the supposed modulation of current control settings by previous experience of conflict. Therefore, although influential models have grouped immediate cognitive control and control adaptation together as products of the same conflict detection and control network, their relationship to subliminal inhibition separates them. Overall, these results suggest that the important distinction lies not between cognitive or top-down processes on the one hand and nonconscious priming mechanisms on the other hand but between responsive (poststimulus) mechanisms that deal with sensorimotor activation after it has occurred and preparatory (prestimulus) mechanisms that are modulated before stimulus arrival.

Original publication

DOI

10.1073/pnas.1001925107

Type

Journal article

Journal

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Publication Date

15/06/2010

Volume

107

Pages

11134 - 11139

Keywords

Adolescent, Adult, Brain, Cognition, Conflict (Psychology), Female, Humans, Male, Models, Psychological, Photic Stimulation, Subliminal Stimulation, Unconscious (Psychology), Young Adult