QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

HOME  |   SEARCH  |   ARCHIVE  |   SUBSCRIBE  |   CONTACT  |   HELP

The Journal of Neuroscience, August 6, 2008, 28(32):8053-8062; doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1278-08.2008

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit an eLetter Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by van Gaal, S. Articles by Lamme, V. A. F. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by van Gaal, S. Articles by Lamme, V. A. F.

 Previous Article  |  Next Article 

Behavioral/Systems/Cognitive
Frontal Cortex Mediates Unconsciously Triggered Inhibitory Control

Simon van Gaal,^1,2 K. Richard Ridderinkhof,² Johannes J. Fahrenfort,^1,2 H. Steven Scholte,¹ and Victor A. F. Lamme^1,3

¹Cognitive Neuroscience Group and ²Amsterdam Center for the Study of Adaptive Control in Brain and Behavior, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, 1018 WB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and ³Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, 1105 BA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Correspondence should be addressed to Simon van Gaal, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: s.vangaal{at}uva.nl

To further our understanding of the function of conscious experience we need to know which cognitive processes require awareness and which do not. Here, we show that an unconscious stimulus can trigger inhibitory control processes, commonly ascribed to conscious control mechanisms. We combined the metacontrast masking paradigm and the Go/No-Go paradigm to study whether unconscious No-Go signals can actively trigger high-level inhibitory control processes, strongly associated with the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Behaviorally, unconscious No-Go signals sometimes triggered response inhibition to the level of complete response termination and yielded a slow down in the speed of responses that were not inhibited. Electroencephalographic recordings showed that unconscious No-Go signals elicit two neural events: (1) an early occipital event and (2) a frontocentral event somewhat later in time. The first neural event represents the visual encoding of the unconscious No-Go stimulus, and is also present in a control experiment where the masked stimulus has no behavioral relevance. The second event is unique to the Go/No-Go experiment, and shows the subsequent implementation of inhibitory control in the PFC. The size of the frontal activity pattern correlated highly with the impact of unconscious No-Go signals on subsequent behavior. We conclude that unconscious stimuli can influence whether a task will be performed or interrupted, and thus exert a form of cognitive control. These findings challenge traditional views concerning the proposed relationship between awareness and cognitive control and stretch the alleged limits and depth of unconscious information processing.

Key words: awareness; cognitive control; cognition; consciousness; inhibition; vision

---

Received March 25, 2008; revised June 24, 2008; accepted July 1, 2008.

Correspondence should be addressed to Simon van Gaal, Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 15, 1018 WB, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Email: s.vangaal{at}uva.nl

This article has been cited by other articles:

				T. A. Bekinschtein, S. Dehaene, B. Rohaut, F. Tadel, L. Cohen, and L. Naccache Neural signature of the conscious processing of auditory regularities PNAS, February 3, 2009; 106(5): 1672 - 1677. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home  |   Search  |   Archive  |   Subscribe  |   Contact  |   Help