Subliminal Instrumental Conditioning Demonstrated in the Human Brain
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How the brain uses success and failure to optimize future decisions is a long-standing question in neuroscience. One computational solution involves updating the values of context-action associations in proportion to a reward prediction error. Previous evidence suggests that such computations are expressed in the striatum and, as they are cognitively impenetrable, represent an unconscious learning mechanism. Here, we formally test this by studying instrumental conditioning in a situation where we masked contextual cues, such that they were not consciously perceived. Behavioral data showed that subjects nonetheless developed a significant propensity to choose cues associated with monetary rewards relative to punishments. Functional neuroimaging revealed that during conditioning cue values and prediction errors, generated from a computational model, both correlated with activity in ventral striatum. We conclude that, even without conscious processing of contextual cues, our brain can learn their reward value and use them to provide a bias on decision making.
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In humans, reinforcement learning appears to proceed even when the cues, reward, or motivation signals are presented below the consciousness threshold.
“Remarkably, in humans, such learning appears to proceed even when the cues, reward, or motivation signals are presented below the consciousness threshold ( 17 , 18 ).”
From What is consciousness, and could machines have it? (2017) · cites this paper as [17]
The Results report learning from unseen cues, supporting the cue part of the claim. But the Results describe prediction errors as based on visible outcomes, and the Experimental Procedures say monetary outcomes were displayed at the end of each trial. This paper does not show learning when rewards or motivation signals themselves were presented below the threshold of awareness. (LLM, conf=0.90)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
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- Authors
- Pessiglione, M., Petrovic, P., Daunizeau, J., Palminteri, S., Dolan, R. J., & Frith, C. D.
- Affiliations
- Inserm (FR)
- Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Pessiglione, Mathias
- Venue
- Neuron
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2008-08
- Volume
- 59
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 561-567
- ISSN
- 0896-6273 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC2572733
- OpenAlex
- W2123851461
- Cited by
- 308
- References
- 37
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 9 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 38 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 19 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 19 · 2014: 29 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 19
- FWCI
- 8.96
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Neuron (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Max Planck Digital Library (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Wellcome Trust
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Neurotransmitter Receptor Influence on Behavior
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- subliminal learning, operant conditioning, reward prediction error, ventral striatum, unconscious learning, decision-making, punishment, computational model
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Association Learning, Attention, Awareness, Brain Mapping, Choice Behavior, Conditioning, Operant, Consciousness, Decision Making, Discrimination, Psychological, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Perceptual Masking, Reference Values, Subliminal Stimulation, Visual Cortex, Neostriatum, Intuition
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
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