Imaging implicit perception: promise and pitfalls
Abstract
The study of implicit perception - perception in the absence of awareness - has a long history. Decades of behavioural work have identified crucial theoretical and methodological issues that must be considered when evaluating claims of implicit perception. Neuroimaging methods provide an important new avenue for illuminating our understanding of perception both with and without awareness, but most imaging experiments have not met the rigorous conditions that the behavioural work has shown are necessary for inferring implicit perception. Here, we review the literature of both behavioural and neuroimaging studies, and note the pitfalls of studying implicit perception as well as the promise that neuroimaging studies have for providing insights about implicit perception when combined with appropriately rigorous behavioural measures of awareness.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Most studies supporting the existence of unconscious priming rely on a dissociation procedure, i.e., showing that prime awareness is not significantly different from chance while also showing a significant priming effect.
“Most studies supporting the existence of unconscious priming rely on what is usually referred to as a dissociation procedure (Reingold and Merikle 1988, Hannula et al. 2005, Schmidt and Vorberg 2006), i.e. showing that prime awareness is not significantly different from chance, while also showing a significant priming effect.”
From Evidence for unconscious priming using a Bayesian single-subject approach (2026) · cites this paper as Hannula et al. 2005
Cites
Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.185.4157.1124 · Cited by 28,810 · see citing works
Towards a cognitive neuroscience of consciousness: basic evidence and a workspace framework
Dehaene, S. (2001) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/s0010-0277(00)00123-2 · Cited by 2,498 · cited 1× · see citing works
“These modules might be mobilized and their outputs made available to consciousness as a result of top-down attentional amplification of neural activit”
BackgroundConscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala
Morris, J. S., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (1998) · Nature · doi:10.1038/30976 · Cited by 1,665 · see citing works
A subcortical pathway to the right amygdala mediating “unseen” fear
Morris, J. S., Öhman, A., & Dolan, R. J. (1999) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.96.4.1680 · Cited by 1,349 · see citing works
Neural processing of emotional faces requires attention
Pessoa, L., McKenna, M., Gutierrez, E., & Ungerleider, L. G. (2002) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.172403899 · Cited by 1,155 · see citing works
Distinct spatial frequency sensitivities for processing faces and emotional expressions
Vuilleumier, P., Armony, J. L., Driver, J., & Dolan, R. J. (2003) · Nature Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nn1057 · Cited by 1,117 · see citing works
Letter Binding and Invariant Recognition of Masked Words: Behavioral and Neuroimaging Evidence
Dehaene, S., Jobert, A., Naccache, L., Ciuciu, P., Poline, J.-B., Le Bihan, D., & Cohen, L. (2004) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1111/j.0956-7976.2004.00674.x · Cited by 356 · see citing works
Confidence and accuracy of near-threshold discrimination responses
Kunimoto, C., Miller, J., & Pashler, H. (2001) · Consciousness and Cognition · doi:10.1006/ccog.2000.0494 · Cited by 291 · see citing works
On demonstrating unconscious perception: comment on Draine and Greenwald (1998)
Merikle, P. M., & Reingold, E. M. (1998) · Journal of Experimental Psychology: General · doi:10.1037/0096-3445.127.3.304 · Cited by 108 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Empirical support for higher-order theories of conscious awareness
Lau, H., & Rosenthal, D. (2011) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2011.05.009 · Cited by 869 · see citing works
When the Brain Loses Its Self: Prefrontal Inactivation during Sensorimotor Processing
Goldberg, I. I., Harel, M., & Malach, R. (2006) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2006.03.015 · Cited by 593 · see citing works
Unconscious Activation of the Cognitive Control System in the Human Prefrontal Cortex
Lau, H. C., & Passingham, R. E. (2007) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.4335-06.2007 · Cited by 358 · see citing works
Frontal cortex mediates unconsciously triggered inhibitory control.
van Gaal, S., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Fahrenfort, J. J., Scholte, H. S., & Lamme, V. A. F. (2008) · The Journal of Neuroscience · doi:10.1523/jneurosci.1278-08.2008 · Cited by 285 · see citing works
Can the meaning of multiple words be integrated unconsciously?
van Gaal, S., Naccache, L., Meuwese, J. D. I., van Loon, A. M., Leighton, A. H., Cohen, L., & Dehaene, S. (2014) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2013.0212 · Cited by 139 · see citing works
Dissociable Brain Mechanisms Underlying the Conscious and Unconscious Control of Behavior
van Gaal, S., Lamme, V. A. F., Fahrenfort, J. J., & Ridderinkhof, K. R. (2011) · Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1162/jocn.2010.21431 · Cited by 127 · see citing works
Hedger, N., Gray, K. L. H., Garner, M., & Adams, W. J. (2016) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/bul0000054 · Cited by 115 · see citing works
The Attentional Blink Reveals the Probabilistic Nature of Discrete Conscious Perception
Asplund, C. L., Fougnie, D., Zughni, S., Martin, J. W., & Marois, R. (2014) · Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/0956797613513810 · Cited by 92 · see citing works
Evidence for unconscious priming using a Bayesian single-subject approach
Sánchez-Fuenzalida, N., van Gaal, S., van den Hurk, Z., Stein, T., & Fahrenfort, J. J. (2026) · Neuroscience of Consciousness · doi:10.1093/nc/niag052
- Authors
- Hannula, D. E., Simons, D. J., & Cohen, N. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hannula, Deborah E.
- Venue
- Nature Reviews Neuroscience
- Published
- 2005-03
- Volume
- 6
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 247-255
- ISSN
- 1471-003X (ISSN-L)
- 1471-0048
- OpenAlex
- W2095270828
- Cited by
- 155
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 5 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 5 · 2017: 5 · 2016: 4 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 15 · 2013: 9 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 0.99
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- Nature reviews. Neuroscience (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Face Recognition and Perception
- Keywords
- implicit perception, awareness, methodological quality, unconscious perception, visual awareness
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Awareness, Brain Mapping, Consciousness, Diagnostic Imaging, Humans, Functional Laterality, Neuropsychological Tests, Perception, Perceptual Masking, Visual Pathways, Visual Perception, Neural Networks, Computer
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 ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
