The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 51 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Frontal cortex mediates unconsciously triggered inhibitory control.
Open accessAbstract
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.
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“Frontostriatal circuits in the brain, capitalizing on the inferior frontal cortex, the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and the basal ganglia, are engaged when impulsive actions are to be interrupted, aborted, suppressed, or overridden by more appropriate actions (Jahfari et al., 2011; Ridderinkhof et al., 2011), even when such action control is triggered unconsciously (van Gaal et al., 200”
From Impulsive action: emotional impulses and their control (2014) · cites this paper as van Gaal et al., 2008
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Cites
A new method for off-line removal of ocular artifact
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BackgroundMethodThresholding of statistical maps in functional neuroimaging using the false discovery rate
Genovese, C. R., Lazar, N. A., & Nichols, T. (2002) · NeuroImage · doi:10.1006/nimg.2001.1037 · Cited by 4,923
The role of the medial frontal cortex in cognitive control
Ridderinkhof, K. R., Ullsperger, M., Crone, E. A., & Nieuwenhuis, S. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1100301 · Cited by 2,974
Self-citationTowards 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 7×
“, 2007) and associated exclusively with consciousness (Dehaene and Naccache, 2001; Eimer and Schlaghecken, 2003).”
BackgroundInfluentialThe distinct modes of vision offered by feedforward and recurrent processing
Lamme, V. A. F., & Roelfsema, P. R. (2000) · Trends in Neurosciences · doi:10.1016/s0166-2236(00)01657-x · Cited by 2,338 · cited 2×
“These results indicate that the feedforward sweep alone is not sufficient to produce a conscious percept (no matter what area in the brain is activated) (Thompson and Schall, 1999; Lamme and Roelfsema, 2000; Lau and Passingham, 2007).”
BackgroundSelf-citationConscious, preconscious, and subliminal processing: a testable taxonomy
Dehaene, S., Changeux, J.-P., Naccache, L., Sackur, J., & Sergent, C. (2006) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.03.007 · Cited by 2,067
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Self-citationERP components in Go/Nogo tasks and their relation to inhibition
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Towards a true neural stance on consciousness
Lamme, V. A. F. (2006) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2006.09.001 · Cited by 1,149 · cited 2×
“Although never demonstrated before, these findings are in line with recent theoretical models concerning the neural correlates of consciousness and the potential depth of processing of unconscious information (Dehaene et al., 2006; Lamme, 2006).”
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- 10.1037/0096-3445.129.4.481 · DOI
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Experimental and theoretical approaches to conscious processing
Dehaene, S., & Changeux, J.-P. (2011) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.03.018 · Cited by 2,573
Aron, A. R. (2011) · Biological Psychiatry · doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2010.07.024 · Cited by 1,236
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
Neural signature of the conscious processing of auditory regularities
Bekinschtein, T. A., Dehaene, S., Rohaut, B., Tadel, F., Cohen, L., & Naccache, L. (2009) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0809667106 · Cited by 738
How neuroscience will change our view on consciousness
Lamme, V. A. F. (2010) · Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1080/17588921003731586 · Cited by 487
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Metadata
- Authors
- van Gaal, S., Ridderinkhof, K. R., Fahrenfort, J. J., Scholte, H. S., & Lamme, V. A. F.
- Affiliations
- University of Amsterdam (NL)
- Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience (NL)
- Venue
- The Journal of Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Society for Neuroscience
- Published
- 2008-08-06
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 32
- Pages
- 8053-8062
- ISSN
- 0270-6474 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-2401
- PMC
- PMC6670759
- OpenAlex
- W2059885263
- Cited by
- 285
- References
- 51
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 37 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 11 · 2018: 15 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 18 · 2014: 27 · 2013: 25 · 2012: 23
- FWCI
- 7.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Journal of Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-sa)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UvA-DARE (University of Amsterdam) (publishedVersion)
- VU Research Portal (submittedVersion)
- Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Free Will and Agency
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Keywords
- unconscious processes, inhibitory control, prefrontal cortex, metacontrast masking, go/no-go task, response inhibition, conscious awareness, cognitive control, visual encoding
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Awareness, Cognition, Cues, Electrophysiology, Evoked Potentials, Female, Frontal Lobe, Humans, Inhibition, Psychological, Male, Perceptual Masking, Visual Perception, Prefrontal Cortex
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