The role of consciousness in cognitive control and decision making

Gaal, Simon evan; Lange, Floris P. de; Cohen, Michael X

doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00121

Cited by 137 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 184 publications

(266 reference statements)

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“…The second question that we addressed was related to the extent to which nonconscious stimuli can trigger prediction error responses, as measured with EEG. Over the last 20 years, we and others have shown that nonconscious information processing is rather sophisticated 57,58 , and that a diverse range of high-level cognitive processes can unfold unconsciously, including motivational processing [59][60][61] , semantic processing 62,63 , decision making 61,64 and cognitive control 65,66 . Interestingly, in Experiment 2 we found evidence that predictions that are violated by a nonconscious stimulus trigger a stronger negative fronto-central ERP component than predictions that are confirmed.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic interactions between top-down expectations and conscious awareness

Meijs

Slagter

Lange

et al. 2017

Preprint

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It is well known that top-down expectations affect perceptual processes. Yet, remarkably little is known about the relationship between expectations and conscious awareness We address three crucial questions that are outstanding: 1) How do predictions affect the likelihood of conscious stimulus perception?; 2) Does the brain register violations of predictions nonconsciously?; and 3) Do predictions need to be conscious to influence perceptual decisions? We performed three experiments in which we manipulated stimulus predictability within the attentional blink paradigm, while combining visual psychophysics with electrophysiological recordings. We found that valid stimulus expectations increase the likelihood of conscious access of stimuli. Furthermore, our findings suggest a clear dissociation in the interaction between expectations and consciousness: conscious awareness seems crucial for the implementation of top-down predictions, but not for the bottom-up generation of stimulus-evoked prediction errors. These results constrain and update influential theories about the role of consciousness in the predictive brain.. CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/151019 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Jun. 16, 2017; 3 A rapidly growing body of work indicates that sensory processing is strongly influenced by the expectations that we have about likely states of the world. Such expectations are shaped by the immediate environment or context in which we are operating, but also by learning, past experience and our genetic makeup [1][2][3] .Expectations are typically thought to originate from higher-level brain regions, such as the prefrontal cortex, which may guide information processing in lower-level sensory regions via top-down (descending) projections 4,5 . In this framework, what we consciously see is proposed to be strongly influenced by the brain's expectations about, or its best guess of, the outside world 6,7 . Initial studies support a tight relationship between expectations and conscious perception. For example, it has been shown that objects that are unexpected in a particular visual scene (e.g. a hammer in the kitchen) are detected more slowly than expected objects (e.g. a knife in the kitchen) 8 . Further, a correct prediction about the nature of an upcoming stimulus (e.g. the orientation of a Gabor) improves its discrimination 9 and sharpens its neural representation 10. The brain can thus use predictive information in the environment to build expectations of stimulus frequency or conditional probabilities to modify subsequent sensory information processing and perception. These ideas have been formalized in several theoretical models, such as predictive coding and sequential sampling models 3,11,12 . Although these frameworks are attractive in their simplicity and are rapidly growing in scientific stature, how exactly predictions shape conscious ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamic interactions between top-down expectations and conscious awareness

Meijs

Slagter

Lange

et al. 2017

Preprint

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“…However, new findings have challenged these traditional views by showing that 'high-level' functions of the prefrontal cortex such as conflict-monitoring, response inhibition and error detection can unfold without conscious awareness (D'Ostillio and Garraux, 2012;Nieuwenhuis et al, 2001;Sumner et al, 2007;van Gaal et al, 2008;van Gaal et al, 2011). To examine the influence of unconscious processing on cognitive control functions most studies have used masked-prime paradigms (see review by van Gaal et al, 2012). Generally, in these tasks participants have to respond to a target that is rapidly followed by a prime stimulus that can either facilitate or interfere with the response to the target.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 96%

Exogenous capture of medial–frontal oscillatory mechanisms by unattended conflicting information

et al. 2015

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“…Generally, although several high-level cognitive processes can be influenced by subliminal stimuli they are likely not executed in the same way as during their conscious versions [2,15]. Influential models as well as experimental data suggest that consciousness is required for multiple-step rule-based algorithms, for example in doing mental arithmetic or performing grammatical language operations [16][17][18].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can the meaning of multiple words be integrated unconsciously?

Gaal

Naccache

Meuwese

et al. 2014

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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What are the limits of unconscious language processing? Can language circuits process simple grammatical constructions unconsciously and integrate the meaning of several unseen words? Using behavioural priming and electroencephalography (EEG), we studied a specific rule-based linguistic operation traditionally thought to require conscious cognitive control: the negation of valence. In a masked priming paradigm, two masked words were successively (Experiment 1) or simultaneously presented (Experiment 2), a modifier (‘not’/‘very’) and an adjective (e.g. ‘good’/‘bad’), followed by a visible target noun (e.g. ‘peace’/‘murder’). Subjects indicated whether the target noun had a positive or negative valence. The combination of these three words could either be contextually consistent (e.g. ‘very bad - murder’) or inconsistent (e.g. ‘not bad - murder’). EEG recordings revealed that grammatical negations could unfold partly unconsciously, as reflected in similar occipito-parietal N400 effects for conscious and unconscious three-word sequences forming inconsistent combinations. However, only conscious word sequences elicited P600 effects, later in time. Overall, these results suggest that multiple unconscious words can be rapidly integrated and that an unconscious negation can automatically ‘flip the sign’ of an unconscious adjective. These findings not only extend the limits of subliminal combinatorial language processes, but also highlight how consciousness modulates the grammatical integration of multiple words.

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The role of consciousness in cognitive control and decision making

Cited by 137 publications

References 184 publications

Dynamic interactions between top-down expectations and conscious awareness

Dynamic interactions between top-down expectations and conscious awareness

Exogenous capture of medial–frontal oscillatory mechanisms by unattended conflicting information

Can the meaning of multiple words be integrated unconsciously?

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