Subliminal instrumental conditioning demonstrated in the human brain.

ABSTRACT: 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 a

SUBMITTER: Pessiglione M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2572733 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature