Unconscious Manipulation of Conceptual Representations with Decoded Neurofeedback Impacts Search Behavior

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Learning Science

Background:

• Conscious awareness's role in human learning is debated.
• Previous non-conscious associative learning studies faced replication issues and low signal-to-noise ratios.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate if associative learning can occur unconsciously using decoded neurofeedback (DecNef).
• To explore the behavioral consequences of unconscious associative learning on neural representations.

Main Methods:

• Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) decoded neurofeedback (DecNef) was used to train participants.
• Participants learned to generate specific neural patterns without conscious awareness of the associated content.
• Associative DecNef imbued neutral Japanese hiragana characters with perceptual meaning (e.g., dogs).

Main Results:

• Participants successfully learned to activate target perceptual representations unconsciously.
• The DecNef training did not prime visual search for the associated target.
• Participants were impaired in searching for the targeted perceptual category, indicating an unexpected behavioral consequence.

Conclusions:

• Conscious awareness may be crucial for higher-order associative learning.
• Lower-level neural plasticity and learning can occur unconsciously, impacting behavior outside the training context.
• DecNef effects can be explained by neural representational drift.