Influences of unconscious priming on voluntary actions: Role of the rostral cingulate zone

Abstract

The ability to make voluntary, free choices is fundamental to what it means to be human. A key brain region that is involved in free choices is the rostral cingulate zone (RCZ), which is part of the medial frontal cortex. Previous research has shown that activity in this brain region can be modulated by bottom-up information while making free choices. The current study extends those findings, and shows, for the first time, that activation in the RCZ can also be modulated by subliminal information. We used a subliminal response priming paradigm to bias free and cued choices. We observed more activation in the RCZ when participants made a choice that went against the prime's suggestion, compared to when they chose according to the prime. This shows that the RCZ plays an important role in overcoming externally-triggered conflict between different response options, even when the stimuli triggering this conflict are not consciously perceived. Our results suggest that an important mechanism of endogenous action in the RCZ may therefore involve exerting an internally-generated action choice against conflicting influences, such as external sensory evidence. We further found that subliminal information also modulated activity in the anterior insula and the supramarginal gyrus.

Trading off the cost of conflict against expected rewards

“…This confirms that response conflict was triggered by distracting stimuli that were incongruent with participants' choices, resulting in a cost to action selection. These findings are consistent with previous studies showing conflict costs associated with choosing to go against conscious [22] and unconscious [25,27,28,41] distracting stimuli.…”

“…It could be argued that the distractors could have facilitated the decision. As deciding between similarly valued options may be seen as a type of conflict in itself [28,35], the distractors' suggestion could help break the tie between similar alternatives. The present results do not allow us to unequivocally arbitrate between the conflict avoidance vs. facilitation accounts.…”

“…People tend to avoid high conflict tasks [17], and contexts associated with a high conflict probability, whether the conflict is triggered consciously [18,19] or unconsciously [20]. Many studies have also shown that our choices can be biased by both conscious [21,22] and unconscious [23][24][25][26][27][28] stimuli. Yet, in those studies, it was irrelevant whether participants chose one option or the other, as they had similar, or no, consequences.…”

“…Yet, in those studies, it was irrelevant whether participants chose one option or the other, as they had similar, or no, consequences. As choosing between options of similar value may itself constitute a type of conflict [28,29], following an external suggestion might even facilitate decision-making.…”

Metacognitive awareness of difficulty in action selection: the role of the cingulo-opercular network

“…This way we could use the subjective rating data while controlling for reaction times and compatibility and vice versa. Looking at the results of the model were reaction times were added first and subjective difficulty ratings were added second (Table 2), on the whole brain level, the parameter of subjective rating residuals revealed significant clusters of FWE corrected activation in the RCZ [MNI 0 17 52] and the left anterior insula [MNI -39 20 1], The left anterior insula cluster is closely located to the anterior insula [MNI -36 20 -2] that we observed in our previous study (Teuchies et al, 2016). These results indicate that the RCZ and the anterior insula showed increased activity with increased subjective difficulty, independent from prime-response compatibility or reaction times.…”