Performance and Material-Dependent Holistic Representation of Unconscious Thought: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study

Abstract

Psychological research has demonstrated that humans can think unconsciously. Unconscious thought (UT) refers to cognitive or affective decision-related processes that occur beyond conscious awareness. UT processes are considered more effective in complex decision-making than conscious thought (CT). In addition, holistic representation plays a key role in UT and consists of a multimodal, value-related cognitive process. While the neural correlates of UT have recently been investigated, the holistic representation hypothesis of UT has not been confirmed. Therefore, in the present study, we aimed to further evaluate this hypothesis by utilizing two UT tasks (person and consumer-product evaluations) in conjunction with an improved functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experimental protocol. Participants evaluated four alternatives with 12 attributes each. In the UT condition, once the decision information had been presented, the participants completed a 1-back task for 120 s and evaluated each alternative, as well as an independent 1-back task in the absence of any decision information. We then performed regression analysis of the UT performance in both tasks. Our results revealed a positive correlation between performance in the UT task and the use of the anterior part of the precuneus/paracentral lobule in the person evaluation task and between performance and the posterior part of the precuneus, postcentral gyrus, middle occipital gyrus, and superior parietal lobule in the consumer-product evaluation task. The involvement of the precuneus area in both tasks was indicative of a multimodal, value-related process and is consistent with the features of holistic representation, supporting a central role for holistic representation in UT. Furthermore, the involvement of different precuneus subregions in the two UT tasks may reflect the task dependency of the key representation critical for advantageous UT.

Sincere praise and flattery: reward value and association with the praise-seeking trait

“…NAc activation is considered to reflect a rewarding effect, where the NAc shows dopaminergic innervation (Izuma et al, 2008 ; Lin et al, 2012 ); sincere praise (i.e., reliable praise) evokes more brain activity in the NAc compared to flattery, suggesting a higher rewarding effect of the former. The PCC, rather than dopamine-innervated areas, is involved in higher-order processing of social interactions (Yokoyama et al, 2017 ; Alcalá-López et al, 2018 ; Kageyama et al, 2019 ), probably based on self-referential processing (Brewer et al, 2013 ), regulating the focus of attention (Leech and Sharp, 2014 ), and in the functional processing and flexible response to environment changes (Leech et al, 2012 ). The correlation between the brain activity in the PCC and subjective reliability scores of our participants may reflect the high cognitive process, engagement with information relevant to the self, and adaptation of oneself to the environment, mirroring the rewarding effects of reliable feedback.…”

Why people hesitate to help: Neural correlates of the counter-dynamics of altruistic helping and individual differences in daily helping tendencies

“…Anatomically, the PCC and adjacent precuneus are considered to have dorsal and ventral functional subdivisions (Leech et al, 2011;Stawarczyk & D'Argembeau, 2015); in both of these studies, PCC activation occurred at the dorsal subdivision. In the context of decision making, activation of the dorsal subdivision was observed during choices between fixed amounts of money and the probability of winning incommensurable goods such as food (FitzGerald et al, 2009), and higher activation was associated with better evaluation performance in people or consumer products based on 12 attributes (Kageyama et al, 2019). There appears to be a gap between the behavioral and neural data, as the effect of helping tendency on helping likelihood was specific to the Emp scenario in this study, whereas its effect on neural activation during decision-making was common to both scenario types.…”

The effect of action contingency on social perception is independent of person-like appearance and is related to deactivation of the frontal component of the self-agency network

“…The main purpose of this study is to investigate brain activation related to the action-contingency effect on social perception. Thus, the sample size was determined according to task-based fMRI studies conducted previously at our institution (e.g., Kageyama et al, 2019 55 and Motoki et al, 2019 56 ). Three participants were excluded because of machine errors during recording, and seven were excluded because of excessive head movements (i.e., > 7 mm).…”