Author(s)

Shen Tu, Ulla Martens, Guang Zhao, Weigang Pan, Ting Wang, Jiang Qiu, Qinglin Zhang

Institute of Experimental Psychology, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany.
School of Psychology, Liaoning Normal University, Dalian, China.
School of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.

Many studies revealed unconscious effects on conscious processing. However, in this study, we tried to investigate whether unconscious processes could interact with each other by using simultaneously presented face pictures with the same or a different unconscious valence (SUV versus DUV). In the first event-related potential (ERP) study, DUV elicited a smaller N2 as compared with SUV. In the second functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment, the left middle frontal gyrus (MFG) was activated under DUV condition in comparison to SUV condition. These results support the idea of interactions between unconscious processes (unconscious mismatch detection). The theoretical implications are discussed in the light of the global neuronal workspace theory.

 

Interactions between Unconscious Processing; Unconscious Mismatch Detection; Global Neuronal Workspace Theory; fMRI; ERP

Tu, S. , Martens, U. , Zhao, G. , Pan, W. , Wang, T. , Qiu, J. and Zhang, Q. (2013) Subliminal faces with different valence: Unconscious mismatch detection indicates interactions between unconscious processing. World Journal of Neuroscience, 3, 298-306. doi: 10.4236/wjns.2013.34041.