Authors: Jeremy R Gray John A Bargh Ezequiel Morsella
Publish Date: 2013/06/01
Volume: 229, Issue: 3, Pages: 453-465
Abstract
The study of intrapsychic conflict has long been central to many key theories about the control of behavior More recently by focusing on the nature of conflicting processes in the brain investigators have revealed great insights about controlled versus automatic processes and the nature of selfcontrol Despite these advances many theories of cognitive control or selfcontrol remain agnostic about the function of subjective awareness ie basic consciousness Why people consciously experience some conflicts in the nervous system but not others remains a mystery One hypothesis is that people become conscious only of conflicts involving competition for the control of skeletal muscle To test one aspect of this larger hypothesis in the present study 14 participants were trained to introspect the feeling of conflict the urge to make an error during a Stroop colorword interference task and then were asked to introspect in the same way while sustaining simple compatible and incompatible intentions during fMRI scanning to move a finger left or right As predicted merely sustaining incompatible skeletomotor intentions prior to their execution produced stronger systematic changes in subjective experience than sustaining compatible intentions as indicated by selfreport ratings obtained in the scanner Similar ratings held for a modified Strooplike task when contrasting incompatible versus compatible trials also during fMRI scanning We use subjective ratings as the basis of parametric analyses of fMRI data focusing a priori on the brain regions involved in actionrelated urges eg parietal cortex and cognitive control eg dorsal anterior cingulate cortex lateral PFC The results showed that subjective conflict from sustaining incompatible intentions was consistently related to activity in the left postcentral gyrusSupported by grants from the National Institutes of Health to E Morsella F32MH69083 and to J Bargh R01MH60767 This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No 0644131 to J R Gray Any opinions findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation E Morsella received support also from the Center for Human Culture and Behavior at San Francisco State University
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