Nature Neuroscience
4, 752 - 758 (2001)
doi:10.1038/89551
Cerebral mechanisms of word masking and unconscious repetition primingStanislas Dehaene1, Lionel Naccache1, Laurent Cohen1, Denis Le Bihan2, Jean-François Mangin2, Jean-Baptiste Poline2
& Denis Rivière11
Unité INSERM 334, IFR 49, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, CEA/DSV, 4 Place du Général Leclerc, 91401 Orsay cedex, France
2
Unité de Neuro-Activation Fonctionnelle, IFR 49, Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot, CEA/DSV, 4, Placedu Général Leclerc, 91401 Orsay cedex, France
Correspondence should be addressed to Stanislas Dehaene dehaene@shfj.cea.frWe used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and event-related potentials (ERPs) to visualize the cerebral processing of unseen masked words. Within the areas associated with conscious reading, masked words activated left extrastriate, fusiform and precentral areas. Furthermore, masked words reduced the amount of activation evoked by a subsequent conscious presentation of the same word. In the left fusiform gyrus, this repetition suppression phenomenon was independent of whether the prime and target shared the same case, indicating that case-independent information about letter strings was extracted unconsciously. In comparison to an unmasked situation, however, the activation evoked by masked words was drastically reduced and was undetectable in prefrontal and parietal areas, correlating with participants' inability to report the masked words.
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