Nature Communications (Aug 2020)

Unconscious reinforcement learning of hidden brain states supported by confidence

  • Aurelio Cortese,
  • Hakwan Lau,
  • Mitsuo Kawato

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-17828-8
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Humans can unconsciously learn to gamble on rewarding options, but can they do so when it comes to their own mental states? Here, the authors show that participants can learn to use unconscious representations in their own brains to earn rewards, and that metacognition correlates with their learning processes.