The basic nuts and bolts underlying human action remain mysterious from a mechanistic point of view. Everyday actions such as naming an object, suppressing the urge to say something, grabbing a waiter’s attention with a "cappuccino, please," or deciding out of the blue to call a friend remain difficult to understand from a scientific, biologically-based standpoint.
At the Action and Consciousness Laboratory, we investigate the nature of human action production from an integrative cognitive neuroscience perspective, focusing on both its conscious (e.g., urges, self-control, working memory) and unconscious mechanisms. Our approach is broadly based in terms of dependent measures: cognitive, affective, social, and neurobiological.
The majority of the mechanisms underlying human action are unconscious. For example, the brain's motor-programs and intersensory processes, as well as the sophisticated actions of the digestive tract, pupils, and respiratory system, are all consciously-impenetrable. In trying to understand complex nonconscious processes, one eventually encounters the thorny question, "Then what is consciousness for?" To address this questions, much of our recent research is based on a theoretical framework (Supramodular Interaction Theory [SIT] and the PRISM principle) explaining the primary function of phenomenal states (Morsella, Psychological Review, 2005).
Regarding conscious processing, SIT is unique in that it explains the primary role of consciousness by comparing the task demands of consciously-penetrable processes (e.g., pain and breathlessness) and consciously-impenetrable processes (e.g., the pupillary reflex). SIT proposes that these states are required to integrate high-level systems in the brain that are vying for (specifically) skeletomotor control, as described by the principle of parallel responses into skeletal muscle (PRISM). From this point of view, consciousness functions above the level of the traditional module to permit cross-talk among specialized, and often multi-modal, systems. For example, regarding a process such as digestion, one is conscious of only those phases of the process that require coordination with skeletal muscle plans (e.g., chewing). The PRISM acronym is conceptually related to the principle, for just as a prism can combine different colors to yield a single hue, conscious states cull simultaneously activated response tendencies to yield a single, adaptive skeletomotor action. (For video explanation, click Prism Lecture.)
In collaboration with Dr. John Bargh and Dr. Jeremy Gray, we are evaluating SIT using behavioral and neuroimaging techniques. In addition, with the assistance of the neurologist Stephen Krieger, M.D., we are examining the implications that SIT has for disorders of awareness.
Regarding unconscious processing, at the Action and Consciousness Laboratory we investigate the nonconscious processes involved in environmentally-driven automaticity, automatic imitation, speech production, language use (communication cognition), tip-of-the-tongue states, and the role of movements in cognitive processes, situated action, and embodied cognition. |
