Conscious and nonconscious thought: Insights from the neuroscience of decision-making
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 26, 2026 N. Shadlen Michael
Conscious thought is often treated as a special class of neural processing, distinct from the nonconscious computations that guide most behavior. Here I offer a different perspective, grounded in the neuroscience of decision-making. I argue that conscious thought arises not from a unique mechanism but from a distinctive use of neural representations already engaged in nonconscious thought....