Abstract: Studies on cognitive control triggered by unconscious information provide important methods and procedures to reveal the function and limitation of consciousness. Unconscious cognitive control studies mainly adopt pattern masking and meta-contrast masking to create unconscious condition and measure consciousness by objective means. This paper reviews recent studies on unconscious cognitive control and its neural mechanism from unconscious inhibition control, unconscious conflict control and unconscious error processing. Both behavioral and cognitive neuroscience studies have evidenced the existence of unconscious cognitive control and revealed its neural mechanism. These studies expand our understanding of conscious information and lay the foundation for future revelation of conscious origin. Future directions that researches can be done on transition between unconscious cognitive control and conscious cognitive control are also discussed.

Key words: unconsciousness, cognitive control, inhibition control, conflict control, error processing, neural mechanism