Maybe causal, but still cautious: Reply to “Cautious or causal? Key implicit sequence learning paradigms should not be overlooked when assessing the role of DLPFC (Commentary on Prutean et al.)”

In our recent work (Prutean, Martín-Arévalo et al., 2021), we presented the existing evidence on the causal role of DLPFC top-down control on the acquisition and automatic expression of implicit sequence learning. Implicit sequence learning refers to the incidental acquisition of structured information, which is not accompanied by full awareness of its contents, but it gets automatically expressed in the appropriate context (Reber, 1993). The systematic review was motivated by previous studies suggesting an antagonistic role of cognitive control on the automatic expression of sequence learning (Jiménez et al., 2006; Jiménez et al., 2009; Prutean, Wenk et al., 2021; Vaquero et al., 2019), and by evidence on the role of DLPFC in engaging such a control function (Botvinick et al., 2001; Nee & D’Esposito, 2016)...