Neurofeedback allows humans to self-regulate neural activity in specific brain regions and is considered a promising tool for psychiatric interventions. Recently, methods have been developed to use neurofeedback implicitly, prompting a theoretical debate on the role of awareness in neurofeedback learning. We offer a critical review of the role of awareness in neurofeedback learning, with a special focus on recently developed neurofeedback paradigms. We detail differences in instructions and propose a fine-grained categorization of tasks based on the degree of involvement of explicit and implicit processes. Finally, we review the methods used to measure awareness in neurofeedback and propose new candidate measures. We conclude that explicit processes cannot be eschewed in most current implicit tasks that have explicit goals, and suggest ways in which awareness could be better measured in the future. Investigating awareness during learning will help understand the learning mechanisms underlying neurofeedback learning and will help shape future tasks.

神经反馈允许人类自我调节特定大脑区域的神经活动，被认为是精神病干预的有前途的工具。最近，已经开发出隐式使用神经反馈的方法，引发了关于意识在神经反馈学习中的作用的理论争论。我们对意识在神经反馈学习中的作用进行了批判性回顾，特别关注最近开发的神经反馈范例。我们详细说明了指令的差异，并根据显式和隐式过程的参与程度提出了细粒度的任务分类。最后，我们回顾了用于测量神经反馈意识的方法并提出了新的候选措施。我们的结论是，在当前大多数具有明确目标的隐性任务中，不能回避显性过程，并提出了未来可以更好地衡量意识的方法。在学习过程中研究意识将有助于理解神经反馈学习背后的学习机制，并有助于塑造未来的任务。