Uh, press releases. There is no back-door. 
What they found is the plain old habituation effect, circumventing the cortex directly through the hypothalamus, and in this case linking the basolateral amygdala (the pleasure centre) with the dorsolateral striatum (the main centre for unaware behavior). 
This is a normal effect, not everything can go through the consciousness (the cortex), otherwise it will be overloaded. In fact 80% of all senses and motoric effects are eventually bypassed this way.