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PubMed1995

Education, gender and cognitive performance in a 62-year-old normal population: results from the Turva Project.

Four WAIS (Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale) subtests, and tasks of memory and cognitive control were administered to a population sample of 143 men and 179 women. Subjects with a minor advantage in years of education out-performed those with only primary schooling. Gender-related effects were also remarkable. Whereas the general abilities were equal in the genders, women out-performed men on recall of word pairs and objects, on verbal cognitive control and on Digit Symbol. In contrast, men excelled on Trail Making A, and on Block Design. The findings emphasize the need for age norms by gender and education for cognitive tests.

Aging↗

PubMed2006

Us versus them: Political attitudes and party affiliation influence neural response to faces of presidential candidates.

We investigated how political party affiliation and political attitudes modulate neural activity while viewing faces of presidential candidates. Ten registered Democrats and 10 registered Republicans were scanned in an event-related functional MRI paradigm while viewing pictures of the faces of George Bush, John Kerry, and Ralph Nader during the 2004 United States presidential campaign. We found that compared with viewing one's own candidate, viewing the candidate from the opposing political party produced signal changes in cognitive control circuitry in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate, as well as in emotional regions such as the insula and anterior temporal poles. BOLD signal in these regions correlated with subjects' self-reported ratings of how they felt emotionally about the candidates. These data suggest that brain activity when viewing a politician's face is affected by the political allegiance of the viewer and that people regulate their emotional reactions to opposing candidates by activating cognitive control networks.

Adult↗

PubMed1977

Development and evaluation of treatment paradigms for the suppression of smoking behavior.

A multiple-baseline component-analysis design was employed to assess the effectiveness of three treatment programs for suppressing the cigarette smoking behavior of 24 subjects. Sartiation, cognitive control, and continger shock procedures were evaluated. The results demonstrated a consistent relationship between contingent shock and suppression of smoking. It was further indicated that subjects should be exposed to the number of sessions necessary to achieve total suppression in order to gain maximally from treatment and to avoid relapse. Neither the satiation component nor the cognitive control component was correlated with clear, permanent decrements in smoking frequencies. To date no other treatment program has demonstrated the dramatic effects ofethe contingent shock procedures used in the present study.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Anterior cingulate cortex activity can be independent of response conflict in Stroop-like tasks.

Cognitive control includes the ability to formulate goals and plans of action and to follow these while facing distraction. Previous neuroimaging studies have shown that the presence of conflicting response alternatives in Stroop-like tasks increases activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), suggesting that the ACC is involved in cognitive control. However, the exact nature of ACC function is still under debate. The prevailing conflict detection hypothesis maintains that the ACC is involved in performance monitoring. According to this view, ACC activity reflects the detection of response conflict and acts as a signal that engages regulative processes subserved by lateral prefrontal brain regions. Here, we provide evidence from functional MRI that challenges this view and favors an alternative view, according to which the ACC has a role in regulation itself. Using an arrow-word Stroop task, subjects responded to incongruent, congruent, and neutral stimuli. A critical prediction made by the conflict detection hypothesis is that ACC activity should be increased only when conflicting response alternatives are present. Our data show that ACC responses are larger for neutral than for congruent stimuli, in the absence of response conflict. This result demonstrates the engagement of the ACC in regulation itself. A computational model of Stroop-like performance instantiating a version of the regulative hypothesis is shown to account for our findings.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

Content- and task-specific dissociations of frontal activity during maintenance and manipulation in visual working memory.

Working memory, the short-term maintenance and manipulation of information, relies strongly on neural activity in the frontal cortex. Understanding the functional role of this activity is a prerequisite for the understanding of cognitive control mechanisms. Functional imaging studies in human participants have attempted to reveal neural correlates of the subdivision of visual working memory into different processes (maintenance vs manipulation) and according to the type of memorized content. Here, we show, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a content-specific dissociation of frontal activity, with dorsal premotor areas supporting both maintenance and manipulation of spatial features and more ventral areas supporting maintenance and manipulation of color. Manipulation-specific activity was observed in the anterior middle frontal gyrus, the inferior frontal junction, and the inferior parietal lobe bilaterally. These areas have been implicated in cognitive control, and their activation by the manipulation task conforms to the demand on central executive resources in this condition. We suggest that the enhanced demand on cognitive resources in manipulation compared with maintenance was met by interplay of content- and task-specific modules in a frontoparietal network.

Brain Mapping↗

PubMed2004

Dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment and mimicry reactions at different levels of information processing.

Individuals with a dismissing-avoidant pattern of attachment are assumed to repress anxiety-related signals, a disposition hypothesized to interfere with facial mimicry and emotional contagion. Further, they are assumed to have one internal working model associated with anxiety, operating out of awareness at early, automatic stages of information processing, and another positive model operating at later, cognitively controlled stages of processing. The main aim of the present investigation was to compare facial mimicry in dismissing-avoidant and non-dismissing subjects at different levels of information processing. Pictures of happy and angry faces were exposed to 61 subjects at three different exposure times (17, 56, and 2,350 ms) in order to elicit facial muscle reactions, first at automatic levels and then at a more controlled levels. Corrugator activity ("frowning muscles") represented negative emotions and zygomaticus activity ("smiling muscles") positive emotions. The dismissing-avoidant subjects scored significantly lower on emotional empathy than the non-dismissing subjects. At the automatic level the dismissing-avoidant subjects showed "normal" corrugator responses (negative emotions) upon exposure to angry faces. At the cognitively controlled level of processing (2,350 ms) a significant interaction effect was shown between Faces x Muscles x Attachment pattern. The dismissing-avoidant subjects showed no corrugator response and an increased zygomaticus response ("smiling reaction") to the angry face, whereas the non-dismissing subjects reacted with a significant mimicking reaction. The dismissing-avoidant subjects' tendency to "smiling" in response to the angry face at the controlled level (2,350 ms) may be interpreted as a repression of their earlier, automatically evoked (56 ms) negative emotional reaction.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Personality predicts working-memory-related activation in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex.

Behavioral studies suggest that two affective dimensions of personality are associated with working memory (WM) function. WM load is known to modulate neural activity in the caudal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a brain region critical for the cognitive control of behavior. On this basis, we hypothesized that neural activity in the caudal ACC during a WM task should be associated with personality: correlated negatively with behavioral approach sensitivity (BAS) and positively with behavioral inhibition sensitivity (BIS). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we measured brain activity in 14 participants performing a three-back WM task. Higher self-reported BAS predicted better WM performance (r = .27) and lower WM-related activation in the caudal ACC (r = -.84), suggesting personality differences in cognitive control. The data bolster approach-withdrawal (action control) theories of personality and suggest refinements to the dominant views of ACC and personality.

Adult↗

PubMed2001

Executive control of cognitive processes in task switching.

In 4 experiments, participants alternated between different tasks or performed the same task repeatedly. The tasks for 2 of the experiments required responding to geometric objects in terms of alternative classification rules, and the tasks for the other 2 experiments required solving arithmetic problems in terms of alternative numerical operations. Performance was measured as a function of whether the tasks were familiar or unfamiliar, the rules were simple or complex, and visual cues were present or absent about which tasks should be performed. Task alternation yielded switching-time costs that increased with rule complexity but decreased with task cuing. These factor effects were additive, supporting a model of executive control that has goal-shifting and rule-activation stages for task switching. It appears that rule activation takes more time for switching from familiar to unfamiliar tasks than for switching in the opposite direction.

Cognition↗

PubMed1984

The neurology of human emotion.

Emotion can be considered the result of mood (the inner, subjective feelings), affect (the outer, objective manifestations of feeling), drive, and cognitive control. Research in the past several decades suggests a correlation between characteristic emotional disorders and abnormalities involving restricted neuroanatomical regions. Mood appears to be a product of the basal-limbic structures. Affect is more hemisphere influenced and the difference between nonverbal and verbal affect appears to reflect right and left hemispheric function. Drive can be considered a function of midline anterior anatomical structures while cognitive control, the ability to govern action by thought, seems to depend on frontal convexity and/or orbital frontal function. Emotion is a summation of these activities and emotional disorder may follow disturbance to any one or a combination of these separate functions.

Affect↗

PubMed2005

Anterior cingulate cortex: an fMRI analysis of conflict specificity and functional differentiation.

In this event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, we provide evidence that the role of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) in cognitive control may not be unitary, as the responses of different ACC subregions vary depending upon the nature of task-irrelevant information. More specifically, using the color-word Stroop task (congruent, incongruent, and neutral trial types), we examined the degree to which increases in neural activity within ACC are specific to conditions of conflict, as posited by the conflict monitoring theory (Botvinick et al. [1999]: Rev Neurosci 10:49-57; Carter et al. [1998]: Science 280:747-749). Although incongruent and congruent trials both involve two competing sources of color information (color word and ink color), only incongruent trials involve a direct conflict between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information. Although the anterior division of the ACC rostral zone exhibited conflict specific increases in neural activity (i.e., incongruent > congruent = neutral), the posterior division exhibited a more generalized pattern, increasing whenever the task-irrelevant information was color related, regardless of whether it was conflicting (i.e., incongruent and congruent > neutral). Our data thus suggest a possible functional differentiation within the ACC. As such, it is unlikely that the role of the ACC in cognitive control will be able to be accommodated by a single unifying theory.

Adolescent↗

PubMed1996

Visual orienting and alerting in rhesus monkeys: comparison with humans.

The behavioral capacities of the rhesus monkey for several sensory and cognitive tasks appear quite similar to those of humans. To evaluate the monkey's attentional capacities, we have compared monkey and human performance on a visuospatial attentional task, the cued target detection (CTD) paradigm. Animals were trained to fixate a small spot of light while a cue and a subsequent target, are flashed in the visual periphery. In valid trials, the cue and target appeared in the same spatial location; in invalid trials, the cue and target appeared in the opposite location; in double trials, two cues were presented and the target appeared in one of their locations; in no-cue trials, the cue was omitted and the target appeared in one location. In addition, we varied cognitive control over the task initiation by making the trial onset either self-paced or computer-paced. Reaction times (RTs) to target presentation, response accuracy, and frequency of aborted trials were measured for all subjects. No significant species differences were found for the patterns of RTs for different trial types or for attentional dynamics, as indexed by the decreases in RT with increasing cue-target interval. However, humans and non-human primates reacted differently to changes in cognitive control. Humans shows significant increases in no-cue trial RTs in the auto-paced task compared to the self-paced, but no differences in overall RT between tasks; monkeys showed a significant faster overall RT for the self-paced than the computer-paced task, but no difference between no-cue RTs. The performance differences between species may be related to the training history of the animals or to known anatomical differences in cortical organization, especially in the parietal lobe.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Decreased conflict- and error-related activity in the anterior cingulate cortex in subjects with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE: People with schizophrenia have exhibited reduced functional activity in the anterior cingulate cortex during the performance of many types of cognitive tasks and during the commission of errors. According to conflict theory, the anterior cingulate cortex is involved in the monitoring of response conflict, acting as a signal for a need for greater cognitive control. This study examined whether impaired conflict monitoring in people with schizophrenia could underlie reduced anterior cingulate activity during both correct task performance and error-related activity. METHOD: Functional activity in the anterior cingulate of 13 schizophrenia patients and 13 healthy comparison subjects was investigated by using event-related fMRI and a Stroop task that allowed simultaneous examination of activity during both conflict (incongruent trials) and error (commission of error trials). RESULTS: In the presence of comparable reaction time measures for conflict as well as comparable error rates, the schizophrenia subjects showed both decreased conflict- and error-related activity in the same region of the anterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, those with schizophrenia did not exhibit significant post-conflict or post-error behavioral adjustments. CONCLUSIONS: Concurrently reduced conflict- and error-related activity in the anterior cingulate cortex along with reduced trial-to-trial adjustments in performance has not previously been reported in schizophrenia. The current results suggest that impaired conflict monitoring by the anterior cingulate cortex might play an important role in contributing to cognitive control deficits in patients with schizophrenia.

Adult↗

PubMed1991

Cognitive representations, control, and understanding of complex systems: a field study focusing on components of users' mental models and expert/novice differences.

Users' mental models of systems are frequently asserted to be important in their interactions with those systems. Although there are few explicit definitions of mental models in the literature, mental models are assumed to be important and researchers have seemed to accept and understand the concept intuitively. In our research, we have extracted three themes from the definitions of mental models including: (1) the relations among features or components of a system; (2) the capability of the mental model to aid in the control of the system; and (3) the capability of the mental model to enhance the user's understanding of the system. The relationships among the components of users' mental models, including procedural and declarative knowledge, perceptions of the use of system features, and the relations among the similarity of use of system features, were investigated in a field study. Trained and untrained novice users of a new business phone system rated the similarity of use of nine standard features on the phone. These ratings were used to derive cognitive representations of the relations among the system features. Users' ratings of features on univariate scales about the use of the features and scores obtained on a test of procedural knowledge were related to these representations. The two novice groups' mental models were similar except for the perception of one feature; it was more accurately depicted in the trained users' representation than those who did not attend a training programme. Two types of experts' similarity of use ratings were evaluated to determine an 'appropriate' representation of the use of the system features; this was then compared to the novices'. This comparison suggested that there were deficiencies in the mental models of novices. Designing training programmes and instructional aids for systems using the discrepancies between novices' and experts' mental models are discussed.

Adult↗

PubMed2006

State, trait and biochemical influences on human anterior cingulate function.

The dorsal part of the human anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) is reliably activated in situations requiring cognitive control, especially during states of conflict. However, little is known about how individual differences in the neural characteristics of the dACC and major dimensions of behavior, affect this brain response. We recruited 28 healthy adults and employed a multi-modal neuroimaging approach combined with a task designed to specifically activate the human dACC and statistical path analysis to demonstrate clear roles for intelligence, personality and concentrations of neuronal N-acetylaspartate in determining dACC activation. These influences were comparable in magnitude to those associated with the experience of conflict. Our findings extend current understandings of the neural substrates of cognitive control by modeling the effect of neuronal viability, intelligence, and personality, on dACC activation. They also highlight the importance of considering enduring personal characteristics when mapping human brain-behavior relationships.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

For better or for worse: neural systems supporting the cognitive down- and up-regulation of negative emotion.

Functional neuroimaging studies examining the neural bases of the cognitive control of emotion have found increased prefrontal and decreased amygdala activation for the reduction or down-regulation of negative emotion. It is unknown, however, (1) whether the same neural systems underlie the enhancement or up-regulation of emotion, and (2) whether altering the nature of the regulatory strategy alters the neural systems mediating the regulation. To address these questions using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants up- and down-regulated negative emotion either by focusing internally on the self-relevance of aversive scenes or by focusing externally on alternative meanings for pictured actions and their situational contexts. Results indicated (1a) that both up- and down-regulating negative emotion recruited prefrontal and anterior cingulate regions implicated in cognitive control, (1b) that amygdala activation was modulated up or down in accord with the regulatory goal, and (1c) that up-regulation uniquely recruited regions of left rostromedial PFC implicated in the retrieval of emotion knowledge, whereas down-regulation uniquely recruited regions of right lateral and orbital PFC implicated in behavioral inhibition. Results also indicated that (2) self-focused regulation recruited medial prefrontal regions implicated in internally focused processing, whereas situation-focused regulation recruited lateral prefrontal regions implicated in externally focused processing. These data suggest that both common and distinct neural systems support various forms of reappraisal and that which particular prefrontal systems modulate the amygdala in different ways depends on the regulatory goal and strategy employed.

Adult↗

PubMed2004

Verbal selective learning after traumatic brain injury in children.

Selective learning (SL), the ability to select items to learn from among other items, engages cognitive control, which is purportedly mediated by the frontal cortex and its circuitry. Using incentive-based auditory word recall and expository discourse tasks, we studied the efficiency of SL in children ages 6 to 16 years who had sustained severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) at least 1 year earlier. We hypothesized that SL would be compromised by severe TBI. Results indicated that children with severe TBI performed significantly worse than age-matched typically developing children on word- and discourse-level measures of SL efficiency with no significant group differences in number of items recalled from auditory word lists or declarative facts. We conclude that severe TBI disrupts incentive-based cognitive control processes, possibly due to involvement of frontal neural networks.

Acoustic Stimulation↗

PubMed2006

The effect of visuospatial attentional load on the processing of irrelevant acoustic distractors.

This work investigated the role of cognitive control functions in selective attention when task-relevant and -irrelevant stimuli come from different sensory modalities. We parametrically manipulated the load of an attentive tracking task and investigated its effect on irrelevant acoustic change-related processing. While subjects were performing the visual attentive tracking task, event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for frequent standard tones and rare deviant tones presented as auditory distractors. The deviant tones elicited two change-related ERP components: the mismatch negativity (MMN) and the P3a. The amplitude of the MMN, which indexes the early detection of irregular changes, increased with increasing attentional load, whereas the subsequent P3a component, which indicates the involuntary orienting of attention to deviants, was significant only in the lowest load condition. These findings suggest that active exclusion of the early detection process of irrelevant acoustic changes depends on available resources of cognitive control, whereas the late involuntary orienting of attention to deviants can be passively suppressed by high demand on central attentional resources. The present study thus reveals opposing visual attentional load effects at different temporal and functional stages in the rejection of deviant auditory distractors and provides a new perspective on the resolution of the long-standing early versus late attention selection debate.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Transcriptional control of cognitive development.

Cognitive development is determined by both genetics and environment. One point of convergence of these two influences is the neural activity-dependent regulation of programs of gene expression that specify neuronal fate and function. Human genetic studies have linked several transcriptional regulators to neurodevelopmental disorders including mental retardation and autism spectrum disorders. Recent reports on two such factors, CREB-binding protein and methyl-CpG-binding protein 2, have begun to reveal how epigenetics and neuronal activity act to modulate the program of gene expression required for synaptic development and function.

Animals↗