Anterior Cingulate Conflict Monitoring and Adjustments in Control

Science

Volumn 303, Issue 5660, 2004, Pages 1023-1026

  Kerns, John G ^a,b   Cohen, Jonathan D ^b,c   MacDonald III, Angus W ^d   Cho, Raymond Y ^b,c   Stenger, V Andrew ^e   Carter, Cameron S ^b,f  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE   (United States)

^c PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^d UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

^e UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH MEDICAL CENTER   (United States)

^f UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COGNITIVE SYSTEMS; MONITORING;

BEHAVIOURAL ADJUSTMENTS; COGNITIVE CONTROL;

NEUROLOGY;

COGNITION;

ADJUSTMENT; ARTICLE; BEHAVIOR CONTROL; BRAIN FUNCTION; BRAIN REGION; CINGULATE GYRUS; CONTROL SYSTEM; HUMAN; MONITORING; NERVE CELL NETWORK; NONHUMAN; PREFRONTAL CORTEX; PRIORITY JOURNAL; TASK PERFORMANCE;

ADULT; BRAIN MAPPING; COGNITION; CONFLICT (PSYCHOLOGY); CUES; FEMALE; FRONTAL LOBE; GYRUS CINGULI; HUMANS; MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING; MALE; NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL TESTS; PREFRONTAL CORTEX; REACTION TIME;

EID: 1142286344     PISSN: 00368075     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1126/science.1089910     Document Type: Article

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22. High-adjustment trials were defined as all il trials with an RT faster than their median. Conversely, low-adjustment trials were slow il trials.
23. Although there was not a significant adjustment effect for iC trials, we performed a similar analysis, with high-adjustment iC trials being the third slowest iC trials and low-adjustment trials being the third fastest iC trials. Again, increased ACC conflict activity predicted greater adjustment, with increased ACC activity preceding slow iC trials. (We used a median split for il trials because of their fewer number.) The pattern of results for il and iC trials indicates that ACC activity on the previous trial was not associated with overall faster or slower responses on the current trial, but rather that there was an interaction between speed and current trial type [F(1, 22) = 9.67, P < 0.005].
24. This analysis was performed only on post-error congruent trials, as there were too few post-error incongruent trials (30% of all trials were incongruent-see Supporting Online Material) to support a reliable analysis. For this reason, post-error adjustments were expected to produce a slowing of response.
25. To conduct this analysis, we examined associations of ACC and PFC with a third region, in the left temporal lobe, that showed the largest response to incongruent trials of any nonfrontal regions, and then controlled for these relations in assessing the correlation between ACC and PFC. Specifically, for each participant, we partialed out the variance in the relation between ACC (on conflict and error trials) and the temporal region (on post-conflict and post-error trials), and similarly for PFC (on post-conflict and post-error trials) and the temporal region (on conflict and error trials). We then performed a t test to determine whether the residual correlation between ACC and PFC activity across the group of participants was significant (see Supporting Online Material).
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30. This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health and the Burroughs-Wellcome Foundation (C.S.C.).