Ongoing brain activity fluctuations directly account for intertrial and indirectly for intersubject variability in Stroop task performance

Recent studies have established a relation between ongoing brain activity fluctuations and intertrial variability in evoked neural responses, perception, and motor performance. Here, we extended these investigations into the domain of cognitive control. Using functional neuroimaging and a sparse eve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. 1991) Vol. 21; no. 11; p. 2612
Main Authors: Coste, Clio P, Sadaghiani, Sepideh, Friston, Karl J, Kleinschmidt, Andreas
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: United States 01.11.2011
Subjects:
Brain - physiology
Brain Mapping
Female
Humans
Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted
Magnetic Resonance Imaging
Male
Reaction Time - physiology
Stroop Test
Task Performance and Analysis
Young Adult
ISSN:1460-2199, 1460-2199
Online Access:Get more information
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Summary:Recent studies have established a relation between ongoing brain activity fluctuations and intertrial variability in evoked neural responses, perception, and motor performance. Here, we extended these investigations into the domain of cognitive control. Using functional neuroimaging and a sparse event-related design (with long and unpredictable intervals), we measured ongoing activity fluctuations and evoked responses in volunteers performing a Stroop task with color-word interference. Across trials, prestimulus activity of several regions predicted subsequent response speed and across subjects this effect scaled with the Stroop effect size, being significant only in subjects manifesting behavioral interference. These effects occurred only in task relevant as the dorsal anterior cingulate and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex as well as ventral visual areas sensitive to color and visual words. Crucially, in subjects showing a Stroop effect, reaction times were faster when prestimulus activity was higher in task-relevant (color) regions and slower when activity was higher in irrelevant (word form) regions. These findings suggest that intrinsic brain activity fluctuations modulate neural mechanisms underpinning selective voluntary attention and cognitive control. Rephrased in terms of predictive coding models, ongoing activity can hence be considered a proxy of the precision (gain) with which prediction error signals are transmitted upon sensory stimulation.
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ISSN:1460-2199
1460-2199
DOI:10.1093/cercor/bhr050