Executive Function Flashcards

What is cognitive control?

Cognitive control refers to the ability to adjust behaviour according to one’s desired goals.

What is an A-not-B error, and what is another common name for it?

A perseverative error. It occurs when an individual continues to search for or respond to a previously rewarded location (A) even after witnessing the target being moved to a new location (B).

According to Milner's (1963) classical studies, which brain region’s lesion leads to the highest percentage of perseverative errors in the

The Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex (DLPFC), with error rates increasing from 39.5% to 51.5% after surgery.

What are the  core aspects  of the ability to adaptively control behavior?

1. A system that tracks performance and detects errors (monitoring). 2. A system that maintains and updates goals and rules (updating). 3. The ability to select between conflicting motor responses (shifting). 4. The ability to inhibit automatic or dominant responses (inhibition)

Why is the PFC, rather than other brain regions, the primary site for cognitive control?

The Prefrontal Cortex (PFC) possesses unique neurobiological properties that make it uniquely suited for control:

Sustained and Robust Activity: PFC neurons exhibit persistent activity that is robust against interfering signals, allowing them to maintain goals even when distractions are present.

Rapid Flexibility: Unlike more rigid sensory areas, the PFC has the capacity for rapid updating of activity patterns, switching between "UP" and "DOWN" states to adapt to new rules.

Domain Generality: While other regions are specialized (e.g., V1 for vision), PFC neurons are domain-general; they can maintain rules across different sensory modalities and motor systems.

Anatomical Hub Status: The PFC is a widely connected "hub," which provides it with the necessary structural access to enable top-down modulation and inhibition of various sensory and motor functions.

Which midbrain area is primarily associated with dopamine and reward error prediction?

The Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA)

In the dopamine-based reward error prediction model, what happens to the prediction if the reward received equals the prediction?

The prediction is kept unchanged.

Error monitoring refers to…

cognitive processes by which we know when our performance deviates from our intended goal.

 

Humans, like other species need to monitor and respond to errors. This is necessary for learning, to adapt one’s behavior to the changing demands of the environment one lives in, and to interrupt useless or potentially harmful actions.

What brain areas are important for error monitoring?

Areas along the midline of the frontal lobe, including the pre-supplementary motor area, supplementary eye field, and middle cingulate cortex.  Middle cingulate cortex is a region in the medial frontal cortex, located ventral to the primary motor cortex, supplementary eye field, supplementary motor area, and pre-supplementary motor area in Brodmann area 24. Fu et al show the location of these areas in the brain. 

What is error-related negativity (ERN)?

A brief, negative-going component in event-related potential response over the medial frontal cortex shortly after an action error has been committed. Action errors may happen, for example, when one automatically commits an automatic, goal-incompatible response instead of a goal-compatible and more adaptive response.

What does the term "corollary discharge" mean in the context of motor control?

It is a copy of efferent motor signals provided to sensory/cognitive structures to enable "forward models" that predict what is going to happen.

In the Fu et al. (2023) model of error monitoring, how is an "action error" identified?

An action error is identified when the corollary discharge of the actual motor command is compared against the predicted action (target) generated by the action forward model.

Post-error slowing refers to…

a delay of response time after one has committed an error in an experimental task (e.g., pressed a wrong button).

Fill in the blanks

________________________ predict the actions that are available in a given task (for example, to respond on the basis of a font color or text in a Stroop task).  These predictions are made for the correct (or “goal-compatible”) response as well as the incorrect (or “goal-incompatible”) response. The ________________ chooses which of the available actions is executed. Performance monitoring systems receive information about the the selected responses via ________________________ which are copies of the efferent (e.g., motor command) signals.

 

COROLLARY DISCHARGE SIGNALS, ACTION FORWARD MODELS, ACTION SELECTION MECHANISM

ACTION FORWARD MODELS predict the actions that are available in a given task (for example, to respond on the basis of a font color or text in a Stroop task).  These predictions are made for the correct or “goal-compatible” response as well as the the incorrect or “goal-incompatible” response. The ACTION SELECTION MECHANISM chooses which of the available actions is executed. Performance monitoring systems receive information about the the selected responses via COROLLARY DISCHARGE SIGNALS, which are copies of the efferent (e.g., motor command) signals.