Integrating Conflict Detection and Attentional Control Mechanisms
- 1 September 2011
- journal article
- Published by MIT Press in Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
- Vol. 23 (9), 2211-2221
- https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2010.21595
Abstract
Human behavior involves monitoring and adjusting performance to meet established goals. Performance-monitoring systems that act by detecting conflict in stimulus and response processing have been hypothesized to influence cortical control systems to adjust and improve performance. Here we used fMRI to investigate the neural mechanisms of conflict monitoring and resolution during voluntary spatial attention. We tested the hypothesis that the ACC would be sensitive to conflict during attentional orienting and influence activity in the frontoparietal attentional control network that selectively modulates visual information processing. We found that activity in ACC increased monotonically with increasing attentional conflict. This increased conflict detection activity was correlated with both increased activity in the attentional control network and improved speed and accuracy from one trial to the next. These results establish a long hypothesized interaction between conflict detection systems and neural systems supporting voluntary control of visual attention.Keywords
This publication has 50 references indexed in Scilit:
- Performance Monitoring Local Field Potentials in the Medial Frontal Cortex of Primates: Anterior Cingulate CortexJournal of Neurophysiology, 2008
- fMRI evidence for both generalized and specialized components of attentional controlBrain Research, 2007
- Anterior Cingulate and Posterior Parietal Cortices Are Sensitive to Dissociable Forms of Conflict in a Task-Switching ParadigmNeuron, 2006
- Effortless control: executive attention and conscious feeling of mental effort are dissociableNeuropsychologia, 2005
- Functional Parcellation of Attentional Control Regions of the BrainJournal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2004
- Dissociating the Role of the Dorsolateral Prefrontal and Anterior Cingulate Cortex in Cognitive ControlScience, 2000
- SPACE AND ATTENTION IN PARIETAL CORTEXAnnual Review of Neuroscience, 1999
- Anterior Cingulate Cortex, Error Detection, and the Online Monitoring of PerformanceScience, 1998
- Topography of projections to the frontal lobe from the macaque frontal eye fieldsJournal of Comparative Neurology, 1993
- Frontal eye field as defined by intracortical microstimulation in squirrel monkeys, owl monkeys, and macaque monkeys II. cortical connectionsJournal of Comparative Neurology, 1987