scholarly journals Task-driven intra- and interarea communications in primate cerebral cortex

2015 ◽  
Vol 112 (15) ◽  
pp. 4761-4766 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrià Tauste Campo ◽  
Marina Martinez-Garcia ◽  
Verónica Nácher ◽  
Rogelio Luna ◽  
Ranulfo Romo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Bayesian Method ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Spike Trains ◽  
Cortical Areas ◽  
Secondary Somatosensory Cortex ◽  
Binary Time Series ◽  
Primate Cerebral Cortex ◽  
Motor Areas

Neural correlations during a cognitive task are central to study brain information processing and computation. However, they have been poorly analyzed due to the difficulty of recording simultaneous single neurons during task performance. In the present work, we quantified neural directional correlations using spike trains that were simultaneously recorded in sensory, premotor, and motor cortical areas of two monkeys during a somatosensory discrimination task. Upon modeling spike trains as binary time series, we used a nonparametric Bayesian method to estimate pairwise directional correlations between many pairs of neurons throughout different stages of the task, namely, perception, working memory, decision making, and motor report. We find that solving the task involves feedforward and feedback correlation paths linking sensory and motor areas during certain task intervals. Specifically, information is communicated by task-driven neural correlations that are significantly delayed across secondary somatosensory cortex, premotor, and motor areas when decision making takes place. Crucially, when sensory comparison is no longer requested for task performance, a major proportion of directional correlations consistently vanish across all cortical areas.

Age-Related Differences in Motivational Integration and Cognitive Control

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debbie Marianne Yee ◽  
Sarah L Adams ◽  
Asad Beck ◽  
Todd Samuel Braver
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Cognitive Control ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Monetary Reward ◽  
Potential Candidate ◽  
Younger Adults ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Cognitive Task Performance

Motivational incentives play an influential role in value-based decision-making and cognitive control. A compelling hypothesis in the literature suggests that the brain integrates the motivational value of diverse incentives (e.g., motivational integration) into a common currency value signal that influences decision-making and behavior. To investigate whether motivational integration processes change during healthy aging, we tested older (N=44) and younger (N=54) adults in an innovative incentive integration task paradigm that establishes dissociable and additive effects of liquid (e.g., juice, neutral, saltwater) and monetary incentives on cognitive task performance. The results reveal that motivational incentives improve cognitive task performance in both older and younger adults, providing novel evidence demonstrating that age-related cognitive control deficits can be ameliorated with sufficient incentive motivation. Additional analyses revealed clear age-related differences in motivational integration. Younger adult task performance was modulated by both monetary and liquid incentives, whereas monetary reward effects were more gradual in older adults and more strongly impacted by trial-by-trial performance feedback. A surprising discovery was that older adults shifted attention from liquid valence toward monetary reward throughout task performance, but younger adults shifted attention from monetary reward toward integrating both monetary reward and liquid valence by the end of the task, suggesting differential strategic utilization of incentives. Together these data suggest that older adults may have impairments in incentive integration, and employ different motivational strategies to improve cognitive task performance. The findings suggest potential candidate neural mechanisms that may serve as the locus of age-related change, providing targets for future cognitive neuroscience investigations.

You Are Your Words: Linguistic Correlates of Cognitive Task Performance

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura K. Varner ◽  
Scott A. Crossley ◽  
Erica L. Snow ◽  
Danielle S. McNamara
Keyword(s):  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Cognitive Task Performance

The Impact of Environmental Stress on Cognitive Performance: A Systematic Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 1205-1246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristy Martin ◽  
Emily McLeod ◽  
Julien Périard ◽  
Ben Rattray ◽  
Richard Keegan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Environmental Stress ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Sea Level ◽  
Cognitive Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Eligibility Criteria ◽  
Healthy Human ◽  
The Impact

Objective: In this review, we detail the impact of environmental stress on cognitive and military task performance and highlight any individual characteristics or interventions which may mitigate any negative effect. Background: Military personnel are often deployed in regions markedly different from their own, experiencing hot days, cold nights, and trips both above and below sea level. In spite of these stressors, high-level cognitive and operational performance must be maintained. Method: A systematic review of the electronic databases Medline (PubMed), EMBASE (Scopus), PsycINFO, and Web of Science was conducted from inception up to September 2018. Eligibility criteria included a healthy human cohort, an outcome of cognition or military task performance and assessment of an environmental condition. Results: The search returned 113,850 records, of which 124 were included in the systematic review. Thirty-one studies examined the impact of heat stress on cognition; 20 of cold stress; 59 of altitude exposure; and 18 of being below sea level. Conclusion: The severity and duration of exposure to the environmental stressor affects the degree to which cognitive performance can be impaired, as does the complexity of the cognitive task and the skill or familiarity of the individual performing the task. Application: Strategies to improve cognitive performance in extreme environmental conditions should focus on reducing the magnitude of the physiological and perceptual disturbance caused by the stressor. Strategies may include acclimatization and habituation, being well skilled on the task, and reducing sensations of thermal stress with approaches such as head and neck cooling.

ADHD severity as a predictor of cognitive task performance in children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 103882
Author(s):  
Rosleen Mansour ◽  
Anthony R. Ward ◽  
David M. Lane ◽  
Katherine A. Loveland ◽  
Michael G. Aman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Children With Autism ◽  
Autism Spectrum ◽  
Spectrum Disorder ◽  
Cognitive Task Performance

scholarly journals The relationship between hippocampal-dependent task performance and hippocampal grey matter myelination and iron content

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 239821282110119
Author(s):  
Ian A. Clark ◽  
Martina F. Callaghan ◽  
Nikolaus Weiskopf ◽  
Eleanor A. Maguire
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Autobiographical Memory ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Iron Content ◽  
Grey Matter ◽  
Cognitive Task ◽  
Spatial Navigation ◽  
Imaging Data ◽  
Future Thinking

Individual differences in scene imagination, autobiographical memory recall, future thinking and spatial navigation have long been linked with hippocampal structure in healthy people, although evidence for such relationships is, in fact, mixed. Extant studies have predominantly concentrated on hippocampal volume. However, it is now possible to use quantitative neuroimaging techniques to model different properties of tissue microstructure in vivo such as myelination and iron. Previous work has linked such measures with cognitive task performance, particularly in older adults. Here we investigated whether performance on scene imagination, autobiographical memory, future thinking and spatial navigation tasks was associated with hippocampal grey matter myelination or iron content in young, healthy adult participants. Magnetic resonance imaging data were collected using a multi-parameter mapping protocol (0.8 mm isotropic voxels) from a large sample of 217 people with widely-varying cognitive task scores. We found little evidence that hippocampal grey matter myelination or iron content were related to task performance. This was the case using different analysis methods (voxel-based quantification, partial correlations), when whole brain, hippocampal regions of interest, and posterior:anterior hippocampal ratios were examined, and across different participant sub-groups (divided by gender and task performance). Variations in hippocampal grey matter myelin and iron levels may not, therefore, help to explain individual differences in performance on hippocampal-dependent tasks, at least in young, healthy individuals.

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