Faculty Opinions recommendation of The relationship between years of cocaine use and brain activation to cocaine and response inhibition cues.

Abstract. The lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays a major role in both working memory (WM) and response inhibition (RI), which are fundamental for various cognitive abilities. We explored the relationship between these LPFC functions during childhood development by examining the performance of two groups of children in visuospatial and auditory WM tasks and a go/no-go RI task. In the younger children (59 5- and 6-year-olds), performance on the visuospatial WM task correlated significantly with that in the auditory WM task. Furthermore, accuracy in these tasks correlated significantly with performance on the RI task, particularly in the no-go trials. In contrast, there were no significant correlations among those tasks in older children (92 8- and 9-year-olds). These results suggest that functional neural systems for visuospatial WM, auditory WM, and RI, especially those in the LPFC, become fractionated during childhood, thereby enabling more efficient processing of these critical cognitive functions.

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Brain Activation of Patients With Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder During a Mental Rotation Task: A Functional MRI Study

Frontiers in Psychiatry ◽

10.3389/fpsyt.2021.659121 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Sanghoon Oh ◽

Wi Hoon Jung ◽

Taekwan Kim ◽

Geumsook Shim ◽

Jun Soo Kwon

Keyword(s):

Magnetic Resonance Imaging ◽

Cognitive Function ◽

Neural Activity ◽

Symptom Severity ◽

Brain Activation ◽

Functional Magnetic Resonance ◽

Resonance Imaging ◽

Obsessive Compulsive ◽

Compulsive Disorder ◽

The Relationship

Functional neuroimaging studies have implicated alterations in frontostriatal and frontoparietal circuits in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during various tasks. To date, however, brain activation for visuospatial function in conjunction with symptoms in OCD has not been comprehensively evaluated. To elucidate the relationship between neural activity, cognitive function, and obsessive-compulsive symptoms, we investigated regional brain activation during the performance of a visuospatial task in patients with OCD using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Seventeen medication-free patients with OCD and 21 age-, sex-, and IQ-matched healthy controls participated in this study. Functional magnetic resonance imaging data were obtained while the subjects performed a mental rotation (MR) task. Brain activation during the task was compared between the two groups using a two-sample t-test. Voxel-wise whole-brain multiple regression analyses were also performed to examine the relationship between obsessive-compulsive symptom severity and neural activity during the task. The two groups did not differ in MR task performance. Both groups also showed similar task-related activation patterns in frontoparietal regions with no significant differences. Activation in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in patients with OCD during the MR task was positively associated with their total Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS) scores. This study identified the specific brain areas associated with the interaction between symptom severity and visuospatial cognitive function during an MR task in medication-free patients with OCD. These findings may serve as potential neuromodulation targets for OCD treatment.

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Explicit and Implicit Verbal Response Inhibition in Preschool-Age Children Who Stutter

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2016_jslhr-s-16-0135 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 60 (4) ◽

pp. 836-852 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Julie D. Anderson ◽

Stacy A. Wagovich

Keyword(s):

Response Inhibition ◽

Daily Life ◽

Language Skills ◽

Reaction Times ◽

Preschool Age ◽

Verbal Response ◽

Group Differences ◽

Dependent Variables ◽

Preschool Age Children ◽

The Relationship

Purpose The purpose of this study was to examine (a) explicit and implicit verbal response inhibition in preschool children who do stutter (CWS) and do not stutter (CWNS) and (b) the relationship between response inhibition and language skills. Method Participants were 41 CWS and 41 CWNS between the ages of 3;1 and 6;1 (years;months). Explicit verbal response inhibition was measured using a computerized version of the grass–snow task (Carlson & Moses, 2001), and implicit verbal response inhibition was measured using the baa–meow task. Main dependent variables were reaction time and accuracy. Results The CWS were significantly less accurate than the CWNS on the implicit task, but not the explicit task. The CWS also exhibited slower reaction times than the CWNS on both tasks. Between-group differences in performance could not be attributed to working memory demands. Overall, children's performance on the inhibition tasks corresponded with parents' perceptions of their children's inhibition skills in daily life. Conclusions CWS are less effective and efficient than CWNS in suppressing a dominant response while executing a conflicting response in the verbal domain.

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