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A multi-demand operating system underlying diverse cognitive tasks
A consistent set of brain areas is engaged across diverse cognitive tasks. Here, the authors reveal a unifying latent brain state that predicts performance across seven tasks, linking a core control network to cognitive flexibility and adaptive behaviors.
- Weidong Cai
- , Jalil Taghia
- & Vinod Menon
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Article
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Ramping dynamics and theta oscillations reflect dissociable signatures during rule-guided human behavior
The authors show that neuronal populations in the human prefrontal-motor network interact via two discernible communication modes – ramping dynamics and neural oscillations. These modes operate in concert to facilitate rule-guided behavior.
- Jan Weber
- , Anne-Kristin Solbakk
- & Randolph F. Helfrich
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Human brain representations of internally generated outcomes of approximate calculation revealed by ultra-high-field brain imaging
How the brain represents quantities remains unclear. Here the authors identify dorsal stream sensory-motor integration areas as a candidate region for the internal generation of numerical contents during mental calculations.
- Sébastien Czajko
- , Alexandre Vignaud
- & Evelyn Eger
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Article
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Dopamine release in human associative striatum during reversal learning
Dopamine release in the brain is hypothesised to be related to unexpected changes in reward. Here, the authors combine PET and fMRI in humans to show individual differences in reward prediction error during a card guessing game are associated with dopamine receptor occupancy in the striatum.
- Filip Grill
- , Marc Guitart-Masip
- & Anna Rieckmann
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Mapping causal links between prefrontal cortical regions and
intra-individual behavioral variability
The neural substrates of intra-individual variability are not well understood. Here, the authors show in macaque monkeys that response time variability is decreased by lesions to the anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, while it is increased by lesions to the posterior cingulate cortex and orbitofrontal cortex.
- Farshad Alizadeh Mansouri
- , Mark J. Buckley
- & Keiji Tanaka
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Asymmetric coding of reward prediction errors in human insula and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
It is unclear how dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and insula represent reward prediction errors. Here, the authors analyze human intracranial data to reveal spatially mixed, asymmetric coding of valence-specific and unsigned reward prediction errors, with insula leading dorsomedial prefrontal cortex.
- Colin W. Hoy
- , David R. Quiroga-Martinez
- & Robert T. Knight
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Personalized functional brain network topography is associated with individual differences in youth cognition
Individual differences in cognitive abilities during childhood are associated with important outcomes in adolescence. Here, the authors show associations between youth cognition and individual-specific patterns of cortical brain network organization.
- Arielle S. Keller
- , Adam R. Pines
- & Theodore D. Satterthwaite
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Functional alterations of the prefrontal circuit underlying cognitive aging in mice
The neural mechanisms underlying the effects of aging on executive functioning remain unclear. Here, the authors show neurons in the young mouse medial prefrontal cortex show cross-modal memory coding, however this declines in middle and old age, along with resting state functional connectivity in the region.
- Huee Ru Chong
- , Yadollah Ranjbar-Slamloo
- & Tsukasa Kamigaki
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A canonical trajectory of executive function maturation from adolescence to adulthood
Goal-directed cognition (executive function) is thought to develop through adolescence. Here, the authors find evidence across multiple datasets and measures that executive function develops until 18–20 years old.
- Brenden Tervo-Clemmens
- , Finnegan J. Calabro
- & Beatriz Luna
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Article
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Network controllability of structural connectomes in the neonatal brain
Network controllability represents the ease with which the brain switches between mental states and can be inferred from white matter connectivity. Here, the authors show network controllability emerges in infants as early as the third trimester, and that preterm birth disrupts the energy required to drive state transitions.
- Huili Sun
- , Rongtao Jiang
- & Dustin Scheinost
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Beta traveling waves in monkey frontal and parietal areas encode recent reward history
Here, the authors show that beta oscillations in the frontal and parietal lobes of monkeys propagate as traveling waves. The strength of these signals increases after rewards, suggesting a role for traveling waves in memory for recent events.
- Erfan Zabeh
- , Nicholas C. Foley
- & Jacqueline P. Gottlieb
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Cycles of goal silencing and reactivation underlie complex problem-solving in primate frontal and parietal cortex
Simple working memory tasks show sustained neural firing in frontal and parietal cortex. Here, the authors show cycles of target silencing and reactivation that are more restricted to single targets in parietal than frontal cortex.
- Kei Watanabe
- , Mikiko Kadohisa
- & John Duncan
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Article
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Anxious individuals shift emotion control from lateral frontal pole to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
Why anxious individuals fail to control emotional behaviour is not well understood. Here, the authors show that highly anxious individuals have a more excitable lateral frontopolar cortex, and fail to recruit this region during emotional action control.
- Bob Bramson
- , Sjoerd Meijer
- & Karin Roelofs
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Article
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Amphetamine disrupts dopamine axon growth in adolescence by a sex-specific mechanism in mice
Adolescent drug use augments psychiatric risk. Here the authors show that abused drugs dysregulate adolescent Netrin-1/DCC signaling, triggering ectopic long-distance dopamine axon growth in males while Netrin1 compensatory events protect females.
- Lauren M. Reynolds
- , Giovanni Hernandez
- & Cecilia Flores
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Cortical glutamate and GABA are related to compulsive behaviour in individuals with obsessive compulsive disorder and healthy controls
The neurochemical basis of compulsive behaviour is not well understood. Here, the authors show that levels of glutamate and GABA in the supplementary motor area and anterior cingulate cortex relate to compulsive behaviour in healthy controls and individuals with OCD.
- Marjan Biria
- , Paula Banca
- & Trevor W. Robbins
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Human orbitofrontal cortex signals decision outcomes to sensory cortex during behavioral adaptations
How the prefrontal cortex interacts with sensory cortex for behavioral adaptation in humans is unclear. Here, Wang et al. show that prediction-error related activity in lateral orbitofrontal cortex is conveyed as a teaching signal to update the outcome representation in sensory cortex.
- Bin A. Wang
- , Maike Veismann
- & Burkhard Pleger
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Microstructural and functional plasticity following repeated brain stimulation during cognitive training in older adults
The neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of behavioural training in combination with transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) are not well understood. Here, the authors combine cognitive training with tDCS, showing a modulation of prefrontal white and grey matter microstructure, and increased prefrontal functional connectivity.
- Daria Antonenko
- , Anna Elisabeth Fromm
- & Agnes Flöel
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Article
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A rapid theta network mechanism for flexible information encoding
Filtering or gating relevant information into working memory has been attributed to the striatum. Here, the authors reveal neocortical filtering mechanisms, namely, rapid changes in oscillatory theta networks, that predict fast and flexible human behavior.
- Elizabeth L. Johnson
- , Jack J. Lin
- & David Badre
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Article
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White matter disconnection of left multiple demand network is associated with post-lesion deficits in cognitive control
The anatomy of white matter tracts which coordinate the computations of cognitive control are not well understood. Here, the authors show that lesions in white matter connecting left frontoparietal regions are associated with deficits in cognitive control performance.
- Jiefeng Jiang
- , Joel Bruss
- & Aaron D. Boes
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Article
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Working memory control dynamics follow principles of spatial computing
It is unclear how cognitive computations are performed on sensory information. Here, neural evidence from working memory tasks suggests that the physical dimensions of cortical networks are used to update the status of sensory representations.
- Mikael Lundqvist
- , Scott L. Brincat
- & Pawel Herman
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Article
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The Stroop effect involves an excitatory–inhibitory fronto-cerebellar loop
It remains unclear how the Stroop effect occurs and gets resolved in the human brain. Here, the authors show that a functional loop involving the prefrontal cortex and cerebellum may play a critical role during word-color perception.
- Moe Okayasu
- , Tensei Inukai
- & Koji Jimura
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Functional architecture of executive control and associated event-related potentials in macaques
The authors examine the cortical microcircuitry relating to executive control in macaques. They describe three classes of neurons that signal response conflict, event timing, and maintenance of task goals, as well as their relations with event-related potentials that are associated with response inhibition.
- Amirsaman Sajad
- , Steven P. Errington
- & Jeffrey D. Schall
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Striatal dopamine dissociates methylphenidate effects on value-based versus surprise-based reversal learning
The mechanisms underpinning the variability in methylphenidate’s effects on cognition remain unclear. Here, the authors show that such effects reflect changes in striatal dopamine-related output gating of task-relevant cortical signals, and that these changes depend on baseline dopamine synthesis capacity.
- Ruben van den Bosch
- , Britt Lambregts
- & Roshan Cools
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Neuronal congruency effects in macaque prefrontal cortex
Stimulus-induced conflicts impair behavior in conflict tasks resulting in a phenomenon known as the behavioral congruency effect. Here, the authors investigate the neural underpinnings of this phenomenon and report a neuronal congruency effect in macaque prefrontal cortex to explain this impairment.
- Tao Yao
- & Wim Vanduffel
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Article
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Longitudinal evidence that Event Related Potential measures of self-regulation do not predict everyday goal pursuit
Self-regulation helps people to achieve their goals, and has been studied across modalities. Here, the authors present longitudinal evidence suggesting that common neural and behavioral measures of self-regulation derived from laboratory tasks do not predict everyday goal pursuit.
- Blair Saunders
- , Marina Milyavskaya
- & Michael Inzlicht
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Article
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Constructing neural network models from brain data reveals representational transformations linked to adaptive behavior
The brain dynamically transforms cognitive information. Here the authors build task-performing, functioning neural network models of sensorimotor transformations constrained by human brain data without the use of typical deep learning techniques.
- Takuya Ito
- , Guangyu Robert Yang
- & Michael W. Cole
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Dynamic targeting enables domain-general inhibitory control over action and thought by the prefrontal cortex
The authors use fMRI to show that the ability to stop unwanted actions and thoughts arises from a common stopping mechanism that flexibly inhibits activity in diverse, content-specific brain areas.
- Dace Apšvalka
- , Catarina S. Ferreira
- & Michael C. Anderson
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Article
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Focal neural perturbations reshape low-dimensional trajectories of brain activity supporting cognitive performance
The study of the brain’s low-dimensional topology enables the dynamic tracking of changes in neural activity. Here authors show how the reshaping of low-dimensional trajectories of brain activity sustain cognition following focal neural perturbations.
- Kartik K. Iyer
- , Kai Hwang
- & Luca Cocchi
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Article
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Prefrontal cortical plasticity during learning of cognitive tasks
It remains unclear whether improvements in one cognitive task transfer to other tasks. Here, the authors show that changes in prefrontal neuronal activation, firing rate, and local field potentials induced during active learning of a working memory task are also evident in a control task.
- Hua Tang
- , Mitchell R. Riley
- & Christos Constantinidis
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Predicting lapses of attention with sleep-like slow waves
Attentional lapses occur in many forms such as mind-wandering or mindblanking. Here the authors show different types of attentional lapse are accompanied by slow waves, neural activity that is characteristic of transitions into sleep.
- Thomas Andrillon
- , Angus Burns
- & Naotsugu Tsuchiya
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Dynamic causal brain circuits during working memory and their functional controllability
Working memory is a foundational component of cognition, but its mechanisms are poorly understood. Using a large sample of participants, this study identifies asymmetric dynamic interactions in cognitive control circuits, and their load-dependent network properties including controllability.
- Weidong Cai
- , Srikanth Ryali
- & Vinod Menon
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Interacting with volatile environments stabilizes hidden-state inference and its brain signatures
Here, the authors show that humans perceive uncertain environments as more stable when actively interacting with them than when observing them. Magnetoencephalographic signals in the temporal lobe were associated with the increased stability of beliefs during active sampling.
- Aurélien Weiss
- , Valérian Chambon
- & Valentin Wyart
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Associations between frontal lobe structure, parent-reported obstructive sleep disordered breathing and childhood behavior in the ABCD dataset
Parents often report behavioral problems in children with symptoms of sleep disordered breathing (oSDB), such as snoring. Here, the authors show that lower brain volumes within the frontal lobe are associated with parent-reported problem behaviors in children with parent-reported symptoms of oSDB.
- Amal Isaiah
- , Thomas Ernst
- & Linda Chang
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Article
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Varying demands for cognitive control reveals shared neural processes supporting semantic and episodic memory retrieval
Making sense of the world around us often requires flexible access to information from both semantic and episodic memory systems. Here, the authors show that controlled retrieval from functionally distinct long-term memory stores is supported by shared neural processes in the human brain.
- Deniz Vatansever
- , Jonathan Smallwood
- & Elizabeth Jefferies
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Article
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Bi-directional regulation of cognitive control by distinct prefrontal cortical output neurons to thalamus and striatum
This study presents an anatomical, neurophysiological and functional characterization of four distinct prefrontal populations that project to striatal and thalamic sub-regions. The authors show that each of these populations have a discrete role in the regulation of cognitive control.
- Sybren F. de Kloet
- , Bastiaan Bruinsma
- & Huibert D. Mansvelder
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Top-down control of visual cortex by the frontal eye fields through oscillatory realignment
Visual attention requires top-down modulation from the frontal eye fields to change cortical excitability of visual cortex. Here, the authors show that these top-down signals shape perception through mechanisms of oscillatory phase realignment at the beta frequency.
- Domenica Veniero
- , Joachim Gross
- & Gregor Thut
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Changes to information in working memory depend on distinct removal operations
There are multiple methods of clearing one’s mind of current thoughts. Here the authors use fMRI decoding to confirm the successful clearing of minds using different strategies, and show that these strategies have distinct neural signatures.
- Hyojeong Kim
- , Harry R. Smolker
- & Jarrod A. Lewis-Peacock
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The visual word form area (VWFA) is part of both language and attention circuitry
The visual word form area (VWFA) is a brain region associated with written language, but it has also been linked to visuospatial attention. Here, the authors reveal distinct structural and functional circuits linking VWFA with language and attention networks, and demonstrate that these circuits separately predict language and attention abilities.
- Lang Chen
- , Demian Wassermann
- & Vinod Menon
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Activity in the dorsal ACC causes deterioration of sequential motor performance due to anxiety
Performance anxiety can impair motor skill, and even affect expert athletes and musicians. Here, the authors show that anxiety affects performance at the ‘junction’ between two well-learned action sequences, and that this affect is associated with activity in dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC).
- Gowrishankar Ganesh
- , Takehiro Minamoto
- & Masahiko Haruno
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Cognitive control of complex motor behavior in marmoset monkeys
Whether marmosets can exhibit complex motor tasks in controlled experimental designs has not yet been demonstrated. Here, the authors show that marmoset monkeys can be trained to call on command in controlled operant conditioning tasks.
- Thomas Pomberger
- , Cristina Risueno-Segovia
- & Steffen R. Hage
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Article
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Characterization of the hemodynamic response function in white matter tracts for event-related fMRI
The hemodynamic response function (HRF) describes how changes in brain activity manifest as a transient signal (BOLD) that is detected by fMRI imaging. Here, the authors show that the HRF in white matter shows reduced magnitudes, delayed onsets, and prolonged initial dips compared to the grey matter HRF.
- Muwei Li
- , Allen T. Newton
- & John C. Gore
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Article
| Open Access
Feature-specific prediction errors and surprise across macaque fronto-striatal circuits
In order to adjust expectations efficiently, prediction errors need to be associated with the features that gave rise to the unexpected outcome. Here, the authors show that neurons in anterior fronto-striatal networks encode prediction errors that are specific to feature values of different stimulus dimensions.
- Mariann Oemisch
- , Stephanie Westendorff
- & Thilo Womelsdorf
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Article
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Model-based lesion mapping of cognitive control using the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
The frontal cortex is involved in cognitive control, e.g. cognitive flexibility and behavioral inhibition, but the roles of frontal subdivisions are unclear. Here, the authors used computational modelling of cognitive control task performance to map lesions responsible for impairments in specific cognitive operations.
- Jan Gläscher
- , Ralph Adolphs
- & Daniel Tranel
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Article
| Open Access
Cortical beta power reflects decision dynamics and uncovers multiple facets of post-error adaptation
People slow down reactions after errors, yet it is debated whether the mechanisms behind this slowing are beneficial for future performance. Here, the authors show that EEG measures converge with model predictions supporting a complex but overall beneficial mechanism of post-error slowing.
- Adrian G. Fischer
- , Roland Nigbur
- & Markus Ullsperger
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Article
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A retrieval-specific mechanism of adaptive forgetting in the mammalian brain
Forgetting is ubiquitous across the animal kingdom, but neuroscience is only beginning to address its mechanisms. This study shows that rats, like humans, actively forget memories that interfere with retrieval, and that this retrieval-induced forgetting requires the prefrontal cortex.
- Pedro Bekinschtein
- , Noelia V. Weisstaub
- & Michael C. Anderson
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Article
| Open Access
Intrinsic neuronal dynamics predict distinct functional roles during working memory
Prefrontal neurons exhibit both transient and persistent firing in working memory tasks. Here the authors report that the intrinsic timescale of neuronal firing outside the task is predictive of the temporal dynamics of coding during working memory in three frontoparietal brain areas.
- D. F. Wasmuht
- , E. Spaak
- & M. G. Stokes
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Article
| Open Access
Multimodal neuromarkers in schizophrenia via cognition-guided MRI fusion
Cognitive impairment is a feature of many psychiatric diseases. Here the authors aimed to identify multimodal neuromarkers that can be used to quantify and predict cognitive performance in individuals with schizophrenia using three different features of MRI and three independent cohorts.
- Jing Sui
- , Shile Qi
- & Vince D. Calhoun
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Article
| Open Access
Uncovering hidden brain state dynamics that regulate performance and decision-making during cognition
Brain activity is driven, in part, by external stimuli and demands, but internal brain states also change over time. Here, the authors use a novel Bayesian algorithm to track dynamic transitions between hidden neural states in human brain activity and to relate brain dynamics with behavior.
- Jalil Taghia
- , Weidong Cai
- & Vinod Menon
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Article
| Open Access
Dissociable neural mechanisms track evidence accumulation for selection of attention versus action
Decision-making involves parallel information processing regarding what stimulus dimension to pay attention to and what action to take. Here, the authors show that vmPFC tracks the value of the attended attribute while dACC tracks the degree to which it is attended.
- Amitai Shenhav
- , Mark A. Straccia
- & Matthew M. Botvinick
A cerebro-cerebellar network for learning visuomotor associations