Elsevier

Neuropsychologia

Volume 62, September 2014, Pages 55-59
Neuropsychologia

Cognitive control predicted by color vision, and vice versa

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2014.07.010Get rights and content

Highlights

  • DA receptors innervates retinal color processing.

  • DA modulates cognitive control processes.

  • Visual colors discrimination predicts the ability to resolve cognitive conflict.

Abstract

One of the most important functions of cognitive control is to continuously adapt cognitive processes to changing and often conflicting demands of the environment. Dopamine (DA) has been suggested to play a key role in the signaling and resolution of such response conflict. Given that DA is found in high concentration in the retina, color vision discrimination has been suggested as an index of DA functioning and in particular blue–yellow color vision impairment (CVI) has been used to indicate a central hypodopaminergic state. We used color discrimination (indexed by the total color distance score; TCDS) to predict individual differences in the cognitive control of response conflict, as reflected by conflict-resolution efficiency in an auditory Simon task. As expected, participants showing better color discrimination were more efficient in resolving response conflict. Interestingly, participants showing a blue–yellow CVI were associated with less efficiency in handling response conflict. Our findings indicate that color vision discrimination might represent a promising predictor of cognitive controlability in healthy individuals.

Introduction

The concept of cognitive control refers to our ability to regulate our thoughts and actions in ways that allow us to reach intended goals, and to continuously adjust the processes involved to changing environmental demands. The general ability of goal-regulation is often assessed by means of conflict-inducing tasks. For instance, the Simon task (Simon & Small, 1969) calls for spatial reactions to non-spatial attributes of stimuli appearing in randomly varying locations. The standard finding shows better performance if stimuli appear in response-congruent (C) than in response-incongruent (I) locations, demonstrating that action goals are indeed challenged, and yet people can overcome these challenges by overruling misleading stimulus-induced response tendencies (Hommel, 2011, Kornblum et al., 1990). Even brief drops in control strength (i.e., concentration on the goal) are immediately repaired, as shown by the observation that people are more efficient in resolving response conflict after conflict trials: the effect of congruency in the present trial (I-C) is less pronounced after an incongruent trial (iI-iC) than after a congruent trial (cI-cC; Gratton, Coles, & Donchin, 1992). This so-called “conflict-adaptation effect”(also known as Gratton effect) has been taken to reflect the increase of cognitive control triggered by the experience of conflict (Botvinick, Braver, Barch, Carter, & Cohen, 20011).

Dopamine (DA) has been suggested to play a key role in representing and maintaining task goals in the face of challenges (Botvinick, 2007). Indeed, the detection of response conflict seems to rely on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) (Peterson, Kane, & Alexander, 2002; Kerns et al., 2005) and DA is thought to play a key role in both signaling and resolving such conflict (Botvinick, 2007; Holroyd & Coles, 2002). The main idea is that both response conflict and (registered) response errors induce a phasic reduction in DA levels, which again initiates processes that either prevent the error altogether or at least adapt the control system to prevent such errors in the future.

The direct assessment of DA function in humans is only possible by positron emission tomography (PET) so far, which is very expensive and highly invasive due to radioactive contamination and arterial blood sampling (Volkow, Fowler, Wang, Baler, & Telang, 2009). Interestingly for our purposes, however, DA can be found in high concentration in the amacrine and interplexiform cells of the retina (Bodis-Wollner and Tzelepi, 1998, Witkovsky, 2004). Abnormal color discrimination has been described for several neuropsychiatric conditions underlying altered dopaminergic functions, such as Parkinson׳s and Huntington׳s disease, Tourette syndrome, ADHD, and cocaine use (Melun et al., 2001, Paulus et al., 1993, Pieri et al., 2000, Tannock et al., 2006, Hulka et al., 2013). Moreover, Lagerlöf (1982) found evidence that the intake of DAD2 receptorantagonists, such as haloperidol, induces moderate blue–yellow deficits. Along the same line, Roy, Roy, Berman, and Gonzalez (2003) suggested that blue–yellow color vision impairment (CVI) indicates a central hypodopaminergic state.

If so, color vision may predict conflict management because both are driven by dopamine. In the present study, we thus investigated whether individual color discrimination performance, and in particular blue–yellow color vision, predicts individual differences in cognitive control in an auditory Simon task. In particular, we tested whether color vision predicts the efficiency of handling response conflict, as reflected by the size of the Simon congruency effect (with smaller effects indicating tighter control). Furthermore, we explored whether color vision may also predict dynamic behavioral adjustments (i.e., trial-to-trial variability) in the Simon task, as indexed by the size of the Gratton effect.

Section snippets

Participants

Seventy-eight young healthy adults (63 female and 15 male; aged 18–29 years; mean age 19.64) participated in the experiment for partial fulfillment of course credit. All participants were naïve about the purpose of the experiment.Participants who self-reported inherited dichromacy (protanopia and deuteranopia, i.e., red–green blindness predominantly present in males) were not tested.

Written informed consent was obtained from all participants after the nature of the study was explained to them.

Simon task

ANOVAs revealed that, as expected, responses were faster and more accurate on S-R congruent (504 ms, SD=86.5; 0.7%, SD=0.8) than on S-R incongruent trials (554 ms, SD=86.9; 3.5%, SD=2.7), F(1,77)=530.06, p<0.0001, 2= 0.87 (RT), F(1,77)=105.52, p<0.0001, 2= 0.58 (PE). A reliable conflict-adaptation effect was also found, as indicated by a significant interaction between congruency in present trials and congruency in previous trials, F(1,77)=182.51, p<0.0001, 2= 0.70 (RT), F(1,77)=49.91, p

Conclusion

Our findings reveal that individual differences in color vision discrimination, a marker of DA functioning, can statistically predict differences in the strength and stability of cognitive control, as reflected by the Simon effect and the conflict-adaptation effect, respectively. As expected, the size of the stimulus-response congruency effect and the conflict-adaptation effect was proportional to TCDSs, showing that better color discrimination was associated with smaller congruency effects and

Acknowledgments

The research of L.S. Colzato is supported by a Vidi grant (#452-12-001) of the NWO (Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research). LMH and BBQ were supported by grants of the Swiss National Science Foundation, Switzerland (SNSF; Grant no. PP00P1-123516/1 and PP00P1-146326/1). We thank Jason van Pelt, Jeffrey Durieux and Romée de Blois for their enthusiasm and invaluable assistance in recruiting and testing the participants of this study.

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