Abstract
An ongoing controversy concerns whether executive control mechanisms can actively reconfigure the cognitive system in preparation for switching to a new task set. To address this question, we recorded brain activity from 14 healthy participants, using event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging, while they performed a cued attention task. Critically, in any particular trial, the cued task set was either the same as that in the previous trial or switched. As was hypothesized, cue-related, switch-specific preparatory activity was observed in a network of dorsal frontal and parietal brain areas that are typically associated with cognitive control processes. Moreover, the magnitude of switch-specific preparatory activity varied with the number of possible task sets that could be presented in a given trial block. These findings provide compelling support for the existence of top-down, preparatory control processes that enable set switching. Furthermore, they demonstrate that global task structure is a critical determinant of whether switch-specific preparatory activity is observed.
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This research was supported by Dutch NWO Grant 42520206 to A.K. and J.L.K., a grant from the Psychology Research Institute of the University of Amsterdam to A.K., postdoctoral NSRA 1 F32 NS41867-01 to D.H.W., and by Research Grants R01-MH55714 and K05-MH02019 from the NIMH to G.R.M., PO1-NS41328 (Proj 2) from NINDS to M.G.W. and G.R.M, and RO1-MH60415 from the NIMH to M.G.W.
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Slagter, H.A., Weissman, D.H., Giesbrecht, B. et al. Brain regions activated by endogenous preparatory set shifting as revealed by fMRI. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience 6, 175–189 (2006). https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.3.175
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/CABN.6.3.175