Abstract
Mental rotation (MR) is a cognitive skill whose neural dynamics are still a matter of debate as previous neuroimaging studies have produced controversial results. In order to investigate the underlying neurophysiology of MR, hemodynamic responses from the prefrontal cortex of 14 healthy subjects were recorded with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) during a novel MR task that had three categorical difficulty levels. Hemodynamic activity strength (HAS) parameter, which reflects the ratio of brain activation during the task to the baseline activation level, was used to assess the prefrontal cortex activation localization and strength. Behavioral data indicated that the MR requiring conditions are more difficult than the condition that did not require MR. The right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was found to be active in all conditions and to be the dominant region in the easiest task while more complex tasks showed widespread bilateral prefrontal activation. A significant increase in left DLPFC activation was observed with increasing task difficulty. Significantly higher right DLPFC activation was observed when the incongruent trials were contrasted against the congruent trials, which implied the possibility of a robust error or conflict-monitoring process during the incongruent trials. Our results showed that the right DLPFC is a core region for the processing of MR tasks regardless of the task complexity and that the left DLPFC is involved to a greater extent with increasing task complexity, which is consistent with the previous neuroimaging literature.
Highlights
In recent years, the number of studies conducted with functional near-infrared spectroscopy has increased due to several advantages it has over other functional imaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging, and positron emission tomography (PET). functional nearinfrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology offers a more cost-effective and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) Activation in Mental Rotation user-friendly alternative to fMRI and PET in measuring cerebral energy metabolism besides having the major advantage of being field-deployable
Bonferroni corrected post hoc analysis of paired t-test results showed that reaction times for the Match trials were significantly longer than those for the Perfect Match trials (p = 0.02), while no significant difference was found between the Non-Match and the Match (p = 0.272) or between the Non-Match and the Perfect Match (p = 0.99) conditions, even though Non-Match required slightly longer reaction times than Perfect Match condition
A novel mental rotation task based on mentally fitting a jigsaw puzzle piece into a template was designed
Summary
The number of studies conducted with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) has increased due to several advantages it has over other functional imaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and positron emission tomography (PET). fNIRS technology offers a more cost-effective and DLPFC Activation in Mental Rotation user-friendly alternative to fMRI and PET in measuring cerebral energy metabolism besides having the major advantage of being field-deployable. While initial studies depended mostly on behavioral responses and usually measured reaction time as a metric of cognitive workload and difficulty (Shepard and Metzler, 1971; Cooper and Shepard, 1975), more recent studies have employed neuroimaging methods such as fMRI (Jordan et al, 2001; Halari et al, 2006; Seydell-Greenwald et al, 2017), fNIRS (Shimoda et al, 2008) and PET (Harris et al, 2000) to understand the neurophysiological processes underlying MR skill In these studies, hemispheric dominance in mental rotation skill has been a major scope of the investigation, but the results still remain to be a matter of debate. For the latter factor, increased task complexity requires various additional cognitive resources to be utilized during the task
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