Abstract
Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a hierarchical functional structure of the frontal cortices of the human brain, but the temporal course and the electrophysiological signature of the hierarchical representation remains unaddressed. In the present study, twenty-one volunteers were asked to perform a nested cue-target task, while their scalp potentials were recorded. The results showed that: (1) in comparison with the lower-level hierarchical targets, the higher-level targets elicited a larger N2 component (220–350 ms) at the frontal sites, and a smaller P3 component (350–500 ms) across the frontal and parietal sites; (2) conflict-related negativity (non-target minus target) was greater for the lower-level hierarchy than the higher-level, reflecting a more intensive process of conflict monitoring at the final step of target detection. These results imply that decision making, context updating, and conflict monitoring differ among different hierarchical levels of abstraction.
Highlights
Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a hierarchical functional structure of the frontal cortices of the human brain, but the temporal course and the electrophysiological signature of the hierarchical representation remains unaddressed
A hierarchical representation is a mental representation that consists of components and nested subcomponents, where the superordinate components exert an influence on actions represented at the subcomponent level[3,4,5,6,7]
The results showed that rostral areas of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex represented the higher hierarchy context, while the mid-dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and inferior frontal junction represented more concrete rules
Summary
Previous neuroimaging studies have demonstrated a hierarchical functional structure of the frontal cortices of the human brain, but the temporal course and the electrophysiological signature of the hierarchical representation remains unaddressed. The results showed that: (1) in comparison with the lower-level hierarchical targets, the higher-level targets elicited a larger N2 component (220–350 ms) at the frontal sites, and a smaller P3 component (350–500 ms) across the frontal and parietal sites; (2) conflict-related negativity (non-target minus target) was greater for the lower-level hierarchy than the higher-level, reflecting a more intensive process of conflict monitoring at the final step of target detection. These results imply that decision making, context updating, and conflict monitoring differ among different hierarchical levels of abstraction. CRNs elicited by non-targets are expected to be greater at lower hierarchical levels than higher www.nature.com/scientificreports/
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