Abstract
Executive functions (EFs) associated with the frontal lobe are vital for goal-orientated behavior. To date, limited efforts have been made to examine the relationships among the behavior, brain activation, and topological organization of functional networks in the frontal lobe underlying various EF tasks, including inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. In this study, functional near-infrared spectroscopy neuroimaging technique was used to systematically inspect the differences in the brain activation and the topological organization of brain networks between various EF tasks in the frontal lobe. In addition, the relationships between brain activation/network properties and task performances and the relationships between brain activation and network properties were, respectively, examined for different EF tasks. Consequently, we have discovered that the nodal and global properties of the resting-state and task-evoked networks, respectively, exhibited significant correlations with the activation of various brain regions during various EF tasks. In particular, the measure that links the neural activation to the topological organization of the brain networks in the frontal lobe can serve as a synergistic indicator to examine the difference between various EF tasks, which paves a way toward a comprehensive understanding of the neural mechanism underlying EFs.
Highlights
Executive functions (EFs) refer to a set of cognitive processes that are essential for the cognitive control of behavior
EFs consist of three basic cognitive processes, such as inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, in which inhibition involves resisting dominant response and focusing on the present task, and working memory is associated with holding and operating verbal or nonverbal information in mind, whereas cognitive flexibility is related to shifting between multiple tasks and adjusting the behavior appropriately to a changing circumstance.[2]
The Pearson correlation is performed to examine the relationship between the HbO and the HbR activation, and the correlation coefficients are visualized in the third row of Fig. 3
Summary
Executive functions (EFs) refer to a set of cognitive processes that are essential for the cognitive control of behavior. EFs implicate the top–down control processes, which are vital for physical and mental health and academic and job performances.[1] EFs consist of three basic cognitive processes, such as inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility, in which inhibition involves resisting dominant response and focusing on the present task, and working memory is associated with holding and operating verbal or nonverbal information in mind, whereas cognitive flexibility is related to shifting between multiple tasks and adjusting the behavior appropriately to a changing circumstance.[2] It is widely recognized that EFs are regulated by the frontal lobe,[1,3] whereas frontal lesions or dysfunctions can cause a wide range of cognitive deficits and mental diseases, including dyslexia,[4] dyscalculia,[5] obsessive-compulsive disorder,[6] attention-deficit hyperactivity,[7] and schizophrenia.[8]. Previous reports have shown that the attentional inhibition (measured by the flanker task) elicited the activation in the supplementary motor area (SMA), the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, the superior frontal gyrus, and the left
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