Abstract
Research on cognitive control has sparked increasing interest in recent years, as it is an important prerequisite for goal oriented human behavior. The paced auditory serial addition task (PASAT) has been used to test and train cognitive control functions. This adaptive, challenging task includes continuous performance feedback. Therefore, additional cognitive control capacities are required to process this information along with the already high task-load. The underlying neural mechanisms, however, are still unclear. To explore the neural signatures of the PASAT and particularly the processing of distractive feedback information, feedback locked event-related potentials were derived from 24 healthy participants during an adaptive 2-back version of the PASAT. Larger neural activation after negative feedback was found for feedback related negativity (FRN), P300, and late positive potential (LPP). In early stages of feedback processing (i.e., FRN), a larger difference between positive and negative feedback responses was associated with poorer overall performance. This association was inverted in later stages (i.e., P300 and LPP). Together, our findings indicate stage-dependent associations between neural activation after negative information and cognitive functioning. Conceivably, increased early responses to negative feedback signify distraction, whereas higher activity at later stages reflects cognitive control processes to preserve ongoing performance.
Highlights
In a world full of competing information and sources of distraction, the ability to maintain coordinated and purposeful behavior is essential to sustain goal directed processes
The correlation analysis for the valence-specific neural activation of the feedback related negativity (FRN) ( FRN = negative-positive feedback, e.g., a more negative value indicates that the FRN for negative feedback was larger than for positive feedback), revealed a significant association between the FRN and the number of correct trials in the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (PASAT) [see Figure 1C, note that for all scatterplots the Y-axis is ordered ascendingly according to the values indicating larger event related potentials (ERP), e.g., for the FRN values are ordered from positive to negative]
The P300 was significantly larger for negative feedback (M = 10.648, SD = 4.047) than for positive feedback [M = 8.812, SD = 3.464; t(23) = 3.64, p = 0.001]
Summary
In a world full of competing information and sources of distraction, the ability to maintain coordinated and purposeful behavior is essential to sustain goal directed processes. This requires cognitive control, which comprises different cognitive functions including the ability to pay selective attention, ignore distracting information, turn attention away from stimuli when they prove irrelevant, and the ability to store and manipulate internal representations of information (Roiser et al, 2012). Cognitive control is a key factor for successful human behavior. It is not surprising that dysfunctional cognitive control is increasingly recognized as a key feature of various psychiatric disorders. Research shows that in particular patients suffering from depression are prone to a heightened sensitivity
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