Neural Systems Underlying Emotional and Non-emotional Interference Processing: An ALE Meta-Analysis of Functional Neuroimaging Studies.

Min Xu,Yang Yang,Guiping Xu

doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2016.00220

Abstract

Understanding how the nature of interference might influence the recruitments of the neural systems is considered as the key to understanding cognitive control. Although, interference processing in the emotional domain has recently attracted great interest, the question of whether there are separable neural patterns for emotional and non-emotional interference processing remains open. Here, we performed an activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of 78 neuroimaging experiments, and examined common and distinct neural systems for emotional and non-emotional interference processing. We examined brain activation in three domains of interference processing: emotional verbal interference in the face-word conflict task, non-emotional verbal interference in the color-word Stroop task, and non-emotional spatial interference in the Simon, SRC and Flanker tasks. Our results show that the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) was recruited for both emotional and non-emotional interference. In addition, the right anterior insula, presupplementary motor area (pre-SMA), and right inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) were activated by interference processing across both emotional and non-emotional domains. In light of these results, we propose that the anterior insular cortex may serve to integrate information from different dimensions and work together with the dorsal ACC to detect and monitor conflicts, whereas pre-SMA and right IFG may be recruited to inhibit inappropriate responses. In contrast, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and posterior parietal cortex (PPC) showed different degrees of activation and distinct lateralization patterns for different processing domains, which suggests that these regions may implement cognitive control based on the specific task requirements.

Highlights

In our daily life, we consistently need to adapt our behavior by focusing cognitive resources on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information that can interfere with the appropriate response (Desimone and Duncan, 1995; Botvinick et al, 2001; Ridderinkhof et al, 2004; Nee et al, 2007)
Meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies on the emotional interference processing showed the activation converged in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) at BA 32, presupplementary motor area at BA 6, bilateral insula (BA 13), bilateral inferior and middle frontal gyrus (BA 47/46/9), bilateral posterior parietal cortex (PPC) (BA 40/7), bilateral fusiform gyrus (BA 19/37), right cerebellum and left lentiform nucleus
Non-emotional verbal processing using the color-word Stroop task was associated with high convergence of activation in the dorsal ACC (BA 32), pre-SMA (BA 6), bilateral anterior insula (BA 13), bilateral ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) (AB 47), left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) (BA 46/9), right inferior/middle frontal gyrus (BA 45/44/9), left precentral gyrus (BA 6), bilateral PPC (BA 7/40), right caudate and right inferior occipital gyrus (BA 18)

Summary

Introduction

We consistently need to adapt our behavior by focusing cognitive resources on goal-relevant information while filtering out irrelevant information that can interfere with the appropriate response (Desimone and Duncan, 1995; Botvinick et al, 2001; Ridderinkhof et al, 2004; Nee et al, 2007). Such capacity is essential for human adaptation (Mansouri et al, 2009). The role of the anterior insula in interference processing is less clear, yet it has been shown to be associated with response selection (Wager et al, 2005), inhibiting inappropriate responses (Garavan et al, 1999), monitoring (Cieslik et al, 2015), error awareness (Ullsperger et al, 2010), and goal-directed attention (Craig, 2009; Tops and Boksem, 2011)

Methods

Results

Conclusion