Subjective mental fatigue alters task-related cortical responses

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Subjective mental fatigue alters task-related cortical responses Mόnika Gergelyfi1, Oleg Solopchuk1, Laurence Dricot1, Benvenuto Jacob1 and Alexandre Zénon2* 1 Institute of Neuroscience, University of Louvain, Belgium 2 Aquitaine Institute for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience, University of Bordeaux, France Prolonged periods of demanding cognitive activity often lead to increased subjective feeling of mental fatigue (MF) and/or performance decrement. This phenomenon is sometimes viewed as a consequence of a disruption of motivational processes. However, in our previous study we did not find any causal relationship between the development of fatigue and alterations in motivational states. The objective of the present study was to further investigate this finding at the neural level. We hypothesized that if MF consists in a loss of motivation, brain regions known to be involved in reward processing and motivation should be specifically disrupted by MF. Twenty-six healthy participants underwent a fatigue and a control session on different days. In the fatigue session, MF was induced by performing a modified version of the Stroop task during 90 minutes, whereas in the control session, the participants were asked to read online magazines for the same time. The neural effects of MF were measured by means of fMRI during a working memory task (4 x 10 minutes) with block-wise variations in monetary reward. The fatigue session was successful in inducing both subjective and objective fatigue. Crucially, we found that subjective MF, but not its behavioral manifestations, was associated with the depression of the task-evoked BOLD responses, whereas regions modulated by reward were not specifically affected. In addition, subjective fatigue correlated with a global increase in functional connectivity, particularly in the default mode network. These results indicate that subjective fatigue is associated with depressed task-specific BOLD responses and cannot be reduced to an alteration of motivational processes. The lack of correlation between decreased task-related BOLD responses and impaired behavioral performance might suggest the existence of compensatory mechanisms which are not observable by fMRI. Keywords: Mental Fatigue, extrinsic motivation, Brain reward system, fMRI BOLD, working memory Conference: 12th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience, Gent, Belgium, 22 May - 22 May, 2017. Presentation Type: Poster Presentation Topic: Cognition and Behavior Citation: Gergelyfi M, Solopchuk O, Dricot L, Jacob B and Zénon A (2019). Subjective mental fatigue alters task-related cortical responses. Front. Neurosci. Conference Abstract: 12th National Congress of the Belgian Society for Neuroscience. doi: 10.3389/conf.fnins.2017.94.00085 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 23 Apr 2017; Published Online: 25 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: MD, PhD. Alexandre Zénon, Aquitaine Institute for Cognitive and Integrative Neuroscience, University of Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, alexandre.zenon@u-bordeaux.fr Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Mόnika Gergelyfi Oleg Solopchuk Laurence Dricot Benvenuto Jacob Alexandre Zénon Google Mόnika Gergelyfi Oleg Solopchuk Laurence Dricot Benvenuto Jacob Alexandre Zénon Google Scholar Mόnika Gergelyfi Oleg Solopchuk Laurence Dricot Benvenuto Jacob Alexandre Zénon PubMed Mόnika Gergelyfi Oleg Solopchuk Laurence Dricot Benvenuto Jacob Alexandre Zénon Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.