Evidence for a mechanistic model of cognitive control
Introduction
A critical component of cognitive processes is the ability to suppress or override competing attentional and behavioral responses [1], [2], [3]. How is it that we learn or gain the ability to override these responses? The importance of examining the neural basis of cognitive control is underscored by its disruption in a number of childhood disorders. For example, a core deficit observed in childhood disorders is an inability to inhibit or suppress inappropriate thoughts and behaviors as in attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome. This paper addresses the development, biological basis and potential genetic factors that underlie this ability.
A major contribution in psychological theory has been the identification of controlled processing as a central component of human cognition [4], [5]. This construct has been refined and included in a number of theories of attention and memory [3], [6], [7], [8] and referred to in a number of ways (e.g. ‘central executive’, ‘attentional bias’). Each of these coined terms are suggestive of a mechanism that is required to direct or guide appropriate attentional responses or actions [9]. For example, Shallice [7] proposed a ‘supervisory attention system’ as a system for inhibiting or replacing routine, reflexive behaviors and thoughts with more appropriate behaviors and thoughts. Desimone and Duncan [8] describe top-down biasing signals as important in attending to relevant information by virtue of mutual inhibition or suppression of irrelevant information. A common theme that has emerged from this work is that a primary function of cognitive control is to reduce conflict in processing of information [1], [2], [3]. Thus, one critical component of cognitive control is the ability to suppress or override competing attentional and behavioral responses. This aspect of cognitive control is the focus of the current paper.
Section snippets
Development of cognitive control
Clearly, the ability to suppress irrelevant information and actions becomes more efficient with age. A number of classic developmental studies have demonstrated that these cognitive processes develop throughout childhood and adolescence [10], [11], [12], [13]. Several theorists have argued that the development of attention and memory related processes is due to increases in processing speed and efficiency and not due to an increase in mental capacity [14], [15], [16]. According to this view,
Brain circuitry implicated in cognitive control
The importance of examining the neural basis of cognitive control is underscored by its disruption in a number of childhood disorders. A core deficit observed in these disorders is an inability to inhibit or suppress inappropriate thoughts and behaviors (e.g. ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder and Tourette's syndrome). For example, children with ADHD have problems focusing attention and are often characterized as distractible and impulsive [32], [33]. Children with Tourette's syndrome have
Dopamine and cognitive control
An important neuromodulator in the basal ganglia thalamocortical circuitry is dopamine, particularly at the level of the prefrontal cortex and striatum. Several lines of evidence suggest that dopamine plays an important role in the ability to maintain internal representations of contextual information against interference. First, it has been shown that activation of mesocortical dopaminergic neurons via apomorphine enhances activity in the prefrontal cortex, a brain region implicated in
Brain development and cognitive control
Information about the developing human brain is relatively sketchy despite the significant gains in the fields of pediatric neuroimaging and developmental neurobiology. This is particularly the case during early and late childhood - a time when significant leaps in cognitive control take place. In part, this is due to low mortality rates across this age range in addition to the rare occurrence of autopsies on this population [104]. Nonetheless, postmortem studies of both human and nonhuman
Behavioral studies
A theoretically driven approach to characterizing cognitive control is to probe inhibition of different types of information and at different stages of cognitive processing (stimulus selection, response selection, and response execution). Accordingly, we have developed a battery of tasks that require (1) inhibition of a stimulus set (e.g. distractors versus target); (2) inhibition of a behavioral set (e.g. remapping from one set of responses to a new set of responses); and (3) inhibition of a
Discussion and summary
This paper presents a mechanistic model of inhibitory control whereby the inhibitory mechanism is the same across circuits (i.e. at the level of the basal ganglia), but the type of information represented by each circuit (i.e. maintained in the frontal cortex) is different. Accordingly, the basal ganglia are involved in suppression of actions while the frontal cortex is involved in representing and maintaining information and conditions to which we respond or act. Dopamine plays a
Acknowledgements
This work was supported in part by a 5-K01 MH01297-03, the Charles A. Dana Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and a John Merck Scholarship in the Biology of Developmental Disabilities to B.J.C., the Netherlands Royal Academy of the Arts and Sciences and the Foundation De Drie Lichten to S.D.
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2018, Developmental Cognitive NeuroscienceCitation Excerpt :However, this relation was found only for adolescents who exhibited high interference-related dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) reactivity (i.e., poor cognitive control), but not for those adolescents who displayed low interference-related dACC activity (i.e., good cognitive control; Kim-Spoon et al., 2017a). Within the neuroscience literature, previous studies have identified brain regions involved in inhibition, including the basal ganglia (such as caudate, putamen, globus pallidus), that are thought to be involved in inhibition of inappropriate responses, and prefrontal regions (such as inferior, medial, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices) that receive inputs from the limbic basal ganglia thalamocortical circuit and represent and maintain relevant information for goal directed behaviors (Aron et al., 2014; Booth et al., 2003; Casey et al., 2001). Here, we focus on brain regions that are closely related to cognitive control over interference measured by brain activation during an inhibitory control task primarily involving medial prefrontal cortices.