10 Cognitive Control I Flashcards
What is Cognitive Control?
The set of psychological processes that contribute to planning, controlling and regulating the flow of information processing.
These processes bias the selection of action and thoughts to enable goal-directed behaviour.
Who is Phineas Gage?
Railroad foreman who had a worksite injury, where the pole went through the frontal regions.
Major changes in personality.
Went from energetic > to always changing his ideas (no longer gage).
Case study on an attorney who had a left frontal glioma discovered and removed?
Went back to work with lack of concentration to detail, made carless errors and had a lack of emotional responses.
What does the monkey food remembering task over a delay period suggest?
Prefrontal cortex necessary for working memory but not associative memory
Prefrontal lesions impair working memory performance.
What are ‘Delay Cells’ in the PFC?
They found neurons that fire at certain stimulus. However, what is different about these cells in the PFC is when the image is important, the cell will keep firing when the image is gone.
What is the n-back test? And what does it test?
Indicate when the current stimulus matches the one from n steps earlier in the sequence.
The measure of activity on vertical activity is correlated with lure activity. More activity would mean better ability to suppress lures.
What does the Tower of London Test? And what of the brain is active during it?
Dorso lateral Prefrontal cortex and working memory.
It suggests that working memory isn’t just about holding information but also manipulating information.
These regions link back into the hippocampus. It is not memorised or stored here, it is just this system that allows for the reactivation of the memory
What is utilisation behaviour?
A patient’s behaviour is driven by cues in the environment. (The dude kept putting glasses over glasses)
Another time with a painting, hammer and nail, the patient just put it up without being asked to.
Inability to suppress these responses.
Case study: 55-year-old widower, who had an olfactory menigonia discovered and removed (tissue that surrounds the brain in the frontal cortex). What happened when she returned to work?
She worked well, however after, she continually approached strangers to ask them for sex, she recognised she had a problem but she continued it (lacked brakes).
What is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Task?
4 cards are laid out in front of you, they differ in colour and symbol. You are asked to sort them. But you are not initially told what the right response is. Eventually, you figure it out.
Healthy people and people with PFC damage can initially get it right. But after the clinician changes the rule after so many right answers people with PFC damage keep getting it wrong. Healthy individuals adjust.
Dorsolateral Prefrontal cortex activation increase with increased WCST task complexity.
Mischel’s Marshmallow Test on self-control, what does it correlate with?
Superior academic, professional, and personal outcomes.
Dunedin Longitude study shows that self-control predicted outcomes.
What do we know about the development of the prefrontal cortex? And Synaptic development?
It continually develops from childhood - early adulthood.
Synaptic development increase till 5, then stays the same till 20, then a gradual decline.
What is the go/no-go task? And what does it suggest?
Task conducted with people in adolescence. Told to respond to go with neutral faces and not go with happy faces
Not much change in response to calm faces
Teenagers found it hard to not respond to happy faces. This suggests there is a problem with inhibitory control. Which is associated with PFC.
What is the Trial-Making Test? What part of the cortex is bigger if you do better at it?
Two parts: presented with a sheet with a series of numbers. Your task is to draw a line through the scenes. Part B, you have to switch from numbers and letters. Seems to require PFC.
The thicker the cortex of PFC suggests the better your score B score will b.
What is the Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex strongly connected with?
Motor structures, and Parietal/Occipital Visual association areas.
