Executive Function Flashcards
What is executive functioning?
The coordination of cognitive and motor processes that make up flexible decision-making, working memory and manipulation of information. Involves much of the frontal cortex.
What are the three phases of the Sternburg Verbal Working Memory Task? What does the last phase mean?
What kinds of topics can explain executive functioning?
Encoding, maintenance, and retrieval.
Retrieval involves the manipulation and application of data in a coherent, rational manner.
Planning, verbal fluency (working memory), divided attention, cognitive flexibility, reasoning, stroop test, theory of mind.
Verbal Fluency Test.
What is the test?
What are the fMRI results?
Results of the patient study?
Given a letter, name as many words as possible.
Left inferior Frontal Cortex and Right cerebellar. Consistent with language neuroimaging studies.
Cerebellar patients were impaired in the phonological retrieval of words. Phonemic impairment, not semantic impairment.
Word Retrieval and Working Memory
What were the results of the patient study?
Cerebellar patients impaired in phonemic retrieval of words.
Cognitive Flexibility. Wisconsin Card Sorting test (WCST).
What is this test? What behavior do cerebellar patients exhibit during this test? (think of mice)
Where do we see brain activations for this task?
Stimulus and card presented. How does stimulus relate to the card? Must adapt and learn new paradigm.
Cerebellar patients perseverate on the incorrect category and cannot learn new paradigm.
Right Prefrontal Cortex and Left Cerebellum fMRI activations.
Conceptual Reasoning.
What is the test used?
Where do we see brain activations?
The test is the relevant dimensions reasoning task. Try and figure out the correct dimension through reasoning. “If not this, then this, then that…”
We see brain activations in the right prefrontal cortex and left cerebellum.
Syllogistic Reasoning.
What is syllogistic reasoning?
What activations did we see for content vs no-content reasoning?
Two statements validly imply a solution. All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Content reasoning we saw left prefrontal cortex and right cerebellum.
No-content reasoning we saw bilateral cortex and bilateral cerebellum.
Divided attention/Dual Task Performance for cognitive/cognitive.
What activation did we see for dual task tests?
How did cerebellar patients perform on dual-tasks?
Right prefrontal Cortex and left cerebellum.
Less able to perform dual task.
Dual task: cognitive/motor.
What was the task and what activation did we see?
Cerebellar patient performance?
Finger tapping and working memory.
For dual task, we see more cortex and cerebellar activation. However, it was not more motor recruitment, but rather more cerebellar recruitment.
Cerebellar patients had way more errors.
Stroop Test! What is this?
What activations did we see?
What were the patient study results?
Colored words and you guess if its correct stimulus or not.
Right prefrontal cortex and left cerebellum.
Patients impaired longitudinally 1-year post-injury.
Planning.
What area do we see activation for planning in the manipulation of pegs test?
The tower of Hanoi. What area do we see activated during this?
What does patient study with the TOH this reveal about the nature of the deficit?
Ventral Dentate Nucleus and prefrontal cortex.
TOH - right prefrontal cortex and left cerebellum.
Cerebellar patients fewer solutions and more illegal moves. There was no correlation between TOH and motor impairment. So, shows this is a cognitive deficit affecting cerebellar patients.
Theory of Mind/Empathy tasks.
What is the task?
Where do we see activation for theory of mind?
Where do we see activation for empathy?
What do researchers conclude about the function of the cerebellum in TOM/empathy?
Presented with Cartoon. Choose appropriate ending scene.
Theory of Mind had more activation for orbitofrontal cortex.
Empathy had more activation for amygdala.
Both had bilateral cerebellar activations.
Cerebellum is crucial for construction of model that is used to predict sequential, social events that influence how we interpret and predict the emotions of others.
