Executive Function

Question 1

executive function

Answer 1

• controls and manages other cognitive processes
• planning or decision making (short or long term)
• error correction or troubleshooting (relying on past experience)
• situations where response are not well-learned or contain novel sequences of action (being flexible and adaptive)
• dangerous or technically difficult situations
• situations which require the overcoming of strong habitual response or resisting temptation (self-monitoring)

Question 2

executive function studies

Answer 2

Present hypothetical financial problem for family of 4; ask participants to explain how
the family can best meet financial goals with it’s resources
- control group = normal response (cut back on spending)
- executive function problem group (frontal lobe damage) - said to cut out the apartment; pitch a tent somewhere else

Question 3

the ultimatum game

Answer 3

most people with intact brains accept fair offers and reject unfair ones
- Damage in the ventromedial prefrontal
cortex: reject fair offers (unless it’s 50/50)
- With transcranial magnetic stimulation
(TMS) to the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in health people: participants accepted more unfair offers

Question 4

executive function damage

Answer 4

lateral prefrontal and memory
- has extremely important role in working memory NOT associative memory

Question 5

Monkey study (executive function damage)

Answer 5

Monkey watches experimenter place food
in one of the two food wells. Then a screen goes
up, so the monkey has to memorize which one has
the food, then the screen goes down again and he
has to choose which one has food
–> Then second study: Food was always under a plus sign (not the circle) so the monkey learned to associate food with the plus (instead of watching the experimenter place the food)
–> Monkey’s with damage to prefrontal cortex did well on the second task (associative memory test) but not well on the working memory task

Question 6

Study: Wisconsin Card Sorting Task

Answer 6

• Participants given a deck of cards that can have different shapes, colors, etc. on them and then asked to sort them (matching with 4 cards already laid out), but not given a rule for how to sort them
• People with frontal lobe damage have no problem finding the first rule (just like everyone) but it takes them longer to switch out and try a different rule after being told they’re wrong (perseveration)

Question 7

Temporal Memory study

Answer 7

Person given a set of cards with 2 items on each, and a test card is given. Then there are two types of questions:
- Did you see the (lock)?
- I showed you the (blank) and the (blank), which came first

Question 8

Source Memory

Answer 8

-needed to remember context

Question 9

source memory study

Answer 9

Squire and Janowsky experiment: read sentences to participants through headphones
- The sentences contained facts, but some were read in a male voice and others in a female voice
- Test phase: a sentence was read by a neutral voice. People were then asked if they’d heard the sentence before (half were new/half were old)
- People with damage to prefrontal cortex did fine recognizing if it was old or new
- found that the prefrontal cortex doesn’t play a role in recognition memory but it does in identifying the source of it

Question 10

Anterior CIngulate: Supervision/monitoring study

Answer 10

The task of pressing a button when a green light comes on, but not with red;
however becomes difficult with speed –> you misfire, but know you made a mistake
- Recorded ERP while people pressed button
- So the anterior cingulate is important for error monitoring
- When the brain does something wrong, it needs to realize the error so that is can tweak the system to not make the error again
- Error related negativity (ERN) localized to anterior cingulate needs to be
present before you can fix the error
–> ERN is the awareness of the error

Question 11

Anterior Cingulate: Response Conflict

Answer 11

Participants were shown (««) or («>«) and needed to say whether the central arrow pointed to the left or right
- If pointed the same way as the other arrows, it is compatible because there is no conflict – > more accurate and faster here
- If pointed different from the other arrows, it is incompatible because there is a conflict with the arrows around it
- Neurons were firing for the incompatible one, but much less for compatible, so harder to differentiate incompatible due to the conflict

Question 12

Frontal Lobe

Answer 12

1/3 of the cortex
- last to develop

Question 13

What is affected by executive function

Answer 13

Lateral prefrontal cortex + Ventromedial prefrontal cortex + orbital cortex