Lecture 14: Executive Function Flashcards
What do Executive Functions Include?
- Initiation
- Planning
- Purposive Action
- Self-Monitoring
- Self-Regulation
- Volition
What is the 7 Sequence Cognitive Activities Associated with Problem-Solving?
- Awareness/Analysis of the problem
- Formulation of plan/Evaluation of plan effectiveness
- Selection of specific plan components
- Initiation of plan
- Evaluation of progress toward goal/modification of plan if not wholly effective
- Terminating action when the goal has been reached
- Storing the plan and retrieving it when a similar problem appears
What is the key element in Executive Functioning?
A key element in executive functioning is the ability to carry out a series of cognitive and/or psychomotor tasks in a sequence
What is the Dorsolateral PFC in the Lateral Region?
Through connections to the hippocampus and temporal lobes this is associated with the temporal maintenance of information within working memory & supporting strategic thinking (planning)
What is the Ventrolateral PFC in the Lateral Region?
Important for receiving and updating information and discriminating relevant information from potentially distracting information
What is the Dorsomedial PFC in the Medial Region?
Processing a sense of self, integrating social impressions, theory of mind, morality judgments, empathy, decision-making, altruism, fear, anxiety information processing and top-down motor cortex inhibition
What is the Ventromedial PFC (aka Orbitofrontal Cortex) in the Medial Region?
Implicated in the processing of risk and fear, and critical in the regulation of amygdala activity. It also plays a role in the inhibition of emotional responses and in the process of decision-making and self-control. It is also involved in the cognitive evaluation of morality
What are the 5 Executive Functions of the Prefrontal Cortex?
- Energization: Mediated bilaterally by superior medial prefrontal cortices
- Task Setting/Switching: Mediated by left lateral prefrontal cortex
- Monitoring: Mediated by right lateral prefrontal cortex
- Behavioral/Emotional Regulation: Mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex (aka ventromedial prefrontal cortex)
- Metacognition: Mediated by the frontal poles
What are the 4 parts of the Cingulate Cortex?
- Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)
- Middle Cingulate
- Posterior Cingulate (PCC)
- Retrosplenial Cortex
What is Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC)?
Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC): Is often (but not always) included in the prefrontal cortex and includes:
———- Perigenual Area: Associated with social and emotional processing
———–Subgenual Cingulate Gyrus: Shares extensive anatomical connections with the amygdala, subiculum, hypothalamus, accumbens, ventral tegmental area (VTA), substantia nigra, raphe, locus coeruleus, periaqueductal gray and brainstem autonomic nuclei, and other areas of the orbital medial PFC
What is Middle Cingulate?
Associated with monitoring and attention (energization (drive, initiation) and reward-based decision making, and plays an important role in predicting and monitoring the outcomes of one’s own and other’s decisions when the outcomes will be experienced by another
What is Posterior Cingulate (PCC)?
Body orientation, and imagery related to self – form a central node in the default mode network of the brain. Implicated as a neural substrate for human awareness. Imagining studies indicate a prominent role for PCC in pain and episodic memory retrieval
What is Retrosplenial Cortex?
fMRI studies implicate the retro spinel cortex in a wide range of cognitive functions including spatial memory, navigation, landmark processing and the sense of direction, visuospatial imagery and past/future thinking, and episodic memory
Give an example of Multitasking and Task Switching?
Task 1: Lane position maintenance
Task 2: Object Avoidance
Task 3: Navigation (wayfinding)
Task 4: Passenger conversation
Task 5: Radio adjustment
Task 6: Climate control adjustment
Number of tasks: 6
Number of task switches: n(n-1)/2 = 6(5)/2 = 15
What is the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test (MOCA)?
A fast, inexpensive pencil and paper test with subcomponents excerpted from common tests of executive function
What is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test?
Evaluate the patient’s ability to set a shift in response to error feedback
What are the 7 most common Executive Function Tests for Older Patients?
- Trail Making Test
- Verbal Fluency Test
- VFT Animals Category
- Clocking Drawing Tests
- Digits Forward and Backward
- Stroop Test
- Wisconsin Card Sorting Test
