Between-Task Competition and Cognitive Control in Task Switching
By Nick Yeung, Leigh E. Nystrom, Jessica A. Aronson, J. Cohen. 2006
303 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Cognitive control is required to regulate interactions between brain regions to produce effective, purposeful behavior. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate the nature of these interactions and the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) in cognitive control as subjects switched between simple face and word categorization tasks. Face and word stimuli were used because previous research has shown them to activate distinguishable cortical regions, allowing us to measure levels of activity in task-selective brain regions during task switching. We found that activity in brain regions selective for the currently irrelevant task predicted the behavioral cost associated with switching tasks. This finding supports the theory that between-task competition is a critical determinant of behavior. Task switching was also associated with increased activity in a network of regions implicated in cognitive control, including lateral PFC and parietal cortex. Within this network of regions, we observed dissociations between task-selective and general purpose mechanisms. These findings provide support for theories that propose a control hierarchy comprising regions responsible for maintaining task-specific information about rules or goals, and regions involved in the coordination of these goals.
Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience
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In Cognitive Neuroscience
- Steven E. Petersen
- Bradley L. Schlaggar
- Nico U F Dosenbach
- Olaf Sporns
- Francis M. Miezin
- André Vandierendonck
- Baptist Liefooghe
- Frederick Verbruggen
Citations in the corpus
- Orthogonal representations for robust context-dependent task performance in brains and neural networks (2022, neutral): “Human studies havemapped the brain regions that exert control during task performance (Koechlin et al., 2003; Kerns et al., 2004; Yeung et al., 2006; Cole et al., 2016) or measured the processing costs incurred by task switches (Monsell, 2003; Brown et al.”
- Cognitive control in media multitaskers (2009, unknown): “Because switch costs have been attributed to competition from activation of the irrelevant task-set (18–20), these results suggest that HMMs are less capable of filtering out the irrelevant task-set representation in memory on a given trial.”
- Task switching: interplay of reconfiguration and interference control. (2010, methodology): “The study by Yeung et al. (2006) suggested engagement of interference-control processes in the task preparation interval as well as control processes that regulate maintenance of task-specific information about rules or goals.”
- A core system for the implementation of task sets. (2006, methodology): “For example, task-switching paradigms designed to identify activation differences between repeat and switch trials have served as a valuable tool for the study of task-set processes (Sohn et al., 2000; Yeung et al., 2006) Important previous single-unit and neuroimaging studies of executive systems h”
- Multiple task-demands flexibly optimize neural geometry in human ventral temporal cortex (2026, unknown): “Rapid task switching could additionally involve task-dependent attentional shifts across regions, preferentially weighting representations whose existing geometry is specialized or well suited to the current goal 72 .”