Ongoing brain activity fluctuations directly account for intertrial and indirectly for intersubject variability in...

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Ongoing brain activity fluctuations correlate with performance variability.
• These fluctuations impact neural responses, perception, and motor control.

Purpose of the Study:

• Investigate the role of intrinsic brain activity in cognitive control.
• Examine prestimulus activity's influence on Stroop task performance.

Main Methods:

• Functional neuroimaging (fMRI) with a sparse event-related design.
• Volunteers performed a color-word Stroop task.
• Analyzed prestimulus activity in relation to response speed and Stroop effect size.

Main Results:

• Prestimulus activity in task-relevant regions (dorsal anterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, ventral visual areas) predicted response speed.
• Effects were significant in subjects exhibiting behavioral interference.
• Faster reaction times correlated with higher activity in color-related regions and slower times with higher activity in word-form regions.

Conclusions:

• Intrinsic brain activity fluctuations modulate neural mechanisms of selective attention and cognitive control.
• Ongoing activity may reflect the precision of prediction error signaling in predictive coding models.