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Material-specific interference control is dissociable and lateralized in human prefrontal cortex.

Maiya R Geddes¹, Ami Tsuchida², Victoria Ashley³

¹Montreal Neurological Institute, Department of Neurology & Neurosurgery, McGill University, Montréal, Canada H3A 2B4; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, 43 Vassar Street, Office 4033-D, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA; Brigham and Women׳s Hospital, Division of Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology, Harvard University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.

Neuropsychologia

|September 28, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Damage to specific sides of the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) causes distinct deficits in cognitive control. This suggests hemispheric specialization in resolving interference during goal-directed behavior.

Keywords:

Cognitive control Flanker Frontal lobes Lesion Neuropsychology Stroop Ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

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Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Neurology

Background:

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) is crucial for goal-directed behavior and managing competing information.
The role of the PFC in cognitive control, specifically regarding interference resolution, is debated, with theories proposing either general mechanisms or specialized functions based on brain hemisphere.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate whether cognitive control relies on material-general mechanisms or hemispheric specialization within the ventrolateral PFC.
To determine the specific contributions of the left and right ventrolateral PFC to interference control.

Main Methods:

Studied patients with localized damage to the left or right ventrolateral PFC.
Assessed performance on two classic interference control tasks: the color-word Stroop task and the Eriksen flanker task.
Analyzed performance differences between patient groups and control subjects.

Main Results:

Patients with left ventrolateral PFC damage showed significant deficits in the color-word Stroop task but not the Eriksen flanker task.
Patients with right ventrolateral PFC damage exhibited the opposite pattern, with impaired performance on the Eriksen flanker task but not the Stroop task.
These findings demonstrate doubly dissociable deficits linked to the location of PFC damage.

Conclusions:

Cognitive control, specifically interference resolution, is not mediated by a single general mechanism within the PFC.
The results support a lateralized and material-specific model of cognitive control, where different aspects of interference resolution are handled by distinct hemispheres of the ventrolateral PFC.