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The role of the dorsal Anterior Cingulate Cortex (dACC) in a cognitive and emotional counting Stroop task: Two cases
Wing Ting To1, Dirk De Ridder2, Tomas Menovsky3
1School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX, USA.
Background:
The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) has been implicated in both cognitive and emotional processing, with cognitive information proposed to be processed through the dorsal/caudal ACC and emotional information through the rostral/ventral ACC.
Objective:
The objective of this study is to investigate the role of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) in cognitive and emotional processing using a cognitive and emotional counting Stroop task in two patients in whom abnormalities in the dACC were identified and treated.
Methods:
Two patients performed the cognitive and emotional counting Stroop task before and after treatment to examine whether the dACC has a specific or more general processing function.
Results:
We observed an overall improvement in the emotional, cognitive, and neutral trials of the counting Stroop task after the intervention, indicating that the dACC is not a subregion of the ACC that only contributes to a specific domain.
Conclusion:
This study reveals that the dACC is not just a subregion of the ACC that contributes to a specific cognitive function, but is rather part of a salience network that influences general brain functioning, influencing cognitive as well as emotional processing.
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