[Neural mechanisms of basic functions of cognitive control]

Cognitive control refers to the brain functions that regulate variously specific mental activities in terms of task goal, forming the basis of goal-guided behaviors. In the last decade, our team devoted to investigating the neural mechanisms of basic functions of cognitive control, i.e., monitoring, controlling, and switching. We published a series of papers on the temporal course of monitoring initiating cognitive control and its mechanisms, the influential scope of controlling and new controlling mechanisms, brain networks related to controlling efficiency, brain hubs and neural dynamic encoding of switching. This paper reviews the related studies and further extracts their theoretical significance. In the future, more attention should be paid on causal studies, studies on functional implementation of cognitive control, and transfer-application studies, by which we expect to deeply elucidate neural mechanisms of cognitive control.