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Updated: Sep 13, 2025
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A Large Lateral Craniotomy Procedure for Mesoscale Wide-field Optical Imaging of Brain Activity
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Manipulating visual, rule and motor conflict partially dissociates multiple demand cortex sub-regions.
Bryony Goulding Mew1, Darije Custovic1, Eyal Soreq1
1Department of Brain Sciences, Imperial College London, Burlington Danes, The Hammersmith Hospital, Du Cane Road, London, W12 0NN, United Kingdom.
Neuropsychologia
|August 2, 2025
Summary
Cognitive control resolves conflict using distinct brain patterns that overlap in the Multiple Demand Cortex (MDC). This suggests a spectrum of domain-specific to domain-general processing within the brain’s executive functions.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Cognitive Control
Background:
- Flexible behavior relies on cognitive control to manage conflicting information and actions.
- The neural basis of conflict resolution, specifically whether it involves global or domain-specific resources, remains debated.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the neural mechanisms underlying different types of conflict (rule, response, stimulus).
- To determine the extent of overlap and specificity of brain regions involved in conflict resolution.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a novel functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) paradigm with a full-factorial design.
- Orthogonally manipulated rule-based, response-based, and stimulus-based conflict.
- Conducted whole-brain voxelwise and region of interest analyses.
Main Results:
- Distinct brain activation patterns were observed for different conflict types.
- Partial overlap in activation was found within Multiple Demand Cortex (MDC) regions.
- Most MDC sub-regions showed activation across all conflict types, but with varying intensity.
Conclusions:
- Conflict resolution appears to be an emergent property of distributed brain networks.
- Brain regions involved in conflict resolution exist on a continuum from domain-specialized to domain-general.
- While MDC regions are largely general, they exhibit significant functional heterogeneity.
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