cognitive control – Page 4

24

Jul 2013

Interesting and provocative: Bottom-up and top-down attention are independent

Miller Lab

Psychology

Pinto et al, despite enough statistical power, fail to see any correlation between performance of a top-down attention task (search) and a bottom-up attention task (singleton capture). They argue that top-down and bottom-up attention systems operate independently.

They cite our work, which suggests that top-down vs bottom up attention signals originate from prefrontal vs parietal cortex:
Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860-1862 The Scientist’s “Hot Paper” for October 2009. View PDF »
22

Jul 2013

Flexible frequency control of cortical oscillations enables computations required for working memory

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Dipoppa and Gutkin propose a model of working memory in which gamma-beta oscillations gates access, theta oscillations protects working memory from distractions, and alpha oscillations clears out old memories.

This is consistent with our observations that beta helps from ensembles for rules held in working memory while alpha clears out a dominant ensemble so that a weaker one can be used:
Buschman, T.J., Denovellis, E.L., Diogo, C., Bullock, D. and Miller, E.K. (2012) Synchronous oscillatory neural ensembles for rules in the prefrontal cortex. Neuron, 76: 838-846. View PDF
18

Jul 2013

Distinct and Overlapping Frontoparietal Representations of Task Rules

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Zhang et al studied rule-based behavior by either having human subjects choose the rule themselves or by instructing them to the rule. They found context-dependent and context-independent (chosen vs instructed) rule representations in frontal and parietal cortex. This gives insight into the architecture of cognitive control.
16

Jul 2013

Visual working memory capacity: from psychophysics and neurobiology to individual differences

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Excellent review of an important topic: Working memory capacity. The limitation in working memory capacity is the most objective, easily measured, and tractable property of conscious thought..
Luck and Vogel (2013)

Miller Lab work cited:
Siegel, M., Warden, M.R., and Miller, E.K. (2009) Phase-dependent neuronal coding of objects in short-term memory. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106: 21341-21346. View PDF »
11

Jul 2013

Review: The Brain on Stress: Vulnerability and Plasticity of the Prefrontal Cortex over the Life Course

Miller Lab

Neuroscience, Psychology

Your prefrontal cortex becomes less resistant to stress as you age. McEwen and Morrison tell you all about it.
11

Jul 2013

Prefrontal Contributions to Visual Selective Attention

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

The 2013 Annual Review of Neuroscience is here. It includes a very nice review of the role of the prefrontal cortex in visual attention by Squire et al
5

Jul 2013

Effective Connectivity During Feature-Based Attentional Capture

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

DiQuattro et al use dynamic causal modeling (DCM) of FMRI signals to show that the frontal eye fields (FEF) are more involved initiating shifts of attention than the temporoparietal junction (TPJ, another leading candidate). The FEF received sensory signals earlier than the TPJ and FEF to TPJ connectivity was modulated by appearance of a target.

Miller Lab work cited:
Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2007) Top-down versus bottom-up control of attention in the prefrontal and posterior parietal cortices. Science. 315: 1860-1862 The Scientist’s “Hot Paper” for October 2009. View PDF »

Buschman, T.J. and Miller, E.K. (2009) Serial, covert, shifts of attention during visual search are reflected by the frontal eye fields and correlated with population oscillations. Neuron, 63: 386-396. View PDF »
3

Jul 2013

Comparison of abstract decisions in multiple brain areas

Miller Lab

Miller Laboratory, Neuroscience, Psychology

Miller Lab alumnus, Andreas Nieder, finds that abstract decisions divorced from motor plans are distributed across frontal areas, even those traditionally thought of as motor areas. In fact, they are more strongly encoded in the presupplementary motor area than the prefrontal cortex.
Merten and Nieder 2013

Miller Lab work cited:
Freedman, D.J., Riesenhuber, M., Poggio, T., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Categorical representation of visual stimuli in the primate prefrontal cortex. Science, 291:312-316. View PDF »

Miller, E.K. and Cohen, J.D. (2001) An integrative theory of prefrontal cortex function. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 24:167-202. Designated a Current Classic by Thomson Scientific as among the most cited papers in Neuroscience and Behavior. View PDF »

Miller, E.K. (2000) The prefrontal cortex and cognitive control. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 1:59-65.

Wallis, J.D., Anderson, K.C., and Miller, E.K. (2001) Single neurons in the prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. Nature, 411:953-956. View PDF »
25

Jun 2013

Prefrontal mechanisms of behavioral flexibility, emotion regulation and value updating

Miller Lab

Neuroscience

Betsy Murray and crew find evidence to resolve two different views of the function of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). One view is that the OFC provides inhibitory control and emotion regulation. The other view is that processes the value of things. They show that damage limited to the OFC does not affect inhibitory or emotional control, but damage to nearby fiber tracts do. There you go.