A gateway system in rostral PFC? Evidence from biasing attention to perceptual information and internal representations

Henseler, Ilona; Krüger, Sebastian; Dechent, Peter; Gruber, Oliver

doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2011.02.056

Cited by 38 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…The frontopolar cortex is believed to have a role in allocating attentional resources to the processing of external vs internal information (Burgess et al, 2007;Henseler et al, 2011). Consistent with its proposed functional role, our results revealed that anterior vmPFC volume was inversely associated with illness duration.…”

Section: Fear Circuitry Structure In Pediatric Ptsdsupporting

confidence: 84%

Abnormal Structure of Fear Circuitry in Pediatric Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Keding

Herringa

2014

Neuropsychopharmacol

104

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Structural brain studies of adult post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) show reduced gray matter volume (GMV) in fear regulatory areas including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and hippocampus. Surprisingly, neither finding has been reported in pediatric PTSD. One possibility is that they represent age-dependent effects that are not fully apparent until adulthood. In addition, lowerresolution MRI and image processing in prior studies may have limited detection of such differences. Here we examine fear circuitry GMV, including age-related differences, using higher-resolution MRI in pediatric PTSD vs healthy youth. In a cross-sectional design, 3 T anatomical brain MRI was acquired in 27 medication-free youth with PTSD and 27 healthy non-traumatized youth of comparable age, sex, and IQ. Voxel-based morphometry was used to compare GMV in a priori regions including the medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala/hippocampus. Compared with healthy youth, PTSD youth had reduced GMV but no age-related differences in anterior vmPFC (BA 10/11, Z ¼ 4.5), which inversely correlated with PTSD duration. In contrast, although there was no overall group difference in hippocampal volume, a group Â age interaction (Z ¼ 3.6) was present in the right anterior hippocampus. Here, age positively predicted hippocampal volume in healthy youth but negatively predicted volume in PTSD youth. Within the PTSD group, re-experiencing symptoms inversely correlated with subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC, Z ¼ 3.7) and right anterior hippocampus (Z ¼ 3.5) GMV. Pediatric PTSD is associated with abnormal structure of the vmPFC and age-related differences in the hippocampus, regions important in the extinction and contextual gating of fear. Reduced anterior vmPFC volume may confer impaired recovery from illness, consistent with its role in the allocation of attentional resources. In contrast, individual differences in sgACC volume were associated with re-experiencing symptoms, consistent with the role of the sgACC in fear extinction. The negative relationship between age and hippocampal volume in youth with PTSD may suggest an ongoing neurotoxic process over development, which further contributes to illness expression. Future studies employing a longitudinal design would be merited to further explore these possibilities.

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Section: Fear Circuitry Structure In Pediatric Ptsdsupporting

confidence: 84%

Abnormal Structure of Fear Circuitry in Pediatric Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Keding

Herringa

2014

Neuropsychopharmacol

104

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“…Such findings have been interpreted within the framework of the 'gateway hypothesis' Gilbert et al, 2005;Henseler et al, 2011), according to which lateral and medial rostral PFC play a role in promoting attention to stimulus-independent and stimulus-oriented thought respectively. Stimulus-independent thought refers to cognitive processes uncoupled from the immediate sensory environment, such as those required to maintain a pending intention, whereas stimulus-oriented thought refers to cognitive processes driven by current perceptual processing, such as those that may be involved in an ongoing task within which a delayed intention is embedded (Barban et al, 2013(Barban et al, , 2014Henseler et al, 2011).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Stimulus-independent thought refers to cognitive processes uncoupled from the immediate sensory environment, such as those required to maintain a pending intention, whereas stimulus-oriented thought refers to cognitive processes driven by current perceptual processing, such as those that may be involved in an ongoing task within which a delayed intention is embedded (Barban et al, 2013(Barban et al, , 2014Henseler et al, 2011). This hypothesis proposes that both lateral and medial rostral PFC play a role in participants' fulfillment of delayed intentions, acting together to modulate the balance between stimulus-independent and stimulus-oriented thought.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating external reminders for delayed intentions: Dissociable influence on “task-positive” and “task-negative” brain networks

Landsiedel

Gilbert

2015

NeuroImage

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Studies of prospective memory and other paradigms requiring participants to remember delayed intentions typically reveal a distinction between lateral and medial rostral prefrontal cortex, whereby the experimental condition yields increased signal in the former region and decreased signal in the latter. These regions comprise nodes of larger "task-positive" and "task-negative" networks that often show opposite patterns of signal change in response to diverse cognitive demands. However, it is not clear to what extent activity in these networks is A) inverse but equivalent, or B) functionally dissociable. In order to address this question, participants performed an "intention-offloading" task while undergoing fMRI. On each trial they remembered a delayed intention, which they had the opportunity to fulfill after a brief filled delay. In one condition they were required to set an external reminder of this intention, while in the other they acted without any external memory aid. Results indicated a clear functional dissociation between the two networks. Compared with a control task with no delayed intention, there was a highly significant reduction in task-negative deactivation when participants used an external memory aid. However, there was no reduction in task-positive activation. These results are consistent with previous evidence that medial rostral prefrontal cortex plays a prominent role in representing the content of delayed intentions, accompanied by a reduction in BOLD signal and potentially increased theta-band oscillatory activity. This role is no longer required once an external reminder has been created. By contrast, lateral rostral prefrontal cortex may play a content-free role, unaffected by the offloading of content into the external environment.

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“…However, experimental evidence argues against the view that the internal-external orientation per se is related to dmPFC activation in mentalizing, or more generally in high construal. Several studies actually suggest the inverse pattern: greater involvement of the medial dmPFC in externally focused processes and of the lateral prefrontal cortex in internally focused processes (Burgess et al, 2007; Henseler et al, 2011). Critically, Gilbert et al (2007) made a within-participants comparison of mentalizing (performing a task supposedly with a collaborator) vs. no mentalizing (no collaborator) on the one hand, and externally vs. internally oriented processes on the other, and found activations in dissociable parts of the dmPFC related to mentalizing and internal orientation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Dorsal Medial Prefrontal Cortex Is Recruited by High Construal of Non-social Stimuli

Baetens

Overwalle

2017

Front. Behav. Neurosci.

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The dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) is part of the mentalizing network, a set of brain regions consistently engaged in inferring mental states. However, its precise function in this network remains unclear. It has recently been proposed that the dmPFC is involved in high-level abstract (i.e., categorical) identification or construction of both social and non-social stimuli, referred to as “high construal.” This was based on the observation of greater activation in the dmPFC shared by a high construal social condition (trait inference based on visually presented behavior) and a high construal non-social condition (categorization of visually presented objects) vs. matched low construal conditions (visual description of the same pictures). However, dmPFC activation has been related to task contexts requiring responses based on self-guided generation of mental content or decisions as compared to responses more directly determined by the experimental context (e.g., free vs. rule-governed choice). The previously reported dmPFC activity may reflect differences in task constraint (i.e., the extent to which the task context guided the process) confounded with the construal manipulation. Therefore, in the present study, we manipulated construal level and constraint independently, while participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). As before, participants visually described (low level construal) or categorized (high level construal) pictures of objects. Orthogonal to this, the description or categorization task had to be performed on either one object (low constraint) or on two objects simultaneously (high constraint), limiting the number of possible responses. Statistical analysis revealed common greater activation in both high construal conditions (high and low constraint) than in their low construal counterparts, replicating the influence of construal level on dmPFC activation (greater involvement in high than low construal), but no influence of constraint. In line with previous proposals and earlier work, we suggest that the dmPFC is involved in high-construal abstraction across different domains.

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A gateway system in rostral PFC? Evidence from biasing attention to perceptual information and internal representations

Cited by 38 publications

References 70 publications

Abnormal Structure of Fear Circuitry in Pediatric Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Abnormal Structure of Fear Circuitry in Pediatric Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Creating external reminders for delayed intentions: Dissociable influence on “task-positive” and “task-negative” brain networks

The Dorsal Medial Prefrontal Cortex Is Recruited by High Construal of Non-social Stimuli

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